However, his wacko mother is under the serious misapprehension that he was in fact attending a martial arts school and that instead of skills with pastels and video installation he is returning as a finely-honed fighting machine.

Which is a big problem for sensitive, lily-livered Simon, especially when he is expected to clean up the lawless, gang-infested streets of Cabramatta.

If this all sounds a little ... er ... far-fetched, it makes much more sense when you remember that in the world of martial arts movies, cheerfully bonkers plots have long reigned supreme.

Maximum Choppage is co-written by Lawrence Leung, who also plays the lead in the new home-grown comedy, although he insists he is not the "star".

"I never like to think of myself as the star of something, more like the actor with the most lines," he says.

Martial arts movies are a topic very close to his heart.

"I love this genre," he says. "I grew up watching all the Hong Kong action films – Jackie Chan, Jet Li ..."

Leung also identifies, in part at least, with his goofy underdog character, Simon.

"As someone who has been a lifelong coward it's not beyond me to play risk-averse characters, although I am pushing myself more in this one because my character pretends to be a hero half the time," he says.

"My character can't actually fight despite everyone thinking that he can so I spend all my time pretending that I can fight and avoiding dying. Which is kind of like real life – be brave but not die."

Maximum Choppage began life as a short film by Cabramatta filmmaker Timothy Ly, who brought a one-page pitch to Matchbox Pictures. Gradually the idea morphed into a six-part action comedy written by Leung, Duncan Sarkies (Flight of the Conchords) and Josh Mapleston (Home and Away).

"It's a kind of genre-breaking hybrid of action and comedy," explains Leung. "It's promoted as Australia's first kung-fu comedy series. As far as we know a TV series like this has never been made before.

"Every episode is a different genre. The audience is going to see what is, in a way, six short movies. There's a whodunit, there's a horror movie, there's a sports movie but it's all done under this Maximum Choppage world."

And that world is, viewed objectively, ludicrous – not that the characters are ever aware of the fact.

"The world is heightened and dangerous and crazy but for us it is about playing it as if we are in a drama despite some of the lines being quite ridiculous," says Leung.

Playing alongside Leung in this whacked-out kung fu universe are a host of familiar comedy faces, including Darren Gilshenen (The Moodys) who gleefully plays the "highly ambitious, highly corrupt, megalomaniacal mayor of Cabramatta".

Gilshenen describes Mayor Crawford as a cross between Clive Palmer and Baby John Burgess "with a bit of Les Patterson thrown in".

Another Moodys alumnus, Dave Eastgate, plays Simon's best friend, Egg, so called because he is "white on the outside and yellow on the inside".

"He's very much a wannabe Asian, which is very close to my personal story," says Eastgate. "I lived in Japan for five years and I speak fluent Japanese – I've done my time as an Egg. You are always outside the circle."

Eastgate is also well known for his stand-up work, which brings an extra dimension to the action, say Leung.

"It's great to work with people who have really good comedy instincts and chops," he says. "As a stand-up comedian I get to bring to it the timing that I don't often have when I'm just by myself in front of an audience. To play off someone who has natural comic instincts is an absolute joy."

Leung wrote three of the six scripts and being both writer and actor also brings with it some unusual tensions.

"When I'm on set I start to hate the writer," he confesses. "When I first started writing for it I was never thinking of myself as acting in it. I always wanted to concentrate on being a writer and concentrate on the stories and making sure the character breathes and lives and has maximum stakes and jeopardy put on them.

"And now I'm performing the character, I'm like, 'Too much stakes, too much jeopardy, too much fight choreography to learn'.

"I have to do all this stuff because the stupid writer put it in the script."

Maximum Choppage, ABC2, Tuesday, 9pm.