PETER Gawler has been the driving force behind the Underbelly franchise, the latest series of which, Squizzy Taylor, is screening on Nine.
The Underbelly series has proven wildly successful with audiences. Why do Australians seemingly love crime drama more than any other genre?
Underbelly is true crime drama, not crime fiction. I think people have a natural fascination for what really happened, particularly if they can relate to the story in some way – “I remember when Jason Moran was murdered”, “My dad used to point out the house where Squizzy was shot” or “We used to go the Cross and dance in that club John Ibrahim owned” and so on.
What was the attraction to Squizzy Taylor for this series?
When I was a kid growing up in Melbourne in the 60s, boys with the surname “Taylor” were still nicknamed “Squizzy”. He was part of our culture; the game little crook who died in a shoot-out with a bloke who had once been his mate. When former policeman-turned-author Colin McLaren suggested it as an Underbelly, and in the light of the success of another period Underbelly, Razor, we were off and running!
Is there a near inexhaustible supply of material for Underbelly or is it getting harder to find stories that can sustain a whole series? What makes a good Underbelly series?
No, there is a finite supply of suitable stories. As you can imagine, we have looked at many different stories in the six years since we made the original series, and for many reasons – often legal, sometimes logistical, sometimes because they just do not conform to the kind of dramatic and narrative shape we feel works best for an 8-13 part series – we have moved on. One thing we have discovered is that these true crime dramas often play out over 10 years or so; a criminal enterprise is born, crooks start making serious money and/or committing serious violence to protect their turf; the police reaction is generally too slow and under-resourced, the violence starts to impact on the public, politicians weigh in, police are eventually given more resources, and the crooks are finally shut down.
Some critics claim Underbelly can be loose with the facts to help the narrative. What is your response to this claim?
We are not making documentaries for the History Channel. Our brief from Channel Nine is to produce entertaining dramas for the broadest audience possible. Having said that, it is always our mission to find the truth of the characters involved and the
events depicted. But real life is often messy, impenetrable and ridiculous, and as dramatists our job is to try and unscramble and make narrative sense of it. We often run into situations where no two people can agree on the facts of a particular incident.
It has also been criticised for gratuitous sex and violence, although this series has been criticised for not enough of either. How do you find the right balance?
It is not a formula, we are not making a cake. We tackle sex, violence, drugs and bad language on a story-by-story, subject-by-subject, basis. It is a fact that many crooks have strong business links to the sex industry and/or strong predilections in that direction. So that is what we show. It is also a fact that in the criminal underworld violence is frequently used as a dispute resolution mechanism. And – bugger me – bad language is generally the lingua franca! That is the Underbelly world, and if it offends I guess the answer is do not watch.
Screentime and Nine have exhausted the allowance for the Producer Offset Scheme and the 20 per cent tax rebate. What does this mean for future Underbelly series?
As the situation stands, there can be no more Underbellies, sadly.
NICK LEYS – The Australian – August 05, 2013