Too much fun to stop doing Rake, admits Richard Roxburgh.

It was not once but twice that Richard Roxburgh told me Rake would end with three seasons, but the show was renewed a year ago by ABC.

“We want to leave a good-looking corpse and leave something beautifully, so that there is no sense ever that we’ve tried to string it out and it gets watered down,” he said in early 2014.

“We want it to be intense, flavourful, and then it’s gone.”

 

So why the change of heart? Last week Roxburgh endeavoured to shed a bit more light on the decision at the ABC Upfronts, in a style befitting of Cleaver Greene.

“We always said that might be the end of it but we were having so much fun and we did always say if we do bring it back we would have to have a really fantastic idea. So we got together for a while workshopping things, chucking stuff around and then we realised ‘F*** it’s hard to come up with really good ideas!'” he joked.

“So we just thought ‘Bugger it we’ll just do it anyway’ and here we are!”

Returning for a welcome fourth season are Matt Day, Danielle Cormack, Russell Dykstra, Caroline Brazier, Adrienne Pickering, Keegan Joyce, Kate Box, and Damien Garvey. Joining the cast this season are Miriam Margolyes, John Waters and Rachael Blake, with Justine Clarke as one of the first guests announced.

“It’s so great to be back, and it’s a fun, spectacular season with some interesting new phenomena. For anybody who is a devotee and the true believers and new folk, they’re going to love it.”