Victoria Boult’s the co-creator, along with Rachel Fawcett, of n00b — a nostalgic teen sex comedy about 2005, bad fashion choices, emo music and flip phones, which also serves as a love-letter to the internet.
It premieres on Three and ThreeNow tonight, backed by Warner Bros. Discovery ANZ.
Last June the pair were handed almost $1.5million, through Great Southern Television, to turn their 12, 90-second TikTok episodes, by the same name, into a six-episode TV series.
Boult, 26, says seeing it come to fruition is "the coolest thing ever".
"It’s just the most exciting thing in the world, to have this beautiful thing that has been inside my head, and my co-creator Rachel’s head, for so long go on the big screen where everyone will get the opportunity to see it ... that is so exciting to me."
While the TikTok series provided the inspiration, the TV version is "entirely new".
"It takes the themes and ideas of the TikTok series, but blows them up into an entirely different world ... two characters were an inspiration, but they’re now unrecognisable," she says.
Set in Gore, n00b follows the social downfall of Nikau Bennett — the "king of Gore college" and all-round party animal, who’s outed as gay.
He becomes a social outcast and along with a group of "freakish friends and foes" traverses the complicated world of high school, and the internet, in search of the confidence to be his true self.
But why Gore?
Boult says they wanted to set the show in rural small-town New Zealand, and when they uncovered an old YouTube clip, involving Newsboy and Havoc in Gore, circa 1999, it provided the impetus and inspiration for the opening of the series.
"Gore ... is like a character in our show.
"It represents small-town NZ, and all the beauty that comes with that — the amazing small community that I experienced when I was growing up — but it also represents the difficulty of a more conservative small town, which is difficult to be understood by, and difficult to be yourself in."
Eagle-eyed viewers may also spot Boult making a cameo in episode one, along with her boyfriend — "a very good-looking head boy and head girl" — and her parents, former Queenstown mayor and mayoress Jim and Karen, in episodetwo.
"Obviously, they have been my biggest supporters since day one ... I have been coming home telling them the craziest things, like I want to be an actor, director, writer and they’ve never questioned it, but I don’t actually think they really understood what went into directing or making a show.
"Getting to have them on set ... was a cool, full-circle moment."
She also notes there’s a character in the show named after her brother, James.
While future seasons will be determined by audience reactions and viewers, Boult says she already has ideas for seasons two and three and is hopeful they’ll come to fruition — they already have an international distributor on board, Obel, based in France, for season one, too.
"I just think this is such a rich, interesting world that will resonate with a lot of people ... I have a lot of high hopes."
n00b screens on Three at 8.30pm Thursdays.
