Asa Butterfield Stars in Horror-Comedy Series Gnomes

Asa Butterfield stars as senior constable Arnold Kipps in the six-part Australian horror-comedy series Gnomes, where small-town police officers and teenagers battle an army of murderous terracotta garden ornaments awakened by an ancient evil ahead of Nompton’s “Gnome-a-Palooza” festival.

Gnomes Premieres on Stan on October 8

• The Premise: Created by Joel Kohn and written by Tegan Higginbotham and Paul F Verhoeven, the series blends small-town satire with creature-feature gore.
• The Cast: Asa Butterfield leads alongside Megan Smart, Darren Gilshenan as Mayor Lachlan Morrison, and Matt Okine.
• The Release: The production premieres on October 8 on Stan, positioning itself squarely within the Halloween viewing window.

Nompton Prepares for a Gnome-a-Palooza Massacre

In the fictional town of Nompton, an impending festival takes a lethal turn when an ancient evil awakens the local garden ornaments. The production opens with a William Castle-esque horror prologue featuring an eye patch-wearing Nazi in a storm-swept castle before jumping forward to the main narrative. Mayor Lachlan Morrison, played by Darren Gilshenan, insists the town stay open despite the rising body count, echoing the stubborn official from Jaws. Early on, Morrison informs senior constable Arnold Kipps that locating the missing “Gnome Queen” is vital because the council spent all its money acquiring it from a museum. Later, that same quest becomes the key to neutralizing the entire hive.

The series features a local police force that spends little time doing actual law enforcement. Senior constable Arnold Kipps—played by Asa Butterfield, best known as Otis Milburn from Netflix’s Sex Education—attends kids’ parties alongside fellow constables Josie Leeds, played by Tegan Higginbotham, and Devon Raki, played by Matt Okine. The authorities soon dispatch Kipps’ ex-partner, constable Ellie McKay, played by Megan Smart, to deliver news of a dramatic downsizing that will leave only one of them employed. When the narrative threshold is crossed—signaled by the death of the local DVD-shop proprietor played by Luke McGregor—the officers and a group of teenagers band together to fight off the pint-sized plague.

Stan Invests in Local Creature Feature Horror

The project arrives as the Australian streaming platform Stan continues investing heavily in locally produced original programming. The platform opted for creature-feature horror and broad comedy rather than sticking strictly to crime dramas or prestige thrillers. By scheduling the launch for October 8, the service aligns the title directly with the Halloween viewing window. The production draws explicit inspiration from the splatter-heavy creature features of the 1980s, combining practical horror effects with suburban surroundings.

Project Title	Platform	Primary Tone	Key Talent
Gnomes	Stan	Horror-Comedy / Creature Feature	Asa Butterfield, Megan Smart, Darren Gilshenan
Sex Education	Netflix		Asa Butterfield
Black Snow			Megan Smart

Directors Matthias Hoene, Sian Davies, and Joel Kohn maintain an energetic pace across the half-hour episodes. Cinematographer Matthew Temple, who recently shot Late Night with the Devil, gives the production a distinct midnight-movie aesthetic. Reviewers note that while the script occasionally relies on familiar genre tropes, the cast maintains a straight-faced delivery that acknowledges the inherent silliness of fighting homicidal garden gnomes.

Photo: grandgoldman.com