Patrick Brammall's Unusual Behaviour

On the phone Brammall speaks quickly and warmly, anticipating questions and talking to you as if you’re the only person to whom he’s explained his new series. That series is Glitch: a paranormal drama where people begin coming back from the dead, good as new. Hayes is called upon to manage the “impossible situation” — oh, and one of the people who has returned is his wife. “What we try to do in the show is experience what that would actually be like, what it actually looks like for people to go through that, for me to have someone I dearly loved to come back from the dead.”

"I got to have a chance to be a cop and have a gun, who doesn’t want that?”

“When I was reading it I couldn’t really put it down,” says Brammall. “I thought, ‘This is a great story, this could be a really really great show.’ Then to be offered the chance to audition for the lead role; he’s got a really difficult dilemma to deal with. As the series goes on, the stakes and the momentum, more and more complications happen. It’s a really, he counts as this sort of everyman, just trying to see what would happen in this impossible situation and I suppose that’s the thing that really appealed to me about it. And also that I got to have a chance to be a cop and have a gun, who doesn’t want that?”

How did he prepare for the role? “We did a little bit of training with a cop. I fired a gun and I had time with this lovely guy who’s a cop who told me about what it’s like to be a cop in a country town, y’know? In a country town cops are more than just cops they’re a real part of the community and they take care of all sorts of things: not just your usual run-of-the-mill cop work.”

Immediately following the premiere on ABC, the entire six-episode series of Glitch will be available on ABC iview. Brammall says that that watching television on demand suits his lifestyle. “I’m nearly 40, so I’m sort of on the generation right in between those two kind of technologies, I suppose, but it’s more convenient for me to watch stuff when I’ve got time. I don’t work 9 to 5, and I’m constantly travelling from this city to that city, so that suits me much better. I’m very happy for it to be all put onto iView. I don’t know if it’s going to stay on iView for a long time or a short time, but I’m looking forward to it because I’ll get to see the whole series. I’ve only seen the first two eps.”

He’s an actor who flits between genres and mediums, from comedy to drama, theatre to film to television. “It’s sort of the dream as an actor that you get to try out your range as an actor. I’ve been really really lucky actually to get the chances to do comedy – Moody Christmas, Upper Middle Bogan, No Activity was something I just finished shooting for Stan, you know the online service – and then to do this really serious one [Glitch], Ruben Guthrie, yeah, it’s a black comedy but it’s got a really dark heart. I did Power Games a couple of years ago playing Rupert Murdoch, y’know. I’ve been really lucky to bounce between comedy and drama and I really love pushing both ends of it.”

"It’s a black comedy but it’s got a really dark heart."

Brammall signals a return to the theatre. “It’ll happen, it’ll definitely happen, because theatre is the only place where the actor is truly in control of their performance. It’s the director’s and the editor’s medium.”

But in the short term Brammall has plenty of “irons in the fire”. “I shot a pilot for 20th Century Fox and NBC a few months ago called The Strange Calls which was the Australian format, we made it a couple of years ago for ABC, and 20th Century Fox bought the format and made the pilot, we shot it in Vancouver actually with Danny Pudi from Community in the lead role and Daniel Stern playing Barry Crocker’s role and I reprise my own role in it. So I’ll go over to the States to follow up on that and also to see about developing stuff. I’m a writer as well so I’ll be developing lots of my own things in the short term, just getting a chance to sit down with a laptop for a while is something I think I’m actually really looking forward to.

“I’ve got a half-hour sitcom that I’m developing with John Leary who’s also in Glitch. And one of those sort of cable-style, HBO-style show that I’m developing with David Field, who I met in The Moodys who’s also in No Activity. And writing stuff alone as well. And developing ideas for a play that I’m developing as well. Just everything really. In this country it’s difficult to just be an actor and wait for the phones to ring if you don’t have work on the go. Some years ago, almost ten years ago now, I wrote a couple of plays with John Leary because we were waiting for work. We thought ‘Well, let’s write ourselves some work,’ so we did a couple of plays at Belvoir, well actually at the Old Fitz and then it mounted at Belvoir. And so that habit has kicked on. I wrote one of the episodes for the second season of Moodys as well. Just trying to put irons in the fire and keep myself busy.”