The Pretender - Series Two, Episode One

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

– Dennis Plant (Bob MacLaren)

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

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

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

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