Summer Love: behind the scenes

Co-creators, writers, producers and directors Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope discuss bringing a diverse group of voices together for the anthology series Summer Love.

After producing a string of successful comedy series such as The Librarians, Upper Middle Bogan and Very Small Business, the pandemic brought a time of reflection and pause for creators Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope. Wanting to incorporate more diverse voices into their work, Butler proposed an idea that had been sitting in the bottom shelf for almost 20 years – a holiday house.

“Wayne and I had a big conversation with each other to say, well, how do we authentically get other voices into our work?” Butler explains. “And so this holiday house idea was a really genuinely authentic way to do that.”

The series is told over eight half-hour episodes and each is written by eight different writing teams, including Kodie Bedford, Alison Bell, Patrick Brammall, Robyn Butler, James Colley, Harriet Dyer, Wayne Hope, Nazeem Hussain, Jayden Masciulli, Kate Mulvany, Bjorn Stewart, Miranda Tapsell & Nath Valvo.

In this behind-the-scenes video, Butler and Hope talk about the challenges of filming on location, how the holiday house shares screen history with another iconic Australian film and how they approached the writing teams to develop their idea.

Summer Love begins broadcasting weekly on ABC TV from Wednesday 31 August 2022 and is available to stream on ABC iview.