![]() I think when a narrative has as complex a set of strands, sharing out the thing often creates problems. Just write like a novelist or a playwright would write.' I wanted to truly make it my own for the first time in a 40-year career. "I thought, 'I've got the time and I'd rather not share it with other people. "This is such a passion project for me that I didn't want to do the writers' room," says Lee. Credit:įor Lee, having autonomy over the dialogue was paramount. Hermione Norris and Tom Dalzell in Between Two Worlds. ![]() Seven's head of drama and the series' executive producer, Julie McGauran, agrees that it "looks different to any other drama we've seen for a long time", and feels confident that it can compete in the international market. We're all expected to be on our best behaviour, and watching people behaving badly could be quite cathartic."Īs with A Place to Call Home, which was ignored by local industry awards, yet a critical and commercial hit in the US, there is some expectation that international viewers may have more appreciation for Between Two Worlds. You can delight in bitchy characters and people behaving badly. This sounds more of a 1980s melodrama – that sort of Dynasty big soap, with people slapping each other across the face. A Place to Call Home was very much in that mode – a sort of 1950s melodrama. ![]() Australians are very good at camp in a lot of ways, even though we don't necessarily think about ourselves in that way. The clothing is over-the-top and the emotions are real but they're exaggerated, and there's an element of camp to that. Melodrama has always been about excessive emotions. "Maybe as it wears on, they'll be looking for arch melodramatic escapism which is meaner. "In the pandemic moment, a lot of people are looking for warm escapism," Arrow explains. The addictive, teasing plotlines, cinematic production quality and extravagant views of Sydney, inside and out, might offer exactly what the COVID-hit nation, and indeed the world, wants.īrett Climo and Marta Dusseldorp in A Place To Call Home. Originally expected to premiere in 2019, and then, to coincide with Seven's coverage of the cancelled 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Between Two Worlds will perhaps now air at a time that is right for the viewership mood. Then in 2018, the soon-to-be-outgoing Seven chief Tim Worner made, as Lee puts it, the "ballsy call" for the network to "bankroll the whole thing". Negotiations between Seven and an unnamed overseas investor to produce the current version fell over in 2016 due to disagreements over the budget. A 2014 draft titled "Fearless" was rejected. The multimillion-dollar project, which neither Lee nor Seven will put an exact figure on, has been a long time coming. I guess I've taken all my old tropes and, at the end of my career, I've had them all dance with each other to form a whole new ballet." I don't think it's ever been done before. People say, 'We've got to have one genre', and I wanted to technically see if I could have these two shows exist together. You could have two pilots for two totally different shows. "With Between Two Worlds, I created this hybrid where two shows start in the same hour of television. Lavishly produced, it's a complex tale of sex and lies, manipulation, grand betrayal and revenge, with, at its heart, the suggestion of an unlikely redemption.Īfter 40 years catering to a more conventional Australian television concept of drama ( All Saints, headLand, Always Greener, Packed to the Rafters and even, to an extent, epic period drama A Place to Call Home), Lee has produced the kind of high drama we're more used to seeing in an American setting (think Desperate Housewives or Melrose Place). These are the polar opposite worlds that Bevan Lee, Australian most prolific drama series creator, has built to collide in what the 69-year-old writer considers may be his swansong.īilled by the Seven Network, home of all Lee's series, as his "most compelling and powerful work yet", Between Two Worlds, featuring Australian theatre star Philip Quast and Cold Feet's Hermione Norris, is also arguably his most ambitious. Across town, a widow dotes on her shy daughter and rising football star son, before heading to work as a kindergarten teacher. ![]() In a penthouse styled in monochrome, a wicked billionaire and his serially unfaithful trophy wife trade barbs. ![]()
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