Helen Bowden also hails significance of Channel 4 buying Kiwi thriller
The producer behind forthcoming Channel 4 Kiwi thriller After The Party has emphasised her intent to create female-centric drama, labelling her strategy a “political act”.
Lingo Pictures-produced After The Party airs on C4 main channel tomorrow (20 November). It centres on Penny Wilding, played by Top of the Lake’s Robyn Malcolm, who loses everything when she accuses her husband – Ozark’s Peter Mullan – of a sex crime against her daughter’s teenage friend and no one believes her.
Penny is a straight-shooter, whether she’s waging graffiti attacks on fishing boats, lecturing teenage boys on how porn will destroy their sex lives or laying her middle-aged body bare for life-drawing artists.
While she is comfortable that her tells-it-like-it-is attitude has won her few friends in her close-knit coastal town of Wellington, it proved problematic when she accused her husband of a sex crime. Now that that he has returned to town, Penny is facing pressure from her daughter to let go of her accusations and move on and must decide on what’s more important: the truth or rebuilding her relationships with the town-folk.
Helen Bowden, Lingo’s co-founder and managing director, said she was drawn to the character of Penny from the moment she read the draft scripts, and similarly Malcolm – who co-created the drama with writer Dianne Taylor – was “committed to playing this character.”
“Often, women have to behave in a certain way to be acceptable [on TV], and Robyn just really wanted to play against that,” Bowden told Broadcast.
“I’m very interested in making female-centric stories, with female creatives and with females in the lead. It’s a political act for me, I’m all for it.”
Sydney-based Lingo, which is part of ITV Studios, has previous had success in the UK with Australian psychological drama The Secrets She Keeps, both series of which were acquired by the BBC, and it is also behind BBC1 comedy Queen of Oz, starring Catherine Tate.
However, Bowden said the Channel 4 deal is a significant one for New Zealand drama (After The Party is for PSB TVNZ), because the country does not have sufficient funding mechanisms to bump scripted series into higher-end brackets and thus is not as heralded as drama from its nearest neighbour.
“To sell a New Zealand show to the UK is still a really big deal,” she added. “And I feel C4 is a really great home for it. Other broadcasters looked at it and were afraid it might be a bit dark, C4 thought it was a great show and we’re not afraid of it.”
After The Party was acquired for C4 by head of acquisitions Polly Scates, who described it as “an important series”.
It is produced by Lingo and Kiwi label Luminous Beast. It is written by Dianne Taylor, Sam Shore, Martha Hardy-Ward and Emily Perkins. Bowden produced alongside Liz DiFiore and Luminous Beast’s Peter Salmon, who also directed. The series was made in association with ITVS, which handled distribution and brokered the C4 deal.
After The Party airs on C4 at 9pm on Wednesday 20 November and will also be available to stream.
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