Dream dates almost turn nightmares for Peter Helliar

When Peter Helliar devised his new comedy series It’s a Date, looking at the trials and tribulations of dating, one of the names he was keen to get on board was UK comedian Ross Noble.

The ABC1 series sees actors, comedians and assorted famous faces in dating scenarios.

“I asked him ‘If you were going to work with anyone in Australia who would it be?’ and without missing a beat just from hearing the idea he said ‘Ian Smith!'” Helliar recalls.

“It kind of caught me by surprise. Harold from Neighbours! So I said ‘If I can make that happen will you fly back for it?’ and he said ‘Yes!'”

“Ian wanted to make sure we weren’t going to treat the elderly with disrespect due to the age gap and that it would be respectful to the gay community.”

The odd-pairing is one of many mix-and-match couplings that will appear across the series. While Helliar appears alongside Lisa McCune, Poh Ling Yeow performs with Dave Lawson, John Wood with Denise Scott, Sibylla Budd and Luke McGregor, and Asher Keddie with Stephen Curry.

“I said to Asher Keddie I had a few scenarios she might be interested in and I told her one and she said ‘That’s the one I want to do.’ I said ‘Do you want me to tell you the rest?’ but she said ‘No, that’s the one I want to do,'” he says.

“John Wood is a bit more robust than usual, laughing at his own jokes rather than a dry country cop or magistrate. Asher Keddie is a bit more confident than Nina Proudman.”

After working on scripts with co-writers, Helliar spent several hours with each performer to draw upon their own experiences of dating.

“I had the idea that Dave’s character would bump into his ex and she would be Asian, and it would be an awkward moment. Then Poh said ‘That’s a real thing amongst Asian women and it’s called Yellow Fever.’ So that gave us the blessing to discuss what Yellow Fever is and there were various accusations from both sides about what does it really mean, in the end?” he asks.

“So we concluded that it was a fun situation to write and Phil Lloyd had a fun time writing it.”

Also appearing are Kate Ritchie, Shane Jacobson, Sophie Lowe, Nadine Garner, Pia Miranda, Lawrence Mooney, Ryan Shelton, Dan Wyllie,  Jess Harris, Ronny Chieng, Kate McLennan, Louis Corbett, Eva Lazzaro and Nazeem Hussain.

“We wore it like a badge of honour that we hadn’t asked people to audition. But there were points where I wondered, “Shit are we doing the right thing?” he recalls.

“We had 140 actors in 8 weeks who all had to be dressed and made-up and made to feel different as far as the writing goes.

“It was exciting that every 2 days we would have a bunch of new people come in, and a new location, but with the momentum you would have to re-start every couple of days. We were shooting at Christmas time so bars and restaurants weren’t that keen to close for us. ABC doesn’t really have (big) budgets so there was a fair bit of dressing up of closed-down restaurants.

“I approached people I wanted to write with and then entered the vortex of what was a scheduling nightmare to get everyone in the room at some point and make sure everyone was going to be available.

“We lost 3 actors during that process because other projects came up for them overseas. But we knew that was going to happen and we got 3 great replacements.

It’s not the first time Helliar has dabbled in the world of romance, having written and produced the 2010 film, I Love You Too featuring Brendan Cowell, Peter Dinklage and Yvonne Strahovski.

“It was an amazing experience and it did reasonably well. Obviously we would have loved it to do more, but I’m sure James Cameron would have loved Avatar to have done better. In a year of about 6 or 7 Australian films we were one that got over $2m -we were closer to $3m and sold to 17 countries around the world.

“Not to drop a name or anything but Peter Dinklage said to me when we were talking about opening weekends, ‘You can’t worry about that. What we’re doing right now is the most fun part of the experience.’ It’s not waiting for the numbers, it’s making the film that is the most enjoyable part.”

If It’s a Date resonates well there is the possibility of format rights for Helliar.

“Conversations are happening. There had been interest from the UK but the States is obviously the big one and sometimes they like you to go to them first. But we wanted to have it made before we presented it to them,” he insists.

“So we have it with somebody over there who’s very excited -not a broadcaster but some representatives.”

It’s a Date airs 9pm Thursday ABC1.