Asa Butterfield Battles Killer Garden Gnomes in New Australian Stan Series

Asa Butterfield is swapping Sex Education for something considerably more deadly: garden ornaments.

Stan has unveiled the first trailer for its new original series Gnomes, a horror-comedy starring Butterfield alongside Australian actor Megan Smart, while confirming the series will premiere October 8.

The Australian production takes the seemingly harmless suburban garden gnome and transforms it into the centre of a blood-soaked monster story, with Stan describing the series as drawing inspiration from the splatter-heavy creature features of the 1980s.

The newly released trailer offers the first extended look at the show’s army of murderous terracotta creatures, combining practical horror, gore and comedy in a tone that evokes films including Gremlins while leaning into distinctly suburban surroundings. (Stan⁠)

Butterfield, best known for playing Otis Milburn across four seasons of Netflix hit Sex Education, leads the series alongside Smart, whose Australian credits include Black Snow.

For Butterfield, Gnomes marks another significant television role following the conclusion of Sex Education in 2023, the series that transformed the British actor into an international television star.

Smart, meanwhile, continues a run of Australian screen work that has included roles across film and television.

The series also arrives as Stan continues investing heavily in locally produced original programming, with Gnomes providing a decidedly different entry in the streamer’s Australian slate.

Rather than another crime drama or prestige thriller, the project embraces creature-feature horror and broad comedy, with its October launch positioning the series squarely within the Halloween viewing window.

Stan’s first footage suggests the garden itself will become a battleground as its human characters find themselves facing what the streamer has dubbed a “pint-sized plague” of murderous gnomes.

The series joins a long tradition of horror productions turning seemingly innocuous objects into monsters, but its Australian production gives the familiar formula a local spin.

For audiences accustomed to seeing Butterfield navigate the considerably more human problems of Moordale Secondary School, it also represents quite the change of pace.

This time, surviving adolescence isn’t the problem.

It’s surviving the backyard.

Gnomes premieres October 8 on Stan.