‘Who’s got control here?’ Yoson An and Rachel Griffiths star in ‘Dead Lucky’. Image supplied.
Think of the word ‘showrunner’ and it conjures a particularly American vision: the Golden Age of television with Matthew Wiener masterminding Mad Men, the Duffer brothers breaking out Stranger Things or Donald Glover’s unclassifiable Atlanta. But last year, when a pair of youngish Australian writer-producers, Drew Proffitt and Ellie Beaumont, announced the launch of their new production company, Subtext Pictures, and declared themselves to be the showrunners of a four-part crime thriller, Dead Lucky (premiering at Series Mania at ACMI on 22 July and then screening on SBS from 25 July), it was clear what they wanted to say: We’re making premium television for a global market, and we have creative control.
