It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload, the podcast Past week Life. Welcome back TV Reload listeners. My name is Benjamin Norris and this is your podcast to get all the inside goss on the popular TV shows you may be watching from around the world. Undeniably, our TV sets are a major part of our home entertainment, and yet very little is known about how our favorite
shows get made. So each episode I've been finding guests they want to dive just that little bit deeper into the shows they're currently making, so that you can hear all their exclusive stories and gain access to the biggest names in Australian television. I want to thank you for downloading or subscribing to this podcast. I love hearing your feedback, so make sure you leave a reviewer or a comment
on your chosen podcast platform. On today's pod, I have executive producer Dan Edwards and here's the co founder of the production company Rough Diamond with his father John Edwards. Today we'll be talking about their latest project, Year of which is now available to stream on STAN Australia. They have produced some amazing content together, which shows like the TV series Romper Stomper and Bump and This project is an actual brainchild of Dan's which has been a long
time in the making. If you think John Edwards's name sounds familiar, you would be right, as he has also had some amazing success previously over the years with Secret Life of Us and Love My Way, just to name a few. There is very similar style that they both share. In my eyes, I think Dan is a little edgier with his latest work, and I think that he has completed some really interesting work on this series, especially giving
voice to young people. Year Off takes place in the same universe as the Stan original series Bump, and is set around the senior year of that same high school, exploring that limital time between childhood and adulthood and the renegotiations with adults that it brings coming up. We will find out what influences Dan has recognized from his father, John Edwards. We will also hear about how they created this series and how they managed to create authentic voices
for young people. In the writer's room, we will talk about why streaming services has allowed more space for shows like Year Of and how the success of Bumped helped get this project made, and how the success of Bump helped this project get made. Plus we will get plenty of exclusives from behind the scenes, a year of which starts this week on the streaming service STAN Australia, which you can subscribe to on your smartphone or on your smart tv. Anyway, let's bring Dan Edwards into the podcast.
And guys, I really hope you enjoyed this very interesting episode of TV reload. Hey Dan, how are you?
I'm good and you I'm so excited to.
Talk to you, Like this show is so fantastic and I have to just say before we get started, full disclosure, I'm a big fan of the Edwards family.
Oh okay, that's so very nice. How much of you saying?
Well, the thing was, I watched episode one, but I can't move forward because my partner wants to watch it with me, and that's very unusual. I can never get into watch shows that I like. But I was explaining to him what happens in episode one. He was like, you can't watch any more of that until I'm there to watch it with you.
Oh okay, because it really evolves into something like very different to how it starts. So it'll be interesting once you do. Because obviously it feels that. Yeah, it gets into its swing probably by episode three, but that's because obviously we pull the rug in at once. So I'll be interested to hear how you feel again once you're a bit further in.
Well, great, it'll be a part two of the podcast. I'll hit you up again.
Okay, all right, I.
Wanted to ask you what if you borrowed from your dad? I mean, what are the similarities in your storytelling that you've been able to recognize.
Funny, actually we're speaking about today, you know, industry kids, because there's now a lot of them in Australia and actually across the industry globally. But there is you know, in all kinds of facets of television and drama's designers
and dops and directors and writers. And it's interesting. But I'm probably in a slightly different situation that I spent most of my career in the corporate side of television for a long time, almost twenty years and more recently we started the business rough time and six years go, and so it's probably that point here, end of being a NEPO baby in that way that I actually have
a business with him. But like with a lot of kind of family situations, you sometimes become quite engrossed in the lives of all the professional lives of your parents, and in the case of John Dad, we would discuss, you know, drama and all the kind of moving parts that you know, not just producing, but I guess the creative side of fostering an idea from an embryo through
to a fully formed show. So that was something that was just part of our discourse for as long as I can remember, and it probably became heavier as I became a teenager, and you know, around the time I finished school. The Secret Life of Us launched two years later, So there's probably lots and lots that I borrowed from him in terms of the way in which try and
produce approach, as I said, developing an idea. There's a lot of the people who would have influenced my career too, and particularly that even goes back into the distribution days. So while he's probably been the most influential person, he's certainly not the.
Only one I think with year of You know what's interesting though, is like Secret Life of Us was twenties, and Love my Way was like the thirties, and Tangle was like the forties and you've kind of jumped back, you know, with your own this is your story. Is it fitting that you've jumped back and started telling stories about the teens?
Then it's more about what you can get made. And just to give you a little bit of history, because that all you know that the first thing that I made as a producer was Robber Stomper because we could get it made and it was Trump wasn't empower yet, but you know, the world, it just was palpable. You could feel the tensions and it felt like that particular film being remade as television would have been it would
have always been compelling. And so we took a really unique take with how we fuelled that writer's room and off away we went and we made it. But I guess we could get that made. At the point that point of starting the business, we didn't have much of a development slate. We were still going sorry, we're very new to it. You know. John kind of wasn't making anything to Channel ten, where he made I guess the
lion's share of your shows. So it was very hard to figure out if business was going to be viable at all. But we grabbed that opportunity and we made the best thing we could with it. It's similar to Year Off where Year of started. When I was on the corporate side of the business, I think it must have been seven or so years ago, there was a
real lack of young adult shows. And when I say young adult I do mean back to what Heartbreak High may have been at the beginning, which was was actually a show for adult that was watched by a young adult audience and sat it at school. But you know, seven years ago and then for the probably almost a decade of preceding that, there were very few young adult shows because on old free toware television that audience just was not watching. They were very expensive to get up.
But it felt like there was a real opportunity as a real lack. Since then with the streamers, and I guess a lot of rejuvenation of old brands like Heartbreak or there's been others as well. Coming out of the States. There's now a lot there's a lot of teen and young adult shows, and you know, even HBO dipping into the euphoria and Skins obviously, which was which was much earlier. There's a lot more in the market. But I had
pitched this show a little bit illegally. I guess you could say to somebody at a network in Australia at one of the markets, the big kind of corporate formats and finished shows markets, and they said, listen, if you wanted to leave this job and go and make that
show with your old man, I'd commission it, okay. And so that was That was the kind of the birth of Rough diamond It was there was a juncture in John's career and in mine where I would either stay on and continue down that road which I'd been doing, you know, for a long long time, and for him it was, you know something else. It was I wouldn't say winding down, but it was. It certainly wouldn't have I don't think he would have been launching a business
in his own right. So we launched Rough Diamonds. We developed here of funnily enough, and the network that it was going to be at all the senior heads left within about three months of each other, like there was nobody in this network and no one could make a decision for roughly a year. When they did, they came in that the new hed of drama said, oh, you know, I don't really like these kids, okay, fair enough, and we put the show and turn around. But so we
and then we just got busy. We went and made other things. We did, you know, Australian gangster Lesnard and obviously Rompa Stomper. Then when Bump came around, Kelsey had been working with us in various writers' rooms, as I had read a specscript of hers, and she came in and pitched a whole bunch of ideas one day and Bump just stood out as this really fantastic, clear, concise concept and we went away commissioned and one point on where do we set, Like, you know, one of the
main characters in every show is it setting. And so we decided to lift the Jubilee High School setting which was in year of which had been developed before Bump, and have that great melting pot which is Glebe which has got plenty of social housing but also twelve million dollar terrace houses and the melting pot that that created with their local high school, and that was in year of So we lifted it up and put it onto Bump.
Bump blew Up was the right show at the right time, incredibly good spirited, warm show that was made in COVID, so there was very little else. It sold incredibly well overseas, it did very very well for stand and a few series in we were moving those our core casting Bump out of school while we're in their twenties now, and it felt like it would be great to keep a high school show going if we could, and that there
was the opportunity for Year Of. So we lived back in and redeveloped with a very different team that we started four years prior, and now we have the show that we do. So for me, it's been a real journey. It's been a real journey back and forward.
I mean that's television, though, is that it? You know, you get an idea, you think, oh god, this is it, and then you have to park it and then move on to something else, and you kind of have to move with it, right, you know, and find where the work is and find where you can put your creative energy. But fascinating to know that Year Of really came before Bump, because I look at Year Of now like Bump after dark.
That's the way I kind of look at it, because it's it's grittier and it's darker, I would say, and I know you said at the start of our chat that you know, it goes on a journey and it'll evolve, But I do feel like this is sort of, you know, the more adults version of Bump in a weird way.
Well, I think you're right, and I hope it's received by that from by the audience. But we also looked at it like Cheers was this big hit back in the I think it was the nineties, maybe it was the eighties, but the network show Cheers, and I think they spun off three different series which were all completely unique. You know, Fraser, when you say to people acknowledge it, Oh, yeah, it was a spin off of Cheers, but it was its own show. And so that's the ambition with Year Of.
It's not there to be bump marked too. There's Bump for that, you know, there's bump. Stump serves that audience and Year Of as a completely different and quite tonally distinct thing.
The performances are incredible. What was it like in the writer's room? Did you worry that it would be hard to get young actors to give it the authenticity that these characters needed to contain.
Yeah, you're always worry about that, and you hope that it's less of a gamble by the time you finish casting. I think on rough Diamond shows we do like to gamble with there's a you know, a strong desire to do that in the writer's room and to also do that in front of the camera. It's got to be measured and you need to have kind of some scaffolding. People call it around some of that new talent, but I think we got lucky with year of and also
we had really fantastic nurturing directors. PARTI are board setting up and she is just such an actors director. And then we had a couple of other directors who had done short films and this will be their first real screen credits. And I think that that type of exuberance and kind of youth really helped propel everybody to give it their best.
You know, the themes are very now, and I think that you're creating voices that are very authentic for that age bracket. Did you in the writer's room have then young people working with you to make sure that those voices sounded accurate to what kids are talking about.
The writer's room was young. Jess and I were definitely the old farts, but by far the oldest people in that row.
She's in the classroom.
I'd like to say, yeah, yeah, and it started big and unruly and then you've got to reduce that team down to get more and more focused. But no, it was a very young room and sometimes I didn't know what they were talking talking about. And that's good.
It means that you know, they're letting you know what younger people are talking about. I mean, you can't necessarily understand that unless you're talking to young people who are living.
It, you know, and I guess the themes that the themes that inspired by stuff that's happened in all our lives. And it weirdly, in my age now, it doesn't feel like a similar experience that happened with me in my final year. It doesn't feel that long ago.
So it's not that don't make yourself sound older than you really are.
Yeah, but it is. It's it's you know, it's it's without completely using your own stories. I think everybody within that writer's room really did dig into personal experience. And obviously it's just a stepping off point for inspiration, but that's what we encourage people to do, to really dig into what it was like for them in those formative years. And sometimes it works out and people are honest and they give, they come with their truth, and sometimes it doesn't.
But I think on this so it really did. People were very open and very giving.
What did you think of Heartbreak High the reboot? Because I mean they did a really good job of I mean, the very first incarnation of Heartbreak High was I think we talked about that a little bit before. It was very raw and it was very wow you know for that particular time, made for adults, but young adults were watching it. Then brought back and they added another level
to it. Is that an understanding in some way of how far we've come when it comes to what we're allowed to tell on television in scripted drama format for young people?
Yeah? First party question is I think they did a great job because I was the Heartbreak High generation and where I grew up. They shot it close by, and it felt very much of my generation. And to see the way that they executed that show, not just you know, with the storytelling, which I thought Hadna did a really
really good job, it felt very Netflix. Number one, which is this interesting thing to go How does a show definably feel right from a certain commissioner, But that show certainly did and it felt very of the Now, you know, it's very commercial and probably a little shinier than certainly
a year of is. But I think that they nailed it, and I'm hoping that having a couple of Australian shows that are of quality for that audience might be one of the first times that some of that audience is watching an Australian thing really enjoying it, which means that they're going to be more open to watching other Australian shows because that we have had times when certain demographics are very biased against Australian shows. So I hope it's all complimentary.
I think when you're making shows like this as well, are you making shows thinking this is for a global audience because of streaming services? Now you know our shows are being put on global streaming platforms side by side, you know, HBO and other bigger and bigger shows. Are you looking to tell stories that are accessible globally or are you trying to make something quintessentially Australian. What's the conversations with that.
I came from that part of the business, which was selling things globally and bit in concept or be it down to abbey and finished tape. And I think that and also coming from you know, I guess a producing family or a creative producing family, what you want to
do is that and try and do something good. Good will always trump any efforts to do anything else in terms of to globalize or to put a game of Throne star into a murder mystery, which is often what a lot of producers are kind of strong armed into doing to get the extraordinary amount of international money that we need to make these shows. So even on a show like Year of which isn't huge in scale, it
still has a significant amount of international money. The best way, I believe, the best shot it has to make money and to work overseas is that it's genuinely good. And I think that that comes down to a show having
a particular point of view. And in this case, you know, we're making these shows in Australia, it's got to be very particularly Australian, and I think that international audiences, you know, they don't they don't want to look in a mirror necessarily, they want to you know, you're looking through a window, You're looking into a world the world's got to got to grip you. I think that that's fundamentally what we're
striving for all the time. And when it comes down to how they'll actually performance, what else is in the market at that time? What else is you know, is there a glood of these shows, there's a there's a little bit of chance, luck and chance, I guess with how things will go internationally, But we on a year of we're partnered with one of the bigger distribution studios I TV, and so hopefully you know it's seen far and wide.
Of course, of course, and you know you've got some recognizable names in there. Danniel McCormack. You know, after watching the first episode, I didn't even recognize it was her straight away because she's such a brilliant actress. You know, the way she carries her face can different, you know, from role to role. But so fantastic to have Denniel McCormick there and Samuel Johnson and other people who haven't
seen only watch episode one. But is it important to when you're telling these stories to have a few recognizable faces in the show to sort of bring the audience in.
You do, But also with that, you know, the with the parents, you're dealing with great career actors, so naturally you're going to if you want the best performance, you're going to have more than likely you're going to have somebody who's got a profile that We were very, very lucky with the adult characters that we have, And I guess that's you're saying that you know you like some the history of Rough Diamond shows and before that, what
they all have in common is intergenerational rub we always do. I think everything that we do has that dynamic between multiple generations. In year of those parents could have their own show. Like in episode one, you start very naturally just with the teenagers who with that, I guess it's their plot that's going to be affecting everybody else. But as you get on, those adult characters have more and more distinct stories, and we've got such a great adult cast.
Dan, this is such a big tease, Like I just can't wait to keep watching more episodes, and I'm annoyed that it's you know, I have had to wait for my partner to keep watching them. But I, like a lot of people, I think are going to digest this very quickly. I think it's brilliant from what I've seen, and I can't wait to sink my teeth into it
some more. What I was going to say was the last question I ask everybody who joins the podcast, is what's something from behind the scenes, something that we might not see on screen, kind of like a behind the scenes secret of you know, what it was like to make this show.
Gastro was making a comeback, roughing this show, Rain was making a comeback. Everything was coming out of these severe lockdowns. But what makes you of quite different is, as you can see, it's an ensemble cast and we're in train tunnels, and we're on top of buildings because these kids are Burbex's and where in and amongst the streets of Sydney in a kind of almost docu way. But we shoot
it on the same schedule as Pumps. So what was interesting is that sometimes it was so for an etique at the end that would have a crew waiting, you know, five hours to jump off museum station in Sydney and
get under the tunnels. And on the first night there was an unscheduled track work so that the crew have been waiting until two am to go in and then weren't allowed and Our next opportunity was quite short notice, but Gastro had ripped through the crew and it just meant that one of our sound recorders actually was unable to get sound equipment. So we have a sequence shot in the under Hyde path where that sounds has been completely created from other days and you know, it was chaotic,
but it's actually a really terrific sequence. So no one will ever know unless they've been told that story. But yeah, yes it was. It was a accumulation of of of of of COVID and stretching, stretching our resources.
And all the adults on the show, and all of the young adults were wearing diapers because they all had Gastron and pretty much, Dan, I am so grateful and thank you for being so generous with your time and talking to me today. I'm I'm a huge fan, and I'm I'm I will be in your audience for a very long time, so I look forward to I think this Human Error coming out. There's a few other shows that you've got ready to go, and I can't wait to watch them all.
Thanks man, Bye,