Welcome back to TV Reload. My name's Benjamin Norris, and on this podcast I'll be going behind the scenes with the biggest players in television. This week I managed to launch a midweek TV Reload series with Simon me who is the latest person to be eliminated from Australian Survivor. This will divide the type of guests that I have on the show, keeping actors and presenters and reality TV contestants midweek and then the people from behind the scenes on the main episode. I hope you will enjoy the
stories from both podcasts. As I continue to grow and improve the show, I have some great episodes coming up. Next week I will have a main actor from Five Bedrooms, which is now on Paramount Plus, and then next Saturday I will have an episode from one of the biggest rating shows on Free to Wear. I wonder if you guys can pick which show that is. Also, as you guys know, I love to give a recommendation for another podcast, and this week I've been listening to watch What Happens
Live with Andy Cohen. He had Lisa Rinner on the podcast and she's kind of nuts, but the right kind of nut in my mind, and Obviously, Rena was on the show to talk about the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, which is a guilty pleasure of mine. This week, I have watched the first two episodes of Wentworth on Foxtail, which will premiere on the twenty fourth of August, and I also watch the finale of White Lotus which is
on Binge that'll be out on Monday. Sadly, Wentworth will rap for good at the end of this series, but the good news is White Lotus is getting a second series and that's kind of made up for that departure. Obviously, both shows are very different but brilliantly written. Nonetheless. This week in the TV ratings on Free to Wear, we have seen the Olympics on Channel seven really trail off some huge numbers for The Voice and Home and Away, which I'm sure the team at Channel seven are thrilled with.
It's certainly going to be interesting to see how the rest of the year pans out with shows like The Mass Singer on Network ten and Love Island on Channel nine. One thing is for sure, it is a tough market for eyeballs and I hope there is something for everyone as the year pans out. This week on the podcast, I have Michael Lucas here to chat about The Newsreader on ABC, which debuts this Sunday nine at eight thirty.
Michael Lucas is a writer, producer and scriptwriter. He's worked on successful shows right across several genres, from relationship dramedies of Offspring, to the prison thriller of Wentworth, the political drama of Party Tricks, and the comedy sensation on ABC called rose Haven. He has been working behind the scenes with some iconic television moments like Patrick's death on Offspring and B's death on Wentworth, and while those two may seem kind of bleak, he's also cultivated and created some
of the best TV characters of this generation. He is one of my favorite television creators and I actually notice his work in everything that he does. Today, as we focus on The Newsreader, we will discuss sexism in the newsroom, the games LGBTI people have made on Australian television, and of course how the show was researched and put together. However, let's get started with today's guest. I would like to welcome you and Michael Lucas to TV Reload.
The Truth is When I started writing it, it wasn't had nothing to do with the news. Good evening and welcome to news at six. I'm pretty unabashed when it comes to putting the personalities of people that I know in drama.
I thought I was reading the Thatcher's story.
I pitched it to the ABC. I wrote it on spec second explosion here on Russell Street today. Yes, it is fair to say that she's definitely part of the inspiration, but there were Many's going to be a special rule. It is remarkable how long it took for just women to be newsreaders in general.
Hey, mate, how are you?
I'm really well, Ben, how are you?
Yeah, I'm good. Now, full disclosure, You're drinking wine at your end and I'm not drinking wine at mine.
Yeah. So if one of us sounds noticeably more sober than the other, that's why.
Well we'll see if people notice. Now let's get into this. I remember watching Not Suitable for Children, your first feature film, in twenty two twelve, and thinking there was something really compelling about the way in which you understood and portrayed Australian characters. Is there an enormous amount of people watching in your life?
I would say, so, I rip off my family and friends, and I've got a big circle of friends, and I've got a big sort of weird family, I guess, and I find them really entertaining. I think I just find people entertaining, particularly people that I know well. And I'm pretty unabashed when it comes to sort of putting the personalities of people that I know in drama, and they recognize themselves and they certainly let me know. In fact,
sometimes I'm really lazy. I even give them the same names, which is a real mistake.
Bad idea. That means that you're guilty straight away by a mission. You know, there's no mystery there. But look, you have worked on so many of my favorite shows in Australia. If you could go back past your work on Offspring, Wentworth, Party Tricks or Incredible Shows, just to name a few, and tell yourself something that you've learnt over the years, what would you say, Like, what have those shows taught you? Almost like giving yourself a superpower.
Honestly, I would tell myself stop worrying so much. It's a privilege to be able to do what you're doing. And a lot of the time that you spend on anxiety about how things are going to work out. I'd probably say to myself, some things are going to work,
some things aren't, but you're going to go on. Don't act as though everything that you write and work on is life or death or your career is hinged on it, because I feel like I sort of burnt myself out in the early part of my career just because every single time I worked on something, I felt like everything was on the line, and if it didn't work, I was crushed.
Hm.
I feel like I just sort of lost a lot of time and energy to that, and I wish I wish I could go back to myself and say, basically, chill out a little bit, just try and enjoy the process a bit more. I'm trying to become better at that as I get older.
And no one's going to sue you and you've stolen their character rights too.
No, your aunt and uncle will be very unhappy, but no, there will not be any legal action.
I'll get over it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, the show we're talking about today is The news Reader, which is going to debut this Sunday, the fifteenth of August on ABC.
Mate, how well do you know Helen we know hello sometimes then you know she's very very set on these special reports, right, Yes, what I really need now is a blake with some chops to go help with her, help her shoot, help her put the story together. You do this for me on Monday, then maybe I can give you a shot and an update on Tuesday.
Deal.
You got to watch yourself with the RK, because she's going to hit you with a lot of shitty ideas about cross eyed single mother's aides and christ Days.
What else your job is to better away.
I'm obsessed with this show. It is so good. It'll be out weekly, but I have been lucky enough to see the first four episodes. I actually texted Emma Freeman, the director for those of you who are playing at home, and said, oh my god, this show is so good, and she replied, just wait episode.
No. It's a show that kind of reveals itself as it goes on. I mean, I hope that it's, you know, automatically pretty compelling, but you don't really get the measure of what it's fully about in the early episodes. And it's been really interesting speaking to people because some people have just seen the first episode and so they see it in a particular way. But then people like you that are deep into it are starting to realize more things. And then if people have got to the end, that's
not level again. So I hope you. I hope you liked the last two.
I wondered, how did the show find its way onto the ABC?
I pitched it to the ABC. I wrote it on SPEC. I was at a period of time in my career where I was taking contracts writing episodes on other people's shows. Because I had this period of time like on Offspring and Party Tricks and Not Suitable for Children, where I was felt responsible for the whole production in lots of ways,
I mean as a writer, and that was exhausting. And then I had this period of time where I thought, I'm just gonna just work on an episode here and there on other people's projects like rose Haven, and went work and I mean, in my that funded me to just develop my own scripts off my own bat and I started working on The news Reader and I took it to the ABC. It felt like an ABC show to me. And also I thought, it's going to have a lot of news archives, and I know that the
ABC has those news archives. Yeah, And because I was working on Rosehan, I developed a contact with the ABC executives and so I was able to just sort of shoot them an email and say, I'd love to show you this script and see what you think. Yeah, So that's how that's how it wound up there.
Well, it's amazing. And I really liked the newsroom in twenty twelve, which was you know, on HBO, and I wondered if there was any inspiration from you watching that show.
Well, See, the thing for me is I think I love almost anything set in a newsroom, like, and I mean across genres, like I loved Anchorman, I love Frontline, I love Press Gang, I love the newsroom. Like it's almost like I love to die for. It's almost like you can't set something in a newsroom without me liking it. There's just something about the environment that I find really really exciting. And it doesn't matter whether it's comedy, drama or romantic comedy. I'm just always happy to be there.
So yeah, and the newsroom in particular, the main thing is that the newsroom used real stories and they were reporting. In the case of the newsroom, it with stories from just a couple of years prior. But that I loved it. I love that and I thought it was so much better than having them report on sort of imagined fake stories, and so yeah, it was a massive influence.
Well, the setting of actual eighties Australian news events with characters that are fictionalized is just brilliant. How did that concept come about?
Well, actually it was a really long development time, and weirdly, the truth is, when I started writing it, it wasn't had nothing to do with the news. I started writing it writing the character of Dale that Sam Reid plays, and I just really wanted to write a leading man that was sort of trying to be this particular image of masculinity and sort of forcing himself to be a kind of persona that wasn't a natural fit. I'd always wanted to have a show with a main character like that.
Is it a vocal thing? Because I have been working with a vocal coach all summer? He actually worked with Jack Thompson.
You want to get your money back, Dale, He doesn't stand in me like Jack Thompson.
I always just thought there was a lot of comedy and drama in that, and I related to it, and then really early on I decided, well, I'll pair him with a woman who has those sort of alpha traits, but she's punished for them. And so I was sort of writing a relationship drama between the two of them, and I set it in the eighties to make the sort of gender expectations that much more potent. And it was actually like quite a way in that I was just thinking about, Okay, what's his goal though? What is
he what is the image that he wanted? Should he be a politician or a sportsman? And then at a certain point I thought a newsreader. I don't know, Dale said, but even when he was very little, he used to watch the news every night from about seven years old. He'd watch every second right through to the weather. They were like the ultimate state men with their deep voices. And so once I decided to make his goal be a newsreader, I started researching newsrooms and then I just
became obsessed with the culture. How funny is that when you think about so many of the male newsreaders I know them are closeted, you know, like, once you start sort of digging a little bit deeper. And I was on the phone to a journalist today and then we just started spitbowling the names and we're like this person this person, so it's kind of a very fascinating setting. But you know, the character that Sam Reid plays, which is Dale Jennings, he sort of encapsulates that struggle with
coming to terms with your sexuality. So well, you know, was that easy to navigate for you? Yeah, it was. It certainly came very easy to me. But then in the construction of the show, it it was It was interesting in the construction, how do we reveal certain things about these characters. We present them at the beginning in a particular way, and then bit by bit we reveal more and just getting the balance right with that was quite tricky. But I mean, Sam, who's just an incredible actor,
and Emma Freeman is amazing director. The calibration of that took some work. But in terms of tuning in to his yearning and his pain, that was easy for me. I mean, I feel it and know it and feel like it was such a defining part of my life, so it was not a hard thing for me to write at all. I'm committed to Helen. I care about it deeply.
The last thing I want to do is hurt her, So please don't tell anyone of course, so palpable, like it just elevated me. Do you think we've come a long way in regard to homosexuality in the media.
Look, I would say yes for homosexuality, Yeah, I really, I really would, because I mean, I know that a lot of people would still feel are There are plenty of people that are still closeted, no doubt about it. But certainly the notion that to be an outgay person is going to be a career killer, I think that's really started to ebb away. And you know, I mean we have in Melbourne Peter Hitchener is openly gay and
he's just beloved. He's the ultimate newsreader in Melbourne. I don't know, he switched on the radio and Joel Creasy's on nov and so I actually think one of the really remarkable things about the past thirty years has been that journey from where we were at in the eighties and nineties to now. And I'm not saying that there is an ult you know, there obviously there's still a lot of prejudice and there's a lot of people that
are struggling. But for me, it's an optimistic journey because it shows changes possible, changes possible and things can actually change pretty quickly, like where we're at now in lots of ways. I'm married and to my husband, and you know, if you told me even in two thousand and even twenty ten, I think I probably would have really doubted that that would be possible. And I'm probably naturally an optimist, but I think in regards to homosexuality, I feel like there really has been progress in.
Australia, absolutely, you know, and there's been those trailblazers as well, you know, like you mentioned Joel. You know, it's amazing, you know. I remember in twenty twelve auditioning for a radio show and they said to me, you know, this is national so they didn't think I would be the right fit because I was too gay, and they had that conversation with me in twenty twelve.
And I remember on early even this is you know, in twenty ten, twenty eleven, the start of my writing career, I remember getting notes about you can have those two male characters kissed, but you know what, you're going to lose thirty percent of your audience. That was said to me, and people believed it, and people felt people could pull out old ratings reports and say yeah, no, it's absolutely you will just lose your straight male audience if you put that in. And I really feel like I noticed
another show that I work on, Five Bedrooms. I've noticed that both seasons they've put gay male kisses in the trailer. And if you told me back in twenty ten and eleven that one day they'll promote shows with gay romance
in it, I just wouldn't have believed it. I was watching the first episode of series two of Five Bedrooms today and loving it, and I just thought there was a scene where there was it was so weird to me because they were hooking up, and I just remember being like, Oh, this show is so great.
And then I was like, oh my god, this is crazy. You wouldn't have seen this in House Husbands in twenty twelve. You know, we had to have masculine actors playing gay roles to sort of bridge the gap in a way, you know. Crazy. And then also Hugh Sheridan being on this show, being that he's now open about his sexuality, him playing a straight character is very.
Straight, actually impregnated two women in the.
Show, and I'm like, but I'm like, wow, this is this is just mind boggling.
I know, and actually that scene at the start of Five Bedroom season two, Yeah, it was absolutely great because you know, it's no secret that those two actors, Roy and Matt Baker are both gay, and you know, acting is acting nonetheless, the way that they charge at those kisses. Yeah, even for me when I looked at it, I was like, still today, it's kind of startling to see it. And of course, you know, House Husband's was incredibly progressive for
when it for that time. It's still quite a recent show, but they did a gay wedding on there, and yeah, I think for me it's just indicative of how happily in that respect, how fast things have changed in this really condensed space of time.
Well, moving on to Anatov, who is just so good in this role. How quickly did she get attached to the project?
She was attached at the start of twenty twenty. She's worked with Emma Freeman before, they made a Secret City together, and you know, she's just would be at the top of so many people's lists, and she had just come off mind Hunter, which was extraordinary and she was extraordinary in it. So I thought she'll be a long shot, but happily because of the pandemic, she'd come back to Australia and so I felt like that put us in
good position. The fact that she loves Emma as well and Joe Werner, who produced it also was a great boon. But in some ways for me, she's kind of like fantasy casting someone you really dream of because of the extraordinary series she's been in and her and Sam actually really from early on we're both lingering there on the lists and we're just really really lucky that we managed to find this place in time where they got it, they were open to it and signed on.
Well, and it has the right amount of femininity and masculinity that represented, you know, the journalists who were on TV in the eighties. Obviously, you have to accept that telling stories means sometimes telling danger stories. Gadarthi has been described on occasion as the world's most dangerous man. Did you interview many of those iconic newsreaders to get that right?
Yeah, I had interview to a huge number of people who worked in newsrooms. I was a little bit careful in terms of interviewing some of the really famous newsreaders because I was reluctant. I just wouldn't want anyone to
think I was trying to tell their particular story. So for someone like, for example, Peter Hitchener, I'm sure there's a lot of crossover between him and Dale, but he'll probably write his own biography and it'll be brilliant, and the same with someone like yarn event So what I to get the balance right, What I tended to do was I interviewed a lot of producers of the era, people cameraman from the era, or you know, all people
behind the scenes. And then in addition to that I interviewed I did interview some quite really well known news readers, but actually the ones that I settled on were more from the nineties and a little bit afterwards, just to avoid the sense that I was taking anyone's life story. So and everyone that I interviewed, some of which are still on the air and very famous today, I promised them anonymity so that they could and then they might.
I'll be interested to see whether any of them out themselves when the show comes out, and I completely understand if they don't, you know, and I don't know how they'll respond. M It was great, actually, because as soon as I promised them this is just for my own research, purposes, no one will ever know. They really opened up and the stories were amazing.
Well, Amm Rossiano is a good friend of Hells and was reported to have been the inspiration for Cat Stewart's character in Offspring. So yeah, you know, I was going to ask you who inspirations for Simon and Helen.
Well, there's a lot, There's more than one inspiration, but yeah, no question. M. You know, it's really no secret that the M has sort of forged a career in the media, and she's a big personality and famously has you know, has sometimes struggled in those commercial media environments. And I've been very close to her for all that time, so I've had a front row seat to that. I mean, I'm always it pains to say, of course there's you know,
Helen and Dahl are in a romantic relationship. I can assure you that has not happened with M and I, and there's no direct you know, there's no direct moments, but definitely that struggle of being you know, an ambitious, a focused, a talented and uncompromising woman in that environment. I've drawn a lot of inspiration from that, and obviously that's been part of M's story as well, and I've witnessed it, so yes, it is fair to say that she's definitely part of the inspiration. But there were many
sixty minutes. Are sending female reporters.
To wars anywhere you go is a war zone, Helen, You're a war zone on two legs.
So yeah, try your luck there, see if they'll take you. Oh well, what are we tell you something? Though?
Sweeter are the networks they hear about the shit we have to put up with from you.
I wouldn't touch you with a ten foot budge bar. I have to back you up.
Every day. People come in here and they say, Helen Marble, she's a nightmare.
She's got a face like a slap dart.
Well, I just remember watching the show and then doing the research, knowing that I was going to be speaking to you, and thinking I was like, it's em Rosiano here, because she had this ability to be really sort of ambitious and talented but also emotional, and then also being told you're not allowed to have those things all put together is just so interesting.
Yeah, it's it's a pretty you know. I would say that in terms of that you we were speaking about the progress with in terms of homosexuality. I would say in some ways the gender progress is still maybe not a swift and I still feel like there are different standards and our tolerance for men who are decisive and who are ambitious and everything like that is is I
still I reckon a lot greater than women. And it is like in the in the show, audience members ring the switchboard and say all this sort of stuff about Helen saying, you know, she's she's put on weight. I didn't like that. I make up all that sort of stuff. You know that obviously we don't ring the switchboard, but tell you what. They go on Twitter and you only need to like every time Lee sales is on seven
point thirty. I mean, just look at people tweeting her. Like, the pressures on women in the media, both from the audience and from the structure around them, is still pretty intense. I think.
You know, how do you think that the flavor of Australian journalism differs to say, the way in which they report on the news in England and America?
Oh, that's interesting. Actually, the first thing I have to say is one of the surprising things is how much the presentation, how the way that a newsreader composes of themselves. There are actually a lot of similarities. And one of the things that was surprizing to me is how much the look of an eighties news reader seemed to be
consistent in all the different territories. Actually, I would say that the British ones were a bit more tweed and spectacles, a little bit more in the American ones were more that sort of tough hair spray. And I suppose the American news even in the eighties had tripped a little bit more into slightly more sensational territory even back then. And the big difference, actually one of the biggest differences with in America is they in the eighties already had
twenty four hour news. They already had CNN, and we didn't have that here, so we still had the legacy of the news bulletin. And another thing that you really felt with the Australian ones is that in the eighties, at least a lot of particularly the men that were still there, they had been there since the birth of
television and they had begun in radio. And when you look at some of the eighties footage from Australia, they really speak in that old timey Australian voice, which is really feels really dated now.
The main event of our visa Tennery World Expo eighty eight.
So yeah, I guess that's the primary difference. America was speeding into sensationalism in twenty four hour news and we still had that legacy of you are now on the six pm bulletin that was still here in Australia.
You know, women on TV was sort of refined to the barrel girl roles. At best, they might get the second lead story. Are you surprised with how long it's sort of taken us to see more equality on television?
Yeah, it is a strong I mean, it is remarkable how long it took for just women to be newsreaders in general. I mean it was really just starting to come in the late seventies and then a little bit more in the eighties, but typically in the eighties they just had to be pared with a man. That's pretty wild to me, and I think even today, I mean you look at commercial radio, there are very few commercial radio teams that are two women. In fact, are there any?
And isn't there still? Isn't there still with radio this sort of vague sense of audiences won't like two female voices. They need to be you know of that, or they just sound shrill. I mean that is something that could you could imagine still get said in twenty twenty one. So yeah, I mean a lot of these, you know, the misogyny frankly is it's really it's stark and it's
still present today. But then there were really, I mean, there's always fascinating exceptions, and Yanna Vent was a really fascinating exception to the rule because she was she was very serious and authoritative and really beloved, like she was the most popular person on Australian television. You know, there was nothing barrel girl about Yana. She was a very intelligent, sophisticated, serious presence on Australian news and so on one level
she's like the highest paid person on television. But then in other cases there's you know, all sorts of sexism and misogyny. So there are contradictions, but by and large, yeah, it's I think still today, women, particularly teams of women in those headline positions are still unfortunately pretty rare, and you look at us talk shows, I mean Samantha be but beyond her again, there's this weird thing of we just want to be put to bed by the men.
Well, do you think that it was sort of protected over the years by straight white males that you know, all straight white male presenters who couldn't bear to think that women might be more interesting than them.
Yeah, it becomes a self fulfilling thing, I think, in the sense that you know, if people have added a female host to something and it hasn't rated, then people will be quoting that for the next twenty years, like the same way that when I started, you know, and I put a gay kiss in a script and was told this is going to drop twenty percent. They were
citing examples from two thousand. Maybe that was true in two thousand, but it's hard to break the cycles when people when the executives have been there for forty years and they just are pretty you know, fixated on what was happening ten to fifteen years ago. And I do
think that that's part of the trickiness. I would say in Australia there is a little bit of a culture of the executives in Australia tend to be their long term and I have noticed that with an American companies, often there's a lot of turnover, Like you go into those American streams that Netflix is really famous for, pretty
high staff turnover. In Australia, a lot of our decision makers, a lot of them, you know, have been around since the eighties and the nineties and they're still the decision makers in Australia.
Well, there's nothing defametry about this, but in the early nineties Denise Dreisdale hosted an episode of Hey, Hey, It's Saturday while Darryl Summers was away and the show didn't rate any differently, and you know, you think about those telltale signs that the audience didn't care, but we just ignored it.
You know.
I do think often there are times where just give the audience a bit of credit. They might you might be surprised.
You know, well, I think we're trying. I think we're still trying in lots of ways. And I get really funny about people feeling you know a quote of these days when people say, oh, we need a queer person or we need to person in a person of color. You know, I do want to see more equality on screen, of course, but you know, where is the where is the meritocracy?
It is always tricky with quotas. But on the other hand, you know, on the other hand, sometimes I think it's just a practical way of forcing change and when changes is resistant, then they can be really, really effective. And it surprises me when I think back. Now, even at the start of my career, it was really common for me to be in writers' rooms and it was all white, middle class writers. And now that wouldn't happen. And it's not necessarily because of quotas, but there's much more of
a sense. And also once you, i mean you suddenly realize it, the room is so much better that when there's like different perspectives and you know, on Five Bedrooms, I mean, we have a very diverse room on that show. But early on we were working with Mattila Gupta, who and her input into the show is just absolutely made the show. The shows aren't imaginable without everything that she has brought to it.
I think you also had Benjamin Law helping you with sisters, you know, like.
Yeah, that's true, yes, yes, that again was a great Yeah, we had a great room. There was a great room for that. Rosie Woodland was in that room as well.
You know, with digital content being made independently now you know, you've got people popping up and making their own shows from home pretty much me right now. But do you think that will change the way in which the news is reported? Because I think people thought the press was controlled by these billionaires, you know that owned those publishing companies, which sort of meant that we're being educated and informed
with a particular skew. Do you think that now could change the way in which we're told the news?
You can look it already has in lots of ways. I mean, I did spend some time in the ABC newsroom for research for this, but of course that was only of limited help because the whole way news is put together has changed. And in the eighties they went out like the reporters would go out with not just a camera person but a soundo as well, and now oftentimes they're just going out with their own digital equipment.
They're a one man band, and oftentimes they're directly asking the public to send in footage, which everyone everyone can do now. So it's kind of revolutionized the way that news is put together, and it meant that my spending time in the newsroom in twenty twenty was not that helpful in terms of trying to figure out nineteen eighty six. But yeah, absolutely, and it comes with I mean, there's great assets to it, but there's also dangers. There's the
dangers in it as well. And obviously trust in news is low at the moment, and part of that is because there are so many different news sources and it really we've got to develop our sort of literacy in knowing which news sources to, you know, to gravitate towards
and to trust. And I said, you know, I mean I hate to bring up a trumpet slogan, but you know, the belief in fake news and then also inaccuracies in news and is a really big problem that is not helped in some ways by the fragmentation of you know, all of the news bodies. I heard a podcast the other day which I thought was really interesting because they got to the end of the podcast and they let this guest talk at will, and then at the end of the podcast, the host came on and re clarified
some of the mistakes that were made. I'm so interesting and it made me just this podcast more that you can have a guest come on and speak their truth, but then at the end of them just clarify Yeah, it's like what we needed.
With Donald Trump was down the bottom. Tweet away my friend, you nutjob. But you know, let's have down the bottom.
Well, I think that's one of the Yeah, the lessons of that era is that you have to call out lives and accuracies at the time, because if you don't, you're just creating, you know, a pathway to all kinds of wreckage. But yeah, it's a really interesting time for news at the moment. The Internet has revolutionized things and the fact that all of us can be newsgatherers with our phones in our pocket is Yeah, it's amazing in some ways and problematic in others.
You know, if you had to list one or two shows that were your favorite Australian programs growing up that sort of inspired you to come into this industry, what would they be.
Well, look, I'm going to start with Frontline for pretty obvious reasons. You can see there's some connections with the news and I would say in general working dog as a production company. I mean, I was in high school when the Late Show was on and I was obsessed with it, and then to sort of follow that group and become a huge fan of Frontline and still today. Those episodes really hold up there. You can see them
on stan God they're good, They're completely relevant. And I spent the entire development of Newsreader absolutely panicked that they were going to announce they were doing another season of Frontline, because if they did, I'm not sure we would have got commissioned. Yeah, so Frontline absolutely really looms large in my mind. And I mean I have to say Secret Life of Us as well, because which again is having a real moment on Netflix, but our Secret Life of Us.
I was just a little bit younger than those characters on screen. I was in a sharehouse and I loved it. It just felt like we had turned a new page on Australian TV. Those actors were so charismatic, the writing was so good, and even watching it now, I think the writing still feels really pretty fresh. And it's InCred to me that they made twenty two EPs a year and kept the standard that high. Simon, do you have a girlfriend? Yeah? Kind of what snay? Robert? Robert isn't
short for ROBERTA is it? Have you ever done it with a girl?
Was it nice?
Very nice?
But you'd rather do it with boys?
Wouldn't you rather do it? With boys.
It's not rather, it's just that I don't know just like boys, I suppose say there was something to think about. But if boys like boys and girls like boys, who likes the girls?
Particularly Secret Life of Us. I went to one of those sort of writers' festivals and I was studying screenwriting at the time, and I saw Judy mccrosson, who was one of the head writers on that, and the producer Amanda Higgs, and they talked about the process of making that show and how they would tell stories about their love lives and their housemates and how that would become the narrative of the show. And I remember sitting there going, that's what I want to do. That's more than anything.
I was sort of at a time in my life where I wasn't quite sure do I want to write movies or do I want to be a director? Maybe what I want to do, But when I heard the two of them speak, I thought, I want to work on a returning TV show and a relationship drama and I just want to be in a room with great, interesting writers and pour our life stories onto the screen. And so yeah, those two Secret Life of arts in Frontline are going to be my two picks.
Are you surprised we don't see more Australian drama on film that is sort of less grim and more colloquial, because like, the thing I really liked about your film was how much it didn't have to be said in Australia. It was still very Australian, but the subject matter meant that it could be more colloquial without it being about drugs or gangsters.
And yeah, I mean it's tricky with Australian films because often you know, with films, it's true now of television, but with films, to put the financing together, you've got to get a lot of international money, and in terms of an international financi you're putting in money to Australian films and then often they'll want a classic Australian vistas and the Outback and you know, something really uniquely Australian.
So that same quality that you mentioned that you liked, that I like too, and that works on television in things like Secret Life of Us is a little bit trickier in film, Like for a film like not Suitable for children, Well, why would American money go into that when they could do you know, they could do an
American a Judd Apatow version of that. So yeah, I mean, I must admit I'm pretty in love with television now even and I'd be surprised, actually if I went back in time and spoke to myself how much I was sort of going to be so content to completely move
away from feature films. But there's something about long, ongoing plot arcs that I really love, and also for me at least, something about having an ensemble of great actors and you know, working with them over a period of years and developing that relationship with them where you give them particular material. I love that, And of course with film, I mean I love doing not suitable for children, and I'm just still to this day adore Ryan Quanton and
Sarah Snook and Ryan Core. But it was, you know, it was seven weeks and we were done, and the script was finished before they began. I mean, in some ways I almost wish that that show was a series, because it would have been great to keep returning to them and to develop that same relationship with those actors.
A good question to ask is where do you see the Australian film and television industry in ten years from now, do you think that streaming services might be the chance to make more bold choices in storytelling?
Oh? Absolutely, I mean everything's migrating, dramas migrating to streaming now. I mean I've been on the front line of it because The Five Bedrooms began as a network show and now it's on Paramount Plus and in most territories in the world it's on streaming. I think it's a good thing. I mean we're obviously at a peak time at the moment. There are so many hours of drama being made, so many I mean just unprecedented six hundred shows a year
or something get made. I mean it's really exciting for us. Like our newsreader is funded in a large part out of the UK, and Five Bedrooms as well, and so it does give it can give Australian work access to bigger budgets. And of course, when when you're accessing the money of those international streamers, they want bold, noisy concepts, they want something really distinctive. There is a certain great thing about you know, those classic Australian dramas that were
broad put the whole family around. Definitely, streaming mostly demands more more specific niches in terms of streaming. It's better to hit a niche audience and get a niche a smaller group of people obsessed with it. That's better than to have a broad group of people quite like it. But for me, it's exciting and I feel like it'll be great for the industry, particularly if we can get quotas put on the streamers. That if we can get quotas put on Netflix and all of those international streamers,
then there will be an amazing renaissance. I mean there already is an amazing amount of Australian shows being made for the streamers, but that would kick it to the next level.
I think, well, you know, it's interesting, you know, with Kiben making Nine Perfect Strangers here in Australia at the moment, do you think that that will give actresses like you know, Asha Ketty more of a global platform because some of our television actors are some of the best television actors in the world. When you're looking at these streaming services internationally and you can see some of these shows like Offspring next to an American show or UK show, people
just come across. You know, surely we're going to have people because I mean, Laudia carbon Asha Ketty. There's so many of kat Stewart's, so many of the best television actors in the world, and we're lucky to still have them in Australia. Do you reckon people are going to try and snap them up and take them elsewhere.
Absolutely. I mean, I even think of the Danish Showborgan, that the brilliant actress that plays the prime minister in that show. You know, she popped up in all these you know, she was in Westworld, and you know, I mean, I know very well that Asher is this incredible actress. And Offspring has really got traction on Netflix, like it's still to this day. I'm amazed at how many people.
I mean, I'm just one of the writers on it, and the amount of social media traffic I get that people still, you know, blowing up over the bit where Patrick dies is incredible. I can't let you go. It's not what you're doing, but I have to keep leaving somehow. For me, it's a really exciting era because even when we began, when I began, you know, Offspring was just a domestic show. It was hugely successful in Australia, but
it didn't really travel. Now it's got this whole life overseas and certainly for something like five Bedrooms Now Australia is just one part of our rollout, like where we start in the US in a week and we're on Peacock, you know, which has shows like Girls five ever and it sits really well on that platform. So I yeah, it really will change the way people approach their careers.
And I do think for people like Asha and Claudia and everyone that old thing of where you've just got to go over to LA and do the best you can for as long as it takes or whatever, that I think will change. I think if work here travels, then they'll be noticed because they're brilliant. Just to go back just a second, though, you didn't kill Patrick on Offspring. You're not responsible for that. I I'm definitely one of
the murderers. Yeah, I hate to say it, but no, I mean Deborah Oswald is the creator of Offspring and she was the head writer, so maybe it can more hang on her than me. But no, it was primarily plotted by myself and Jonathan Gavin and with deb in charge. But no, I was there. I was there, we yep, and I was on board with it. I was on board with it. I felt like it was the right choice.
Do you know how many women in Australia or the world that was sitting there with a shaton Eh glass of white wine bawling their eyes out and plotting your death if they know it?
Well? I know because I at the time, I was actually the only one of the writers that was on social media on Twitter, and believe me, I heard about it and still to this day, like it's one of those things that you know, I'll go to a wedding and people will say, yeah, well he worked on Offspring and then someone will go, oh my god, when Pat It's just one of those things.
But I reckon there would be some satisfaction in knowing that a piece of your writing has connected like that. To imagine that your writing has compelled an audience.
Oh yeah, that's what I mean. The biggest thing that you hope for when you write anything, it's just that
an audience will care. They'll care about the characters, and obviously with Offspring, they just especially by season four, they cared so much about Nina and Patrick that they were legitimately grief stricken, and even though it was a little bit full on and especially considering that I was new to Twitter at the time, and you know, I think so Twitter in general was pretty new at the time, so it was a pretty startling thing to go through.
But you know, I only ever saw it as a positive because I felt like, well, you know, it worked what we were creating with the cast and with the directors and everything like that. People were invested. And sure they might be really furious at me and sending me weird little wanted posters with my face cut and paste on it, but it just shows they cared.
I'm actually fascinated with the fact that you've got so many shows on television, you know, coming up, and you've got you know, Five Bedrooms, which is just launched on Paramount Plus watch series. Why not watching series two? Was there a second season soft reboot to Five Bedrooms as it started? Because I felt like the second series allowed audience to just pick it up without even needing the first to watch the series.
We were certainly very conscious of the fact that when we came into series two we did sort of like encapsulate the premise. Again, a lot of this was a lot of our hand was forced in a way because we lost the house we shot in first season, We've got a great house. We've got great houses for all the seasons, but first season we're in this great house, and then the owner was going to completely renovate it so and make it really deluxe, so we couldn't shoot
there again. We had to find a new house, and we did, so it meant that season two began with again house purchasing, so in that respect, it felt like a bit of a reset. But it's an interesting one with five bedrooms because it's obviously, you know, it's a
serialized story. It's quite different to a lot of things that I've written in that each episode goes to one of the characters, and hopefully in that episode you get It's not a self contained story because all the ongoing stories are going on, but you invest in that character and you should get you know, with every episode, we aspire to give you a really well rounded, little emotional journey.
So to a certain extent, we hope it is the kind of show that you can drop in and hopefully in the first few minutes of the show you'll suddenly get this is the dilemma in this episode, and you will get some sort of emotional resolution to it. In the episode. Yeah, so that's probably what you're picking up on in watching it, which is quite different to say Offspring,
which is always Nina. And if you haven't been watching the last episode with Nina, then you're going to be lost coming into the new one.
I think it's really clever, but I think it's also a testament to who you are as a collaborator, as a writer, as a storyteller, as a script producer. I think it's the diversity of these two shows, Like how amazing is it to have these two shows something on the ABC like The news Reader and then have five bedrooms on you know, Paramount plus chaneld ten sort of thing, like they're just so different but still so amazing. And it ties me back to the first thing I said
to you, which is you know. It's it's the way in which you understand the characters. You know, it's the way in which you write those characters. There's something that's similar in all of your work which I can see, and it's your ability to believe these characters. It's the nuances that you see.
Likely.
Well, I'm always in your audience, but my last question before you go is something that I ask all my guests and that is what is an amazing story from behind the scenes of the news reader that we as an audience would appreciate.
Oh wow, I feels like there's a lot to talk about there. Look, it's hard for me with the newsreader to go past just some of the stuff with COVID because we were in the surreal thing of you know, we're crafting nineteen eighty six, but in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, and there are a couple of real COVID we always we started to refer to them as
COVID curveballs. But I would say that probably the biggest one was we have an episode that is set in Darwin for the Lindy Chamberlain's trial, and we were going to shoot that at the real jail where she was imprisoned, and we'd location scouted and then everything was ready, and then we had an outbreak in Melbourne and they shut the borders and we couldn't get there, and it was an absolute disaster, and all our flights were booked, all our accommodation was booked, and a torf was already looking
into we were going to go see the jumping crocodiles like it was I had contacted friends in Darwin. We were so on the brink of it, and so then we scrambled and we thought, okay, okay, okay. Let's Emma Freeman had shot Stateless in Port Augusta, so we thought we'll move that. We got a location scout out there, and we desperately like tried to like get the production ready to go to Port Augusta, and then right on the brink of that, then South Australia shut there Port
it too, and so we lost what did your film? It? Then Midura because we finally accepted that it's just got to be Victoria. We can't leave Victoria, but where? And I have to say that in the end, Mildura was amazing and the locals really got behind it, and I think I had underrested. I mean, Mildura is you know not It's closer to kind of Broken Hill than it is to Melbourne, and it had the red dirt. It's
not tropical, it's much more desert. But yeah, so we ended up going to Mildura and then any We were basically looking for any fragment of Mildura that had palm trees. If there was a palm tree in Mildura. I can tell you we filmed it and everything so carefully, carefully framed so that it looks like Darwin. But I mean, that was the most ridiculous thing that happened, just I mean, I could understand one border closing, but to have one
and then another was just kind of unbelievable. But we still got it made.
I read someone yesterday online said I can't wait for this TV but if there's no smoking in the newsroom, then it's not real. And then I thought to myself, well, I don't know whether or not when you were making this show, whether or not you'd be allowed to even have, you know, pretend smoke that they do in TV and film because of COVID, you know what I mean, Like we're so parent.
It was a real question. That was a real question, and there were different classifications for different smoke machines, but the one that we had was approved to create the myst I have to say, it smelt disgusting and I thought it was giving me headaches. I kept on I felt really sorry for the cast, and I kept racing outside and sort of heaving in the air. But apparently it was COVID safe and it looked great on screen. I mean, that's just got that misty look that is
perfect for that smoking newsroom. But god, it was, it was. It was awful. It was awful. Oh my god.
I just want to say you are a fantastic collaborator. You are an amazing storyteller. We're so lucky to have you telling stories here in Australia. I can't wait to still be in your audience.
For people, the cheers.
That that don't watch the ABC because they're idiots, you know, go and watch the ABC, you know, on Sunday night, because this show is just brilliant. I think there's something.
In fro into iView anytime you want. It's free. One of these people complaining to me about paramount plus I have to pay for five bedrooms now, and so I just want to say to everyone that newsreader will be one, one hundred percent free. You've paid for it as an Australian taxpayer. Click on go for gold.
Well, thank you so much for being able to It was fun, we went for we went on a few tangents.
We did enjoy and that the wine was wonderful and so was the company. So thank you.