Cream of the crop

A new season of the darkly comic Kiwi series Creamerie is about to start - welcome news for its growing overseas fan base.

- ALANA RAE

CREAMERIE, TVNZ+, July 14; TVNZ 2, Friday, 10.00pm 

If New Zealand can find a way to export dairy in all its forms, it will. And as breakthrough comedy Creamerie returns for season two in all its dairy adjacent dystopian glory, it, too, is being sold to a wider world.

The series' first season was much loved at home. But after streamer Hulu introduced it to US audiences, with Australia's SBS also picking it up, producer Bronwyn Bakker says the Disney-owned US platform instantly asked when it would be getting the next one.

The season-one cliffhanger finish will no doubt have contributed. The first series ended in a room full of the last remaining men after a global virus supposedly eliminated everyone else. Graphically, they're being forced to provide the only thing that will continue humankind, all masterminded by Lane, the evil governess of "Wellness", played by Tandi Wright.

The ending shifted the series' dark humour further into the black.

"There are some things that happen that are quite confronting, but then equally, someone will say a line that puts you back into that comedy world," says Bakker. "That tonal balance it's a bit of an art form."