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.