The Pretender - Series Two, Episode One

There are real shades of The Office in here. If you happened on to it you would almost think it was real.

– Radio New Zealand review

Playing Dennis was everything but one dimensional, he was petulant, vain, stupidly overconfident and grating and annoyingly dorky. In fact writer Peter Cox created a character more dimensional in his flatness than most dramatic characters are in their emotionality ... What made it a huge challenge to act Dennis is I had to break all the rules of acting to make it believable, like forgetting the cameras, mumbling, tripping over my lines, being wooden, ugly etc.

– Bob Maclaren on playing fictional MP Dennis Plant, Throng website, 5 September 2009

The character is a real character you see in Otago. If you got a farmer, a property developer and a tourism operator, whacked them in a blender, then you'd have Dennis Plant.

– Actor Bob MacLaren on Dennis Plant

Who hoists the flag on top of Mt Everest ... bloody Dennis Plant you know!

– Dennis Plant (Bob MacLaren)

There were two great pleasures of making this show — one, the people I worked with: Vanessa Alexander, Rachel Gardner, and Jonathan Brough, who became some of my closest friends. Two, the pure troublemaking of shooting a fake documentary about a fake politician — and, among other things, having the then current PM Helen Clarke give an entirely fake interview, while pretending it was all for real.

– The Pretender creator Peter Cox, 14 September 2021