Mystery Road: From auteur film to prime time TV

Producers David Jowsey and Greer Simpkin talk about transforming Ivan Sen's arthouse Westerns into ABC's hit series.
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Imagine you’re a television producer and you’ve pent years of your life (and the usual buckets of sweat and tears) making a quality drama series for the ABC. It’s about to broadcast in the prime time Sunday night slot and you’re holding your breath hoping Australian viewers will switch on and stay watching. Then your heart sinks when you realise you’re in competition with the country’s most disgraced politician, giving a much publicised interview on a rival network. 

Imagine the relief then for Mystery Road producers David Jowsey and Greer Simpkin when they realised audiences had fully embraced their work, which premiered its first two episodes on Sunday night (3 June) from 8.30pm to 10.30pm. There was a metropolitan audience of around 800,000, and an Australia-wide audience of 1.2 million viewers. That’s one in 20 Australians who tuned in to the outback murder mystery series, choosing it over Masterchef, and political dirt.

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Rochelle Siemienowicz is the ArtsHub Group's Education and Career Editor. She was previously a journalist for Screenhub and is a writer, film critic and cultural commentator with a PhD in Australian cinema. She was the co-host of Australia's longest-running film podcast 'Hell is for Hyphenates' and has written a memoir, Fallen, published by Affirm Press. Her second book, Double Happiness, a novel, will be published by Midnight Sun in 2024. Instagram: @Rochelle_Rochelle Twitter: @Milan2Pinsk