Netflix adds to Australian originals with dramas & OneFour rap group documentary

OneFour: Against All Odds

Netflix has commissioned four new Australian originals, including two drama series, a scripted movie and a documentary.

Co-produced by Easy Tiger and Ronde, Desert King tells the story of the world’s largest cattle station, which is left without a clear successor, leading to generational clashes that threaten to tear the Lawson family apart.

Sensing this once great dynasty is in decline, the outback’s most powerful factions – rival cattle barons, desert gangsters, Indigenous elders and billionaire miners – move in for the kill.

The series is created by Tim Lee and Ben Davies, who also exec produces alongside Ian Collie and Rob Gibson.

“We’re thrilled to have assembled an incredible creative team, on and off screen, to do justice to the rarely-seen world, characters and stories of the Top End—a place where timeless meets modern, and where landscape is life and livelihood, but also mortal danger,” said Davies and Gibson.

The Survivors, meanwhile, is a series adaptation of the Jane Harper novel from Tony Ayres Productions.

Fifteen years ago, a terrible storm hit the seaside tourist town of Evelyn Bay and three young people died. Kieran lost his older brother, Finn. Mia lost her best friend, Gabby. Finn’s best friend, Toby, also died. The respective families, the community of friends, and the very town itself, became haunted and defined by these immeasurable losses.

Kieran and Mia coped with their feelings of guilt and culpability by running away. But now, they are back and a new tragedy—the murder of a young woman—forces them to confront the past again with all of its murky secrets.

“Jane Harper’s brilliant novel is a gift to adapt, because its clever murder mystery plot is actually a Trojan horse for a deeper examination of how we live with the wounds that life inflicts on us. It’s about the cost of survival and how that impacts differently on men and women,” said Ayres.

Love Is In The Air

Factual & film

The documentary, OneFour: Against All Odds, follows the true story of a group of Sydney-based, Pacific Islander youngsters who start recording drill raps to avoid a life of crime.

Two years into their meteoric rise, a police task force shuts down their sold-out national tour due to concerns that the group’s music will incite violence.

Directed by Gabriel Gasparinatos, the film is produced by Entropico and Stranger Than Fiction. Sarah Noonan, Erin Moy, Jennifer Peedom and Gasparinatos will produce for debut later this year.

“The story of OneFour is one of the most significant cultural moments in recent Australian history. It’s about the changing face of this country and who gets to have a voice in it,” said Gasparinatos.

Meanwhile, the film Love Is In The Air tells the story of a seaplane pilot flying in the tropics, who finds herself falling for the man sent to sink her business.

Produced by Steve Jaggi and Kelly Son Hing for Jaggi Entertainment and Kylie Pascoe, the cast is led by Delta Goodrem, alongside Joshua Sasse, Steph Tisdell and Roy Billing. Adrian Powers directs and writes alongside Caera Bradshaw and Katharine E. McPhee, and the film will premiere on Netflix on 28 September.