“Steven [Jones-Evans, the production designer], Mandy and I had worked together on Love Serenade,” she says, “so it was great to be able to get in stride again a second time around. We were always aware that, going into this, we would be filming on the Gold Coast, where it would be really easy to exploit the obvious excessive glitzy clichés. But we really wanted to pull right back from that. It’s a character-driven story and, in order to believe the characters, you need to believe the environment they’re in.”

Adds Chapman: “Shirley encourages the creative team to come up with their own interpretation, but it’s still based on something that is very definite. She doesn’t like a sense of contrivance or stylistic intervention. They were basing whatever they were doing on the truth, on what the reality of the Gold Coast is: she creates very specific and unusual worlds that are based on a reality.”

The result, concludes the producer, “is a tender, quietly ironic story about ordinary people with big aspirations. It’s a story about people with delusions. All of us are deluded: it’s just that Joey’s a little bit more so than the rest of us.”