If there's a motto by which Australia's most senior TV executives live and die, it's that you can never have too much of a good thing.
Either that or it's "whatever we did that just worked, let's do it again – until it stops working".
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More Aussie biopics on the way
Emboldened by the success of recent mini-series and telemovies about famous Australians, several more forays into hagio-biography have been announced.
Emboldened by the success of a spate of recent mini-series and telemovies about famous Australians – many of them now conveniently dead, and thus significantly less likely to sue – Seven this week announced it has several more forays into hagio-biography in the works.
On the schedule for 2017 are telegenic takes on the life stories of Paul Hogan, Olivia Newton-John, Shane Warne and – sitting slightly outside the model of the medium feeding on itself – dodgy NSW copper Roger Rogerson. Though given it is a belated sequel to the 1995 ABC series Blue Murder, you might argue Blue Murder: Cop Killer, again starring Richard Roxburgh, actually doesn't.
What the other free-to-air networks have in store will be revealed soon enough, as they hold their own "upfronts" – in which they reveal the highlights of their forward schedule – over the next week or so. But only a fool would bet against a few more biopics of the famous, the infamous, the fabulous and/or the fatuous.
The reason is simple: for the most part they rate.
Ten's two-parter on the late racing car driver Peter Brock wasn't wildly successful – the second episode drew just 526,000 viewers in the five mainland capitals, a drop of 300,000 on its first episode – but generally speaking the genre has struck a chord with TV audiences.
Matt Le Nevez won good notices as Peter Brock, but Ten's drama couldn't keep up the pace in its final lap.
And because these are Australian stories, and high-end productions at that, they serve another purpose – they help the commercial networks acquit their Australian content obligations.
In the world of reality programming, the success of MasterChef spawned a generation of cooking shows – many of which have flamed out, but one of which, My Kitchen Rules, has become the master of its domain. But identifying the Patient Zero of the fixation on the famous is a little trickier.
Back in 2007, Foxtel screened the very good biopic The King, with Stephen Curry winning an AFI (now AACTA) best actor award for his performance as Graham Kennedy.
First look: Ryan Corr, Josh Lawson as Paul Hogan and Justine Clark in Hoges.
In 2010, Richard Roxburgh starred as celebrity PM Bob Hawke in Ten's Hawke, with Rachael Blake as Hazel and Asher Keddie as Blanche d'Alpuget.
But it was the following year's Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo that really opened the floodgates on this sub-genre, proving that it wasn't just people in the media who were interested in people in the media – so long as those people were larger-than-life characters like Kerry Packer (Rob Carlton) and Ita Buttrose (Asher Keddie again).
Nine immediately began plundering its own history and mythology for stories: the birth of World Series Cricket (Howzat!, 2012); the multi-generational enmity between the Packer and Murdoch families (Power Games: The Packer-Murdoch Story, 2013); the battle between Nene King (Mandy McElhinney) and Dulcie Boling (Rachel Griffiths) for supremacy in the women's magazine market (Paper Giants: Magazine Wars, 2013).
But Nine also got schooled in the perils of telling stories about people who are still alive – especially people with very deep pockets – when Gina Rinehart did her damnedest to derail its House of Hancock (2015) by claiming it was defamatory.
Much safer, then, to stick with the dead.
True, Molly Meldrum hasn't yet shuffled off this mortal coil, but Seven's coverage of his latest fall in Thailand earlier this year coincided spookily with it airing its miniseries Molly, starring Samuel Johnson.
Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo starred Rob Carlton as Kerry Packer and Asher Keddie as Ita Buttrose.
So what lies in store? Seven's Hoges: The Paul Hogan Story will star Josh Lawson as Hogan, Ryan Corr as John "Strop" Cornell and Justine Clarke as the first Mrs Hogan, Noelene. The fact it is co-written by Marieke Hardy, produced by the experienced and talented Jo Porter (Wentworth, Wonderland, the forthcoming Picnic at Hanging Rock miniseries) and it's not on Nine all suggest it might be suitably irreverent. Here's hoping.
There's no casting details on the Olivia Newton-John biopic, which is from the same team as Hoges, but you have to wonder if anyone will be brave enough to shine a light into whatever dark corners might lurk around St Livvie. We'll see.
Warnie, you might imagine, is nothing but dark corners. Again, there's reason to be hopeful since it's on Seven, not Nine, where Shane Warne has been a fixture for years. But he's still alive, so how far can they go before they risk trashing his reputation? Oh wait: he's already done that. No holds barred, then.
We know Nine has an Alan Bond story in the works; it began filming in secret back in May. He once owned the network, buying it at a premium before selling it back to Kerry Packer at a massive loss, prompting Packer to utter the famous line: "You only get one Alan Bond in your life, and I've just had mine". It's reasonable to think this won't be a kid-gloves exercise.
We'll know soon enough what's in the pipeline. But while we're waiting, here's a few famous Aussies we reckon might be worth the treatment.
A few Aussie biopics we'd like to see
Steve Irwin
Pro: He's dead. Con: All that animal wrangling can get mighty tricky.
Kylie Minogue
Pro: Everyone loves her. Con: Everyone loves her.
Can Kylie be far away from the biopic treatment? Photo: Steven Siewert
Bert Newton
Pro: Fascinating character; who doesn't want to catch a glimpse of the dark side of the moonface? Con: Lawyers.
Errol Flynn
Pro: One of our first major exports to Hollywood, was as big as they got, swung both ways. Con: Who?
The Bali 9
Pro: High-stakes drama, crime, punishment, redemption. Con: How much sympathy does middle Australia have for drug runners?
Gough Whitlam
Pro: A towering figure, in every sense. Funny. Arrogant. Brilliant. Hubristic. Con: Forty years is a long time in politics. Did The Dismissal (1983) say it all?
The biopics: a selective history
The King (2007) Graham Kennedy
Hawke (2010) Bob Hawke
Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo (2011) Ita Buttrose and Kerry Packer
Howzat!: Kerry Packer's War (2012) World Series Cricket
Power Games: The Packer-Murdoch Story (2013) Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer
Paper Giants: Magazine Wars (2013) Nene King, Dulcie Boling, Kerry Packer
Never Tear Us Apart: The Untold Story of INXS (2014) Michael Hutchence
Carlotta (2014) Carlotta
Mary: The Making of a Princess (2015) Princess Mary
House of Hancock (2015) Gina Rinehart, Lang Hancock
Peter Allen – Not the Boy Next Door (2015) Peter Allen, Liza Minnelli
Molly (2016) Molly Meldrum
Brock (2016) Peter Brock
Karl Quinn is on facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin
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