Underbelly

Talk of new Underbelly series

There is talk of a new Underbelly series for 2011 being set in Sydney during the 1920s, a time when crooks armed themselves with razors as opposed to handguns. The buzz is around a new season of the Channel Nine series featuring gangs of razor-wielding crooks who operated in the Darlinghurst/Kings Cross area during a time when pistol licensing laws made it easier for crims to choose blades over bullets.

Writer accuses MTV of stealing Jersey Shore concept

A television writer has accused MTV of stealing his idea for reality shore Jersey Shore from a 2006 pitch he called Guidos: The Reality Series. Christopher Gambale is claiming that MTV used his idea of portraying stereotypical Italians without credit, but MTV is hitting back by saying that his idea was not original.

Uni offers course on The Wire

A Baltimore university has begun offering a course based on critically acclaimed drama series The Wire. The John Hopkins University has launched the class which uses the show as a base to explore issues affecting US cities including drug use and crime with guest lecturers including the show’s creator David Simon.

Ugly Betty actor claims God was involved in murder

The former Ugly Betty actor who killed his mother last week with a samurai sword has insisted he was “doing the work of God”. Michael L. Brea has claimed that voices in his head ordered him to attack his mum after a “demon” took her soul.

Wondering what is happening with your favourite Australian drama or reality competition show? Here is a list summarising both genres with information as to what has been renewed, what has not been, and some names of new shows to air in 2011. Updated November 22.

The list will no doubt grow and update as the networks release their upfronts for 2011.

Australian Drama.

AFP – Nine was supposed to air in 2010 – Low ratings with cop based dramas all round sees it held off until 2011.

City Homicide – Seven – Rumours of the show being axed have not been confirmed by Seven. A decision will be made on whether there will be a 5th season or not some time in 2011. A 6 part mini series airs early 2011.

Cops LAC - Nine – Officially dropped by Nine. Not renewed.

East West 101 – SBS ONE – 3^rd season to air 2011.

Home and Away – Seven – No confirmation, but almost certainly will return in 2011 for its 24^th year.

Inside Out – Ten new for 2011

Neighbours – Ten / Eleven – Returns on Eleven in 2011. 26^th year.

Offspring – Ten – confirmed for 2^nd season in 2011.

Packed to the Rafters – Seven – Production on 4th season has commenced – so yes – it is back in 2011. Ads at teh end of the final suggest Rafters will return ealry 2011 – so possible February start. Usually Rafters is not on until mid year.

Rescue Special Ops – Nine – renewed for 3^rd season in 2011.

Rush – Ten confirmed for 4th season in 2011.

Sea Patrol - Nine renewed for season 5.

Spirited – W renewed for season 2.

Tangle – Showcase 3^rd season yet to be confirmed

Underbelly – Nine 4^th season to air 2011. Subject of 4^th season TBC though. Telemovies to come as well.

Winners and Losers - Seven new for 2011.

Reality Competition shows.

Australia’s Got Talent - 5^th season for 2011. Auditions underway.

Australia’s Next Top Model – FOX8 – 7^th cycle open now for applications

Beauty and the Geek Australia – Seven – Season 2 concludes Thur Nov 25, 8.30pm. If there is a third season, it will be announced during or at the end of the finale.

Come Dine with Me Australia – Lifestyle – 3^rd season in 2011. Looking for contestants now

Don’t Stop Believing – Ten – CANCELLED - Show will not be going ahead.

Got to Dance – FOX8 – new for 2011

Junior Masterchef - Ten – 2nd season for 2011

Masterchef Australia – Ten – 3^rd season in 2011

Must Be the Music – FOX8 – new for 2011

My Kitchen Rules – Seven – 2^nd season in 2011.

The Amazing Race Australia – Seven in 2011.

The Biggest Loser – TEN – back in 2011 with a family based series.

The Block – Nine – Technically 4th season planned for 2011.

The Farmer Wants A Wife – Nine. Applications open for 2011 season.

The Renovators – Ten – New and to air 3^rd quarter 2011, been described as “The Block on steroids”.

The X Factor – Seven – possible second season for 2011, but nothing confirmed.

Note: Documentaries and Factuals (and there are a lot of them – shows like Bondi Rescue, Recruits, Border Security, RBT, The Force, Find My Family, etc) are not part of this list. If there is a current (as in airing in 2010 or 2011) Australian drama or reality competition show I have left off the list, please let me know.

One of the new Underbelly telemovies may have to be shelved indefinitely after the threat of legal action in NSW.

Tell Then Lucifer Was Here is the first of the planned telemovies from the Nine Network and focuses on the 1998 murders of Victoria Police officers Rod Miller and Gary Silk.

The murders were found to be committed by Bandali Debs and Jason Roberts who were found guilty in 2003.

However Debs is also under investigation for the death of a Sydney prostitute fifteen years ago and the Victoria Government Solicitor is applying to the Melbourne Magistrates Court to have Debs transferred to a NSW prison for questioning over the death.

Should the legal action go ahead, Nine would not be able to run with Tell Them Lucifer Was Here in NSW due to Debs’ name being identified.

The network now have several choices to make: they could play the telemovie in every state apart from NSW; they could rush the release of it before the legal action begins; or they could shelve the project until the case passes.

Source: The Age

Why is Australian drama no longer doing well in the ratings? Do we just not like Australian drama or is it the fact that most of it is crime based and we have had enough of crime and cop shows. Maybe the reasons are that the Americans just do it so much better – with their higher budgets, and slick productions or is it just that our actors are not all they are cracked up to be.

As part of licensing conditions for Australian television networks, they are required to produce a certain amount of Australian content each year measured on a points system, including Australian drama that attract the most points. Aside from dramas, content includes reality and factual shows, and imports from New Zealand also count towards the points the networks earn for local content. The amount of reality and factual content these days, however, far outweighs drama.

If you look at what Australian drama is on free to air TV at the moment, you’ll find there is a collection of soaps, cop or crime based shows, one family based and one just quirky. Seven has Packed to the Rafters, City Homicide and Home and Away, Ten has Offspring, Neighbours and Rush while Nine – promoting themselves as the home of Australian drama has Rescue Special Ops and Cops LAC. Other shows that have aired this year include Nine’s Underbelly and Ten’s Hawke telemovie. Still to come on Nine include another police drama AFP, Panic at Rock Island and Tell them Lucifer was here – the first of the Underbelly telemovies.

But if you look at how these shows rate, only two of them could be described run away successes. Packed to the Rafters on Seven – the only drama family based – attracts as many as two million viewers each week. Only Underbelly on Nine has matched – and surpassed – the figures the Rafter family attains.

Looking at the cop / crime shows, none of them are currently reaching over a million viewers. City Homicide and Rush are hovering around the 700-800,000 mark, Rescue Special Ops flirts with a million each Monday night and the new kid on the block Cops LAC for its second episode was watched by 944,000 after debuting to over 1.1 million for its premiere on Sept 2.

Ten’s very different Offspring is watched by around a million viewers per week while Seven’s Home and Away attracts a similar nightly audience. Neighbours on Ten struggles in comparison – between 500-700,000 prompting its move to Ten’s new digital channel in 2011.

The story is somewhat different for US dramas. Crime procedurals like Bones, Criminal Minds, NCIS and the Mentalist all enjoy audience figures well over a million, with new episodes of NCIS and The Mentalist reaching as high as 1.5 million. Parenthood – currently seen on Seven after Packed to the Rafters – another family based drama – also is watched by around a million each week.

Meanwhile, Australian reality competition shows still attract the biggest audiences. Talent based formats like Australia’s Got Talent and The X Factor easily outdo the dramas in ratings, reaching average figures around 1.5 million, while cooking based Masterchef puts everything else on TV to shame with its success. Even Seven’s My Kitchen Rules was easily watched by more people than the dramas are.

One off telemovies like Hawke and last year’s A Model Daughter – The Killing of Carolyn Byrne do very well in the ratings, Hawke at about 1.7 million – good news for the up and coming Panic at Rock Island on Nine. Back in the 80’s it was the big mini-series like Vietnam, Bodyline and the like that used to clean up in the ratings. Telemovies these days are few and far between.

The message the ratings are sending about Australian crime or cop based dramas is that the audience is perhaps had enough of the genre and perhaps it is time to try something different. Packed to the Rafters does so well because it is so different, and easy for many to relate to. Shows made for Pay TV like Tangle and Spirited stand out as being different, but are only exposed to a limited audience.

It’s hard to know what will be our next big drama hit. Apart from Packed to the Rafters and Underbelly, no show is performing well enough to guarantee long term success. Rescue Special Ops is renewed for a third year, but no word on Rush or City Homicide – both of which are having their worst years since being on air.

The decline in ratings for these shows can be attributed to a combination of factors not only including genre saturation but the changing television landscape where viewers have so many more options now. The quality of acting and story lines in some cases doesn‘t help.

But with a small selection of show reaching high ratings figures – like Masterchef, Rafters and Underbelly, the audience is there – and will tune in to a show if it is worth watching. Problem is, while ever the networks keep giving the audience more of the same or trying to play it safe, the figures are simply going to dilute further across the various options on offer.

The dilution of audience is already happening for the crime genre. It’s just a matter of time before the talent based reality competition shows face the same fate, and, as we see a proliferation of cooking based shows hits our screens over the next year, expect cooking shows to also suffer the same fate.

Only those shows that are original, well made and feature believable characters or participants will stand out, and therefore bring in the numbers.

The criminal underworld of New Zealand is poised to be developed into a localised version of the Underbelly television series.

A Kiwi adaption of the hit Australian drama is currently in the early stages of development, following a $20,000 grant from New Zealand On Air. Production company Screentime, is currently investigating the feasibility of the series.

“We are in the very early stages of talks with TV3. It’s very much in the inception stages,” said Philly de Lacey, Screentime’s executive director and head of production.

De Lacey would not be drawn on the potential era or possible figures the drama could focus on.

But Canterbury University criminologist Dr Greg Newbold said that there were a number of underworld personalities which could feature in the series.

Newbold, who served seven years in prison following his involvement in the heroin trade during the 1970s, drew on his experiences in writing seven books and more than fifty academic articles on crime.

Speaking to the New Zealand Herald, he said he would be happy to assist in the development of the program.

“I know a lot of stuff that people don’t know I know. If they are going to talk about some criminals I know, I’m always open and happy to talk.

“The quality of the programme will depend on the quality of the information.”

Early speculation points towards the series focusing on organised crime from the 1960s onwards, potentially featuring criminals Wayne Beri, Ron Jorgensen and George Wilder.

 Source: TSR

Matt Newton quits The X Factor

Underbelly actor Matt Newton has been forced to withdraw as host of the upcoming X Factor Australia after being readmitted to rehab in Melbourne. The actor, who featured on the second season of Underbelly, has had a history of drug and alcohol related problems.

The Stig unmasked?

Newspapers in the UK are reporting that the identity of The Stig from BBC’s Top Gear programme has been uncovered thanks to information garnered from a set of company accounts. The driver is said to be ex-Formula Three racer Ben Collins whose company made significantly more money after providing “driving services for the BBC, mainly in the Top Gear programme”.

Michael J. Fox returning to TV

Michael J. Fox will return to television in the next season of The Good Wife with reports the actor will play a lawyer on the drama series. Fox, who has been battling with Parkinson’s Disease for two decades, semi retired from acting back in 2000 and this will mark his first full time role since then.

Betty White wins Emmy

88-year-old Betty White has picked up an Emmy at the Creative Arts Emmy ceremony over the weekend, a precursor to the Primetime Emmys which take place at the end of the month. Other winners include Neil Patrick Harris for his guest role on Glee, Jeff Probst for his hosting of Survivor and Jamie Oliver for his series Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. 

Hot on the heels of the successful completion of Tell Them Lucifer Was Here and Infiltration, the first two telemovies from the Underbelly Files, the Nine Network and production company Screentime announced that filming commenced today on The Man Who Got Away, the third and final telemovie in the trilogy.

Proving once again that real-life can be stranger than fiction, The Man Who Got Away, to be directed by acclaimed filmmaker Cherie Nowlan from a screenplay by Kris Mrksa, tells the amazing story of David McMillan, a Melbourne man from a privileged background, of immense charm and intelligence, who could have been anything, but instead chose a life of crime.

While still in his early 20s McMillan’s exploits earned him a place on Interpol’s Ten Most Wanted list, but he proved an elusive figure. Aided and abetted by his lover Clelia Vigano, the daughter of respectable Melbourne restaurateurs, McMillan’s ambitions, and ego, were boundless – until the day ‘Lady Luck’ found a new paramour and he found himself a guest of Thailand’s notorious ‘Bangkok Hilton’ facing a death sentence. But McMillan was no ordinary inmate and became the first Westerner to escape Klong Prem Prison.

With an A-List cast including rising star Toby Schmitz as David McMillan, Claire van der Boom as Clelia Vigano, plus Jeremy Sims, Aaron Jeffery, Nicholas Eadie, Brendan Cowell, Freya Stafford, Josh Lawson, John Orcisk, William Zappa, Heather Mitchell and Deirdre Rubenstein, The Man Who Got Away promises to be enthralling entertainment and a proud addition to the Underbelly franchise.

“We’re all delighted with the way that filming has progressed on the Underbelly Files,” said Des Monaghan, Executive Director of Screentime.

“With The Man Who Got Away, we have an incredible, real-life tale of a man who chose to live life on his own terms, despite the often dire consequences.”

Nine Network Head of Drama, Jo Horsburgh, is equally pleased with the progress of the latest installments in the hugely successful Underbelly franchise.

“I never fail to be impressed by the depth of talent this country continues to deliver, whether it be in front of or behind the camera, and I am confident that The Man Who Got Away will introduce Australian households to yet another crop of up-and-coming stars,” said Horsburgh.

A Screentime production in association with the Nine Network, The Man Who Got Away will be filmed on location in Melbourne and produced by Peter Gawler and Elisa Argenzio.  Des Monaghan, Jo Horsburgh and Screentime’s Head of Drama, Greg Haddrick, will be the executive producers.

The 2011 ratings survey calendar has been released.

Once again, the year will consist of 40 ratings weeks, broken into 10 four week survey periods with non-ratings periods for 10 weeks over summer and two weeks over Easter.

2011 is unique in the fact that Easter is late April – so late that Easter Monday is actually April 25 which will cause a rare five day long weekend in most states as an additional holiday is added to compensate for ANZAC Day being the same day as Easter Monday.

Ratings for 2011 starts with Week 7, commencing February 6, 2011.

Easter non- ratings covers weeks 17 and 18 from Sunday April 17 to Saturday April 30, 2011.

Summer non ratings for 2011/2012 starts with week 49, commencing Sunday November 27, 2011. Summer non ratings 2010/2011 commences Sunday November 28, 2010.

The later date for Easter provides for 10 weeks of ratings between summer 2010/2011 and the Easter non ratings period. Networks may be more likely to launch their big shows earlier, rather than later. In 2010, where Easter was relatively early, all networks held of their big titles until after Easter.

In 2011, Ten will most likely launch Masterchef season 3 on Sunday May 1, the first Sunday of ratings after Easter while the same date is the likely date for the 2011 Logie Awards.

Underbelly will return to Nine for its 4^th season, while Biggest Loser will be back for Ten in February. Don’t Stop Believing replaces So You Think You Can Dance and is also likely to run from February.

Source: OzTam.

Australian underworld figure Mick Gatto will be the focus of a new reality series being shot by American Toby Yoshimura.

Gatto, who was portrayed in the first season of Underbelly, has allowed the film crew into his life in order to shoot a “warts-and-all” series that will give insights into his private world.

“I’ve been doing this a long time and Mick is definitely Tony Soprano, I don’t know how else to describe the guy,” Yoshimura said.

“I’m scared out of my mind, intrigued, fascinated, and I want to give him a hug, all at the same time.”

In the series, Gatto will speak of the events portrayed in Underbelly including his acquittal in the case of murdered hitman Andrew “Benji” Veniamin and his relationship with the likes of Carl Williams.

“Mick Gatto is the last man standing. I have him talking about Carl Williams and all the boys,” Yoshimura said.

“It is the real story of the guy’s everyday life in his home behind that gigantic wall and house … it is a real-life Sopranos.

“The only thing off limits is his intimate family life.”

Gatto’s agent, Max Markson, said: “The success of Underbelly has been phenomenal and The Sopranos was so successful, so it should be a hit.

“Mick is a fascinating character, and people find him very interesting.

“It is pure speculation to what it will become. If it got off the table, great, but it is still in early development.”

Source: News.com.au

The Nine Network, together with production company Screentime, announced that filming will commence tomorrow on Infiltration, the second telemovie in the new Underbelly Files.

Based on the best-selling book of the same name by former Victoria Police detective Colin McLaren, Infiltration recounts McLaren’s time as an undercover operative who, together with a female colleague, infiltrated the N’Drangheta – the Calabrian mafia –  based in Griffith in NSW.

Posing as a dodgy art dealer, McLaren and his partner risked their lives daily as they ingratiated themselves with their targets, becoming trusted friends and business acquaintances.

Fresh from his stellar performance in the critically lauded feature film Animal Kingdom, Sullivan Stapleton stars as the charismatic McLaren, a man who befriended those he knew he must ultimately betray. Additional key cast include Jessica Napier, Valentino del Toro, Buddy Dannoun, Henry Nixon and Totti Goldsmith.

“Nine is excited to be working with Screentime again on Infiltration, the second telemovie in the Underbelly Files,” Nine Network’s Head of Drama, Jo Horsburgh, said.

“At Nine we are proud to be the home of high-quality drama. The Underbelly franchise has become synonymous with outstanding performances, uncovering new talent and telling some of the most intriguing true crime stories in Australian history.”

Screentime’s Executive Director, Des Monaghan, said: “With Infiltration, we have a real-life tale of nail-biting suspense which lays bare the moral dilemmas faced by anybody who has ever been forced to lead a double life.”

Infiltration will be shot on location in and around Melbourne, directed by Grant Brown and produced by Peter Gawler and Elisa Argenzio, from a screenplay by Graeme Koetsveld. Des Monaghan, Jo Horsburgh and Screentime’s Head of Drama, Greg Haddrick, will be the executive producers.

The Underbelly Files depict three separate, true-life stories inspired by crimes that splashed across the nation’s front pages and captured the public’s ongoing interest. The first telemovie in the trilogy, Tell Them Lucifer Was Here, which finished shooting on Friday (July 9), recounts the cold-blooded murder of Victoria Police officers Rod Miller and Gary Silk.

The third film, The Man Who Got Away, is the story of British-Australian drug smuggler David McMillan and his incredible escape from Bangkok’s notorious “Bangkok Hilton” jail.