Lisa McCune remembers the exact moment she first laid eyes on Martin Sacks.
"I thought, ‘He’s so handsome, lucky, lucky me’," lisa says laughing.
"I was stuck by how beautiful his eyes are. He was very alluring and so good looking."
It was five years ago, and Lisa was standing in a tiny room with the newly assembled cast of Blue Heelers, shyly glancing around the room and taking in as much as she could.
She felt she had everybody figured out, but she was wrong.
"By the end of the day, I felt entirely differently about martin," Lisa says. "I never look at him in that way again."
"I was still drawn to him, but I felt really comfortable. The attraction was gone and he seemed just like a brother to me. That’s the way it’s been ever since."
It may look glamorous to outsiders, but working on TV is actually highly stressful. Hours are long, the pace frenetic and the pressure immense. More often that not, actors end up barely tolerating one another and sometimes they experience sheer and utter hatred. The Blue Heelers set, however, is entirely different.
Despite spending 12 hours a day together, the cast and crew enjoy one another’s company and none more so than Lisa and Martin.
"Martin is just a good bloke," Lisa says. "Everybody feels that way when they meet him. He is very genuine and friendly. He’s a bit of open book, and so easy-going. I love working with him. I hope I get the opportunity to work with him again."
Martin, of course, feels exactly the same way as Lisa. Why? Because according to Martin, she is the best mate everybody wishes they had.
"She has saved my bacon time and time again," he says.
"Whenever I drop the ball, which is quite often, she is always there to pick it up. She is always there to catch me and she’s incredibly generous. Plus we laugh a lot."
All the Heelers are required to work long and hard, but not many have time to spend as much time together as Martin and Lisa.
Their characters - Sen-Det. P.J. Hasham and Constable Maggie Doyle - are dating and they share many scenes.
Despite that, Lisa and Martin never argue and Lisa believes thay will always remain friends.
"Oh, definitely," she says.
"Martin’s the kind of guy I’ll be calling to tell him my seventh baby had been born!
"We are truly good mates and I haven’t really experienced that with any other actors before."
Martin agrees.
"We have spent so much time together and have worked together for so long, I’d like to think we stay in contact if the show ends," he says.
"It doesn’t often happen with actors. They usually go off their merry way, but that won’t happen with us."
Lisa and Martin spend plenty of their spare time together. They live near one another and like to catch the odd movie of duck out for a bit to eat. Both are incredibly clumsy, so there’s always a mini-catastrophe wherever they go and they share a similar sense of humour, so there’s much laughter. All this helps create the chemistry that lights up the screen whenever they appear.
"I would never have thought there was any chemistry between us, but my Aunty Joyce rang my mum and she said that we were great together," Lisa says.
"My Aunty Joyce is my meter, so I watched some of the scenes we’d done together and she was right! We do have something, but a lot of it is due to Martin.
"He’s quite magical, our Martin."