After first launching online in February 2013, Kiwi cult comedy web series Flat3 has rapidly gained an army of fans.
Those devotees will be sad to know the show's end is nigh... but they'll be rapt to discover it's going out in style.
The upcoming third and final season is the first to be funded by New Zealand on Air to the tune of $100,000. The first season's self-funded budget was just $1000, and the second had a crowd-sourced budget of $10,000.
Flat3 follows three young women living in Auckland: Jessica (JJ Fong), Perlina (Perlina Lau) and Lee (Ally Xue). The trio were inspired to make it through a combination of annoyance at typecasting and the desire to take the kind of comedy they loved and make it their own.
"A lot of the scenes are based on real life stories that we and our friends contribute, and Roseanne [Liang, the show's director and co-writer] writes accordingly to that. Season three was Roseanne and Simon [Ward] writing together," explains Fong.
"Season three comes a lot more from Roseanne's creativity rather than our personal lives," says Xue.
"I would say season three is the farthest from our personal experiences," agrees Lau.
"We have a lot of characters that have come back from season one and two, and we've also fleshed out their storylines. So there was more to play with in season three, because there's this whole bunch of characters that were already there for us to grow on."
Flat3 contains uncensored swearing and much of the humour is definitely adults only - so much so that its stars are uneasy about their parents seeing it.
"I am actively trying to avoid letting my mum see this!" laughs Lau.
"When she's like, 'I can't get Youtube to work,' I'm like, 'Oh, what a shame! I don't know, maybe it's just the internet.' She would know what was going on, but my mum's quite conservative so she might not see the humorous side of it."
"My parents are immigrant parents, I don't think they'll actually get the jokes," says Xue.
"They're really proud, but they don't know what it's about. There's lots of pop culture references which I guess - unless you Google gossip websites, you probably don't know what's going on."
As well as receiving critical praise, Flat3 has attracted several well-known guest actors. Season three features Madeleine Sami, Kimberley Crossman, Glen Levy, Olivia Tennet and Pua Magasiva to name but a few.
So what's next for the cast and crew of Flat3?
"I guess we're concentrating on marketing season three and getting it out there," says Fong.
"And then… we've been discussing certain things."
"We've talked about taking on a different project altogether," says Lau.
"A completely new concept, a new idea, a new show. That's something we're thinking about. We're considering the options - we haven't ruled out TV, but we haven't thought any more seriously about doing that either. At the moment we're focussing on trying to get this season out first, we'll see how that goes, then wait a little bit and see what we feel like doing."
As a fan of Flat3, I sincerely hope this lot do indeed continue to work together and create more quality, original entertainment.
In the meantime, season three launches this Friday and can be viewed free, along with all episodes of the first two seasons, on flat3webseries.com.
View my full video interview with Fong, Lau and Xue above.
3 News
source: newshub archive
