There’s a rich tradition of daggy humour in Australian film and television, running from Alvin Purple (1973) to Muriel’s Wedding (1994) to the inimitable ABC series Dog’s Head Bay (1999). These works embrace the cultural cringe of Australianness in a way that’s thoroughly disarming.

It’s great to see Stan keeping this tradition alive and kicking, first with The F Ward and now with the comedy horror series Gnomes.

Gnomes is, undeniably, extremely silly.

The series opens with Nazis trying to resurrect the evil Gnome Queen – a larger than human statue resembling a garden gnome – in order to win the second world war. We then jump ahead to the garden-gnome obsessed small Victorian town, Nompton, population a touch over 4,000.

We follow local constable Arnold Kipps (Asa Butterfield) as the town’s yearly “Gnome-a-Palooza” is run aground when the show’s “pièce de résistance”, to quote Mayor Lachlan (brilliantly played by Darren Gilshenan) – yep, the evil Gnome Queen – comes to life after Kipps accidentally touches the queen’s magic........

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