The most highly anticipated dramas of 2015 will premiere on the Nine Network over two massive nights, with House of Hancock, the controversial and epic true story of the Hancock dynasty – Sunday, February 8 – and the landmark television event Gallipoli – Monday, February 9.
House of Hancock stars Mandy McElhinney as Gina Rinehart, Sam Neill as Lang Hancock and Peta Sergeant as Rose Lacson. It tells the epic true story of the Hancock dynasty and the bizarre love triangle that emerged between Lang (Neill), his daughter Gina (McElhinney) and his beautiful Filipina housekeeper Rose (Sergeant).
Lang and Gina are inseparable, the perfect team, and Gina is confident she will soon inherit the family business. But their relationship is rocked by a series of tumultuous events.
First, Lang is furious when Gina marries a man old enough to be her father. Then Lang’s beloved wife Hope dies. In an attempt to help her ailing father, Gina employs a new housekeeper to get him back on track, Rose Lacson from the Philippines, not realising this will be a decision that tears their family apart.
Lang is instantly smitten with the vivacious Rose, 37 years younger than the ageing iron ore magnate. Is it real love? Or has the housekeeper snagged the richest man in Australia?
Lang and Rose quickly marry and what follows is an increasingly bitter public feud lasting two decades: filled with forbidden love, murder accusations, drug charges, illegitimate children, court cases and epic betrayal, all played out in the media, and all for Gina to retain control over the staggering Hancock family fortune.
House of Hancock is a two-part mini-series produced for the Nine Network by Michael Cordell, Claudia Karvan and Paul Bennett from Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder.
GALLIPOLI
Gallipoli, a landmark television event, tells the story of 17-year-old Thomas “Tolly” Johnson (rising international star Kodi Smit-McPhee) who lies about his age to join his brother Bevan in the Great War.
Gallipoli is the definitive dramatisation of the bloody Anzac battles against the Turks that did so much to shape the Australian identity 100 years ago.
This seven-part series which covers the entire eight-month campaign is the must-see television event of 2015.
The First Day begins as dawn breaks on April 25, 1915, and Anzac troops go into battle on the beaches of the Gallipoli peninsula. Landing in the dark, Tolly, Bevan and their mates are thrust into the chaos, heartbreak and despair of the doomed campaign that embodied the courage and mateship that forged the Anzac legend.
One month later, in My Friend, The Enemy, we find the young soldiers dug in, struggling to hold their position against unrelenting Turkish attacks. But amidst all the fighting both sides agree to an armistice to bury their dead. They trade gifts, cigarettes and broken conversation, and the Anzacs are confronted with the realisation that the Turkish soldiers are just like them.
Gallipoli also features Harry Greenwood, Lachy Hulme, Matt Nable, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Lincoln Lewis, James Callis, Grant Bowler, Anthony Hayes, Justine Clarke, Damon Gameau, Ashleigh Cummings, Gracie Gilbert, Dan Wyllie, Sam Parsonson, Tom Budge, John Bach, Nicholas Hope and James Stewart, as well as a host of Australia’s most exciting young actors.
Gallipoli is produced for the Nine Network by John Edwards, Imogen Banks and Rob Connolly from Endemol.
Directed by Glendyn Ivin (Beaconsfield, Puberty Blues), with scripts by Christopher Lee (Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War, Paper Giants, Rush, Police Rescue), Gallipoli is inspired by Les Carlyon’s best-selling book of the same name.