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Exclusive: Trent O’Donnell is on a break from shooting an episode of Ghosts when he speaks to Deadline, joining the call as temperatures hit minus-18°C in Montreal where the U.S. version of the comedy is shot.

Sunny Nights, meanwhile, is set and was filmed in the warmer surroundings of Sydney, Australia. O’Donnell directs and exec produces. It follows Vicki (D’Arcy Carden) and Martin (Will Forte) as an American brother-sister team setting up a spray tan business in the city. An unseemly blackmail incident and a pressing need for cash mean, however, the siblings get entangled in the city’s murky underworld, setting up a series that is equal parts drama and comedy.

Having worked with Forte on No Activity and Carden on The Good Place, O’Donnell says he scrawled their names on the script right after reading it for the first time during lockdown. He put in...

Rolling out at the London TV Screenings, where it is being distributed by Cineflix Rights after a slot at the Berlinale Series Market, the Aussie crime comedy “Sunny Nights” follows American siblings Martin (Will Forte) and Vicki (D’Arcy Carden) as they try to strike rich in the spray tan business – only to fall deeper and deeper into the Sydney underworld.

Created by Nick Keetch and Ty Freer and produced by Jungle Entertainment and Echo Lake Entertainment, the series will air on Australian streamer Stan later this year, with Cineflix Rights handling international distribution.

Director and showrunner Trent O’Donnell — creator of “No Activity” and veteran of “New Girl,” among myriad other credits – executive produced and helmed all eight episodes. Variety spoke with O’Donnell ahead of the London screening.

How did this project come to you?

I first read the pilot in 2020, when I was in Calgary, staying in a hotel during a two-week quarantine,...