Part of ABC's 2016 slate

Australian comedians Luke McGregor and Celia Pacquola are to make a new sitcom about a struggling estate agency.

The eight-part series, called Rosehaven, will be filmed in rural Tasmania early next year, ready for broadcast on the ABC.

McGregor and Celia Pacquola, who have both performed in the UK, previously worked together on the mockumentary series Utopia. Renamed Dreamland in the UK to avoid confusion with the Channel 4 series of the same name, the comedy was set in the fictional bureaucracy of Australia's Nation Building Authority.

Rose haven was created by McGregor and is one of two comedy programmes he has on the ABC's 2016 slate.

The other, Luke Warm Sex, is billed as 'an embarrassingly honest and humorous look at sex'.

Meanwhile a raft of comedy talent are to make pilots under the ABC Comedy Showroom banner. Audiences will vote on which of the six episodes – featuring Eddie Perfect, Ronnie Chieng, Lawrence Mooney, Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan – they'd like to see as a full series.

McCartney and McLennan already make a digital show for the national broadcaster, the spoof cookery programme The Katering Show, pictured right.

That has been renewed for a second series; as have the comedies Upper Middle Bogan, Soul Mates, Shaun Micallef's Mad As Hell, Black Comedy, The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, and Julia Zemiro's Home Delivery.

Also in the 2016 programming is a look at Tim Minchin's success in musical theatre, entitled Matilda And Me.

Published: 25 Nov 2015