Grosse Pointe Garden Society’s Alexander Hodge says show is ‘low stakes, high reward’

Is TV getting too intense?

Are there too many high-concept shows that require if not a masters degree then at least one of those red-thread pin boards to keep track of everything? Or on the opposite side, are there too many that are formulaic and procedural?

What’s the middle ground?

According to Australian actor Alexander Hodge, one of the leads of Grosse Pointe Garden Society, his new series is exactly that.

“We just need to chill the f... out in television,” he told The Nightly. “We need low stakes, high reward, and that’s what this show is. You don’t need to remember every word that was said in the episode beforehand, you’re going to be able to follow along.

“But, also, because it’s not procedural you don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s so much on TV that’s just an influx of case-of-the-week, murder-of-the-week, illness-of-the-week. It’s like, how many things can the FBI save?

“Or how many random illnesses are we up to now on medical dramas? This show removes all that lengthy exposition and multi-syllabic diagnoses, and it just becomes the storyline, about what’s going on.”

Grosse Pointe Garden Society is a character-driven murder mystery with a cheeky and heightened tone. Think Desperate Housewives or Why Women Kill.

Everything and everyone is a little arch, the clothes are a little too vibrant and the dialogue maybe a little too snippy for a regular person. It’s guilty pleasure TV, and with a dead body to propel the story forward.

“There is a big murder mystery at the beginning of the (first episode) that we spend the season working towards, but the way it unravels is that it’s everything we think we know about each other, and then everything we don’t,” Hodge added.

The series is led by Melissa Fumero (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Aja Naomi King (Scandal, Lessons in Chemistry), AnnaSophia Robb (The Carrie Diaries) and Ben Rappaport (Younger), who are members of a suburban gardening club in the upscale town of Grosse Pointe.

At the very start of the show, they’re seen burying a body beneath the soil of their little slice of Eden in the dead of night. Fade to black. Flashback to months earlier, and everything that happened which led to the killing. Who’s the body, who killed them and why?

Hodge plays Doug, the husband to Robb’s character Alice. He seems like a nice guy, but like everyone else in TV suburban milieu, there’s more to him than an affable smile and easygoing nature.

Hodge filmed the show in Atlanta, a city he called one of his favourite places. It’s a metro centre but still close enough to nature so that farmers can load their trucks and present that produce directly to you at the markets, and an escape from the big smoke is never that far.

It was just a little bit cold when they were filming in the middle of winter, where the temperature oscillates in the range between five degrees either side of freezing.

With a lot of Grosse Pointe Garden Society filmed outside in an actual garden, and pretending to be springtime, that meant a lot of hand-warmers in hidden spots, and massive puffer coats in between takes.

Filming away from his LA base meant he and his cast members would hang out every other weekend, discovering new parts of their adopted home.

Hodge is Sydney-born and was part of the ensemble cast of the Celeste Barber-led Netflix series Wellmania. But he has worked mostly in the US on the likes of superhero show Black Lightning, raucous road trip comedy Joy Ride, and as a main cast member of Issa Rae’s acclaimed HBO series Insecure.

It’s that experience in the American industry that makes him an advocate for Grosse Pointe Blank and its frothy delights. The streaming wars triggered an avalanche of shows with mega budgets designed to grab attention and new audiences, and producers forgot they also needed to make comfort food TV that was still exciting.

“This show feels like a return to a simpler time,” he explained. “I can’t wait to throw it on after dinner, have a debrief with my missus after a tough day and then just go, ‘What are they going to get up to next?’.

“It’s a storyline that’s accessible for all walks of life, no matter where you live.”

Grosse Pointe Garden Society is on 7plus from September 2