Newcomers Elias Anton and Ben Kindon are playing the leads in Barracuda, the 4-part Matchbox Pictures drama for ABC directed by Rob Connolly.
The ABC revealed the casts and storylines of its 2016 adult dramas, all previously commissioned and announced, at its upfronts presentation on Tuesday night.
The broadcaster confirmed a third season of Matchbox Pictures’ Nowhere Boys and announced two animated series. Planet 55 Studios’ sci-fi/adventure Prisoner Zero follows teen heroes Tag and Gem and their mysterious friend Prisoner Zero.
Stark Production’s The Deep is the saga of the Nekton family who encounter leviathans swimming through sunken cities, modern day pirates lurking amidst floating black markets and mysterious guardians who conceal long lost secrets.
The teen-targeted slate also includes Ambience Entertainment’s Tomorrow, When the War Began, based on the novels by John Marsden.
In Barracuda, Anton plays Danny Kelly, a Melbourne teenager who yearns for a gold medal in swimming at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Matt Nable plays his coach with Kindon as his rival teammate.
Blake Ayshford and Belinda Chayko wrote the screenplay adapted from the Christos Tsiolkas novel. The cast includes Rachel Griffiths, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Andrew Creer, Victoria Haralabidou, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Joel Lok and Rhys Mitchell.
Indigenous sci-fi drama Cleverman stars Game of Thrones’ Iain Glen, The Missing’s Frances O’Connor, Deborah Mailman and Hunter Page-Lochard. The producers are Australia’s Goalpost Pictures Australia and New Zealand’s Pukeko Pictures, in association with Sundance TV and Red Arrow International.
In the second season of Screentime’s Janet King, Janet is handpicked by a nervous government to head a Royal Commission into the surge in recent shootings. A shocking reveal brings Janet’s world crashing in as she faces legal proceedings of a deeply personal nature. The scripts are by Greg Haddrick, Niki Aken, Stuart Page and Felicity Packard; directors are Peter Andrikidis, Grant Brown and Ian Watson.
Season 2 of Playmaker Media’s The Code stars Anthony LaPaglia as Roth, a crook who runs a hidden online bazaar of illicit weapons, drugs and dangerous ideas, drawing Jesse (Ashley Zukerman) and Ned (Dan Spielman) into his dark world. Also starring are Adele Perovic, Sigrid Thornton, Robyn Malcolm, Ella Scott Lynch and Ben Oxenbould. Shelley Birse is the creator/writer and Shawn Seet directs.
Craig McLachlan returns as the brilliant police surgeon in the fourth series of December Media’s The Doctor Blake Mysteries to find further intriguing complications at the police station. As others wonder what is in store romantically for Blake and his housekeeper Jean (Nadine Garner), the sudden arrival of a mysterious figure from his past threatens his world. The cast includes Rodger Corser, Charlie Cousins, John Wood, Anna McGahan, Joel Tobeck and Cate Wolfe.
The series is written by Stuart Page, Peter McTighe, Paul Oliver, Chelsea Cassio and Sarah Lambert, directed by Declan Eames, Fiona Banks, John Hartley and Ian Barr.
Richard Roxburgh’s Cleaver Greene crashes back to earth, literally and metaphorically, when he’s propelled through the window of a one-time mentor, now powerful criminal-on-the-run, in the fourth series of Essential Media and Entertainment’s Rake. Fleeing revenge, Cleaver hightails it to a quiet country town but before long is chased back to Sin City, which has become a dark placed marked by terrorist threats and a loss of faith in authority. The writers are Peter Duncan and Andrew Knight, with Duncan, Peter Salmon and Rowan Woods directing.
After three telemovies, Jack Irish (Guy Pearce) features in Essential Media’s six-part series. Jack is hired to find a missing person, only to be later framed for his murder. An alibi turns up out of the blue in the form of an alluring but unnerving sculptor named Sarah Longmore (Claudia Karvan), who is searching for her missing sister Tina (Brooke Satchwell). The writers are Andrew Knight, Matt Cameron and Andrew Anastasios; Kieran Darcy- Smith, Mark Joffe and Daniel Nettheim are directing.