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Behind the scenes

Go an exclusive tour with the Packed to the Rafter's cast

Meet Ben Rafter

We chat to the cheeky Hugh Sheridan

Dave is a hard-working, fun-loving, thoroughly decent, salt-of-the-earth bloke with a passion for sport, eighties music, his wife and family.

He and his wife Julie work together at a small firm of electricians. She as a book-keeper and he as their longest serving and most experienced sparkie. He’s loved his wife from the moment he set eyes on her, 26 years ago at a test match at the SCG. She came as a date for a mate of his, but the mate scarcely got a look-in.

It was a strong, immediate chemistry – a heady mix of common-life goals, humour and sexual attraction – which saw them married less than one year later in a suburban registry office, already the parents of a daughter Rachel. Two more kids and Dave had completed the family he’d always craved.

As a child Dave was given up by his birth parents (who he’s never known and never wanted to) and fostered out to a series of foster families. It was at the last of these, between the formative ages of 13 and 16, that Dave met and became best mates, almost brothers with a slightly older foster-kid called Steve Wilson (played by Craig McLachlan).

Together they formed a garage band, scrimping and saving for the necessary equipment, and writing songs. But then Dave met Julie, and his life changed forever. Fearing he would lose the chance to be a father, Dave chose to opt out of the band and dedicate himself to completing his apprenticeship as an electrician.

“Having never had parents of his own, family and a sense of belonging are very important to him,” Erik explains. “So when the opportunity came along to have his own his family, they became his everything.” The decision led to a rift with Steve and his place in the band was quickly filled. Dave subsequently heard next-to-nothing of Steve and the gang until, tuning into Countdown one evening six months later, he saw them belting out a number that quickly became a chart-topper – a song that he and Steve had co-written.

All efforts to contact Steve went ignored. Dave felt severely ripped off – both personally and financially. He knows that the band’s star soon faded and that he was the winner in the end. But part of him still wonders what it might have been like to savour, even for a short while, the musical success that – as a teenager – was all he ever dreamed of.

“He’s sacrificed a lot of himself to bring up his kids,” Erik says. “He’s been pretty selfless and given up a lot of his dreams. So when we meet him at the start of the series, his selflessness has run out.”

After almost 25 years of marriage, Dave is in the prime of his life. A job he loves, three great kids, a comfortable home, and a place in the local social cricket team. The prospect of a life less clustered with kids is only the icing on the proverbial cake. But his mid-life security is completely overturned, when his boss of 24 years asks him to re-apply for his own job, offering a part-time wage for basically a full-time commitment. His pride on the line, he tells his boss he can stick his job, making his wife their major bread-winner.

“It’s very emasculating for him,” Erik says. “It turns his life upside down. “All the cards have been thrown in the air, and we have to wait and see where they land and where this family ends up. It’s life unraveling - sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s not. And you never know what’s around the corner.”

Watch Erik Thomson talk about how being a dad in real life has helped him be a father to the Rafter kids here