Gnomes begins with a brief and rather atmospheric prologue set in the closing stages of the Second World War. As the conflict turns against them, Hitler dispatches some of his most trusted men to locate the legendary Gnome Queen, an ancient and powerful figure whose statue is said to hold the key to world domination. In a storm-swept castle scene complete with flickering candles and an eyepatch-wearing officer, the soldiers attempt a ritual involving the blood of a virgin and the Queen’s hatchet. The effort ends in disaster when the awakened Queen proves impossible to control, forcing those present to reverse the process and lock her power away once more. The opening establishes that this particular garden ornament carries a long and dangerous history before the story jumps forward to the present day. In tone and structure it bears a clear resemblance to the opening of Captain America: The First Avenger, where wartime agents likewise pursue an ancient object of immense power amid the chaos of the same conflict, only for the quest to spiral beyond their control and leave a lingering threat for later generations, what we get is something very different.
The main action then settles in the small Australian town of Nompton, a place that feels faded around the edges yet oddly proud of its peculiar local obsession. The residents have pinned their hopes on the first ever Gnome a Palooza festival, an event designed to draw visitors and rescue the local economy from quiet decline. Garden ornaments of every cheerful variety line the streets and front lawns, and the town even boasts its own gnome factory. It is the sort of cheerfully eccentric setting that promises gentle comedy until the story takes a sharp and rather bloody turn.
Senior Sergeant Arnold Kipps finds himself at the centre of the unfolding mess. He is a local officer who has grown comfortable with the slow pace of policing in a community of only a few thousand. Most days involve little more serious than chasing teenage gnome thieves or attending community events. That comfortable routine is disrupted when his former partner and former romantic interest, Senior Constable Ellie McKay, arrives with official news that the police station is to be scaled back dramatically. A place this small, she explains, no longer justifies a full station. Arnold is less than thrilled at the prospect of losing the job and the town he clearly loves.
Meanwhile the ambitious mayor has arranged for a special centrepiece to boost the festival. A sculpture of the ancient Gnome Queen has been brought over from a German museum, complete with firm instructions that it must be watched carefully at all times. The festival preparations proceed with the usual mixture of local pride and mild chaos, while Arnold tries to navigate both the professional upheaval and the awkward personal history with Ellie.
The turning point arrives after a rather heavy night of drinking. Arnold ends up alone with the Gnome Queen statue. Through drunken clumsiness he cuts his hand and becomes compelled to touch hatchet the figure is holding. That interaction proves enough to awaken the ancient evil of the Gnome Queen.
The episode spends a fair amount of time establishing the everyday texture of Nompton before the supernatural elements fully take hold. You see the mayor pushing the festival hard, the local officers going about their limited duties, and the general sense that this is a place that has seen better days yet still holds onto a certain stubborn charm. Arnold’s reluctance to leave and his complicated feelings about Ellie’s return provide the human element is the absurd little corner of the world. When the gnomes finally stir, the shift from mild comedy to something more frantic happens with a mixture of slapstick and genuine menace. The whole approach is clearly influenced by 1980s small creature horror films, those energetic and often gory stories in which ordinary objects or diminutive beings turn against unsuspecting humans with chaotic results.
Asa Butterfield brings an amiable, slightly awkward quality to Arnold that suits the character’s small town roots. He conveys the sense of a man who is competent enough for ordinary days yet thoroughly unprepared for an army of murderous lawn ornaments. Megan Smart’s Ellie arrives with a clearer sense of purpose and a cooler demeanour, creating an easy contrast that the episode begins to explore. There is plenty of local colour, from the determined mayor to the various townsfolk who treat the upcoming festival as a last chance at relevance.
The first episode has to carry a considerable amount of setup. You learn about the town’s economic troubles, the history of the Gnome Queen, the strained relationship between Arnold and Ellie, and the logistics of the festival. The pacing can feel uneven as a result, with this short opening episode feeling slow in places. The drunken sequence that leads to the awakening is played for broad comedy, which works in the moment yet sits a little awkwardly against the darker historical prologue that opened the episode.
The shows concept is very basic. It begins with the ordinary pressures of a struggling town and a threatened police station, introduces the festival as a hopeful distraction, and then allows Arnold’s accidental ritual to release the Gnome Queen and her ceramic army. By the end the town is no longer the peaceful place it appeared to be, with the gnomes makeing their first kill. The set up is surprising similar to Jaws and Gremlins didn’t exactly have a complex struture.
What works best is the central conceit itself. Taking something as harmless and ubiquitous as a garden gnome and turning it into a source of threat carries an immediate comic cache. The episode understands this and lets the absurdity do a good deal of the heavy lifting. The small town atmosphere is sketched with enough specificity that you can imagine the residents treating the festival as a genuine lifeline. There is sense that the familiar streets are no longer safe once the first ornaments begin to move.
The episode functions as a solid introduction to a deliberately silly premise. It establishes the town, the key players, and the nature of the threat with reasonable clarity and opens and ends well. The combination of local politics, personal history between the leads, and sudden supernatural chaos to create interest. Whether the series can sustain the joke across further episodes remains to be seen, but this first outing manages to make the idea of killer garden gnomes feel both ridiculous and oddly compelling.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Where to watch Gnomes – Season1, Episode 1: