Tim Minchin has returned home battered but far from beaten from his Hollywood experience. Credit:Justin McManus He is talking about DreamWorks' cancellation of Larrikins, the $100-million animated feature he moved to LA to direct. He has spoken publicly about his "impotent fury and sadness" about the project's demise, and he's still grieving. But the thing about being a composer-musician-comedian-actor-writer-director is that there is always plenty to do. Take Squinters, the Australian comedy series beginning in February, in which he plays a sweet-natured delivery driver named Paul. His story is a romance, albeit an unusual one. Like all of Squinters' interwoven narratives, it takes place largely inside a car crawling through peak hour during the morning and afternoon commutes. Paul is heading to work with his colleague Romi (Andrea Demetriades). He started their "carpool" by designing and printing a sole flyer to be slipped under her door. At the time of this interview, Minchin is yet to see the final cut and he's hoping his character won't seem creepy. "But it's not like you spend the whole time thinking, 'Oh, you've trapped her into a small space'," he says. "He's really nice. You're batting for him." The obsession with variety that has seen Minchin bounding between projects across genres also drives his choices as a performer. He played a coked-up rocker in American television series Californication; a guileless Rosencrantz in the Sydney Theatre Company's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; an ex-convict curdled by his own prejudices in the ABC drama The Secret River; and a needy security guard in comedy series No Activity (made by Jungle, the production team behind Squinters).

Minchin as Paul in Squinters. Credit:ABC Squinters was appealing because Minchin had never really played a nice bloke looking for love. What's more, he is interested in the show's unusual approach to narrative; the triumphs and tragedies of its characters – most of them employees of the same consumer goods dispatch centre – unfold inside their vehicles. "I like stories and I really like words," he says. "So I like stories that rely on dialogue. And a lot of these stories in Squinters, they're reported … You're catching up on something that has happened, or anticipating something that's going to happen. I just think that structure is so cool." Sam Simmons and Jacki Weaver in a a scene from the ABC comedy Squinters. Credit:ABC The simplicity of the settings meant the actors could film scenes more or less in sequence – a pleasant change for Minchin, who last year finished filming his role as Friar Tuck in Hollywood's latest take on Robin Hood. "I'd open a door in Croatia in February, say, 'come in', then the internal shot in the hallway would happen in Budapest in early April," he says. "And you're meant to try and keep your beard the same length, let alone your performance the same tone."

The move home to Australia is likely to mean we see more of him in local productions and on stage. He is working on a new television series – "an Australian story for a global audience" – that he will co-write, co-produce and perform in. He also has plans for a studio album – "it's not comedy. There's quirk but no punchlines". He wants to bring some of the experience he's gathered overseas home to the local industry and believes he has a moral imperative to do so. Chances are, when he gets annoyed about local politics, there will be more satirical songs in the vein of I Still Call Australia Homophobic, his song for marriage equality, and Come Home (Cardinal Pell), his furious (and funny) condemnation of Australia's highest-ranking Catholic's failure to appear in person at the royal commission into child abuse. But as his audience continues to grow (more than 2.5 million people have watched the Cardinal Pell video on YouTube) he thinks carefully about when to add his voice to public debate. He has stayed deliberately quiet during the spate of revelations about sexual harassment and abuse in the entertainment industry. "I find it hard that I'm not allowed to say anything, but that's good, right? I'm an entitled white guy with a huge audience and I feel like I don't have the right to speak. People like me are just shutting the f--- up and that's right." And, as a man in the industry – "a flirty, sexually driven, powerful guy" – he confesses he finds it a bit scary. "I doubt that any woman has ever been scared in my presence but I get drunk and talk about sex all the time … But at the moment, the people who are falling seem to be the proper baddies, so at the moment it seems to be alright."

Loading He thinks speaking out too often about public issues could dilute his impact. "If you don't have anything different to say, don't say it at all," he says. "That's my rule." Squinters

ABC, Wednesday, 9pm, from February 7