New TV series: ‘Postcard Bandit' shows life of WA bank robber Brenden Abbott currently shooting in Fremantle
Abbott is currently serving time in Casuarina Prison for crimes he committed more than three decades ago.
Based on Australian Outlaw — The True Story of Postcard Bandit Brenden Abbott by Derek Pedley, the as-yet-unnamed series, coming to Binge and starring George Mason as Abbott, will mark the second time the convicted robber's story has been told on the small screen, following a 2003 TV movie starring Tom Long.
'We're thrilled to have cameras now rolling in WA where the story started nearly 40 years ago,' Lana Greenhalgh, executive producer and director of scripted originals Foxtel Group, said.
Abbott became a household name in the 1980s after committing a string of bank robberies and successfully evading police.
He is reported to have stolen and hidden millions of dollars, and was dubbed the Postcard Bandit by police, due to postcards he sent law enforcement while on the run.
Abbott was eventually arrested, convicted and successfully escaped custody twice.
With the exception of inmates convicted of murder, Abbott is currently the longest serving prisoner in Australia and will be eligible for parole in 2026.
The production, a scripted series of six one-hour episodes, is shooting in and around Fremantle, with cameras spotted filming around the periphery of the old Fremantle Prison on Monday.
The series, described as a 'propulsive, high-octane, 1980/90s crime drama' sports a stellar lead cast, with Robyn Malcolm (The Survivors), Ashleigh Cummings (Citadel), and Keiynan Lonsdale (Swift Street) joining Mason in pivotal roles.
The ensemble cast includes David Howell (Narrow Road to the Deep North), Mia Artemis (Sweet Tooth), Christian Byers (Bump), Roxie Mohebbi (He Had It Coming), Oscar Redding (The Twelve), Anthony Hayes (Mystery Road) and Jayden Popik (Mystery Road).
According to Screenwest, the series is expected to attract a spend of more than $7 million into the WA economy, and the production will employ at least 80 West Australian crew and 80 WA cast with speaking roles, as well as 400 extras.
'The production shows the growing momentum in our screen industry and reinforces our growing reputation as a destination for high-quality screen production,' Screenwest chief executive Rikki Lea Bestall said.
Ben Young (Hounds of Love, The Twelve) and Bonnie Moir (Exposure, Love Me,) are directing, with Young also serving as executive producer.
Hamish Lewis, head of scripted at WBITVP Australia said: 'We're pumped to be back in Western Australia working with Foxtel and Screenwest again.
'This is a truly incredible story, too good not to be told.
'It's the story of extreme resilience, determination and family — with a wild backdrop of 80s and 90s Australia.'
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Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘I'm glad I'm starting again': Eryn Jean Norvill on finding herself at 40
This story is part of the July 27 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories. Eryn Jean Norvill is no stranger to taking a stand. Throughout her stage career, she has advocated for actors' rights, especially women, and approached her roles with a depth that has earned her critical acclaim. Now, as she takes on her first major TV project, she's even advocating for a dead woman, albeit a fictional one. 'Playing a female victim is something I had a lot of queries about,' Norvill, 40, says of her role in The Twelve: Cape Rock Killer, the third season of thecrime drama series. 'I had all the questions. Is it nuanced? Is it smart? Is it saying the things we want it to say about victimhood in the world right now?' In The Twelve, Norvill plays Amanda Taylor, an English teacher turned wannabe crime author who is murdered while researching a book about the alleged homicide of two young women in 1968. The Sydney-born actor was determined to get the part right, which included asking tough questions of director Madeleine Gottlieb and writer Sarah L. Walker. 'Madeleine and Sarah had all the answers for me, and were open to me having big opinions on what I needed the role to be in order to play a woman who is killed,' says Norvill. 'Playing Amanda gave me the opportunity to activate her agency every step of the way. She is an incredibly strong woman, but learning that a strong woman can be a victim as well is very confronting.' Another drawcard for Norvill is her co-stars, who include Danielle Cormack and series lead Sam Neill. Norvill says Neill was great company on the four-month shoot in Perth, the pair debriefing over burger lunches and beach walks. 'I was grateful to have Sam knock on my door and ask me to get a bite to eat and check in while filming,' she says. 'He is a very generous person. It was a real highlight to hang with him and hear about his life.' Switching mediums in midlife is an emerging theme for actors; Neill, for example, got his start in film. Norvill says she is relishing her break from the stage – 'I have loved coming into a new medium mid-career' – while acknowledging that it will inevitably call her back at some point. Before The Twelve, Norvill had only had a few small TV parts, including in Home and Away (2010), Preppers (2021) and It's Fine, I'm Fine (2022). The switch to television is proving therapeutic for Norvill, whose theatre career was at times consumed as much by what happened off stage as on it. In 2017, she reluctantly became a household name when she made a private complaint about actor Geoffrey Rush to the Sydney Theatre Company, alleging he behaved inappropriately towards her during a 2015 production of King Lear. Details of the complaint, which Rush denied, leaked to Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper. He sued the paper for defamation and was awarded $2.87 million in damages (Norvill was subpoenaed to give evidence at the trial). It's an episode she doesn't wish to relive, or discuss. However, it spurred her to join with her friend Sophie Ross to launch the not-for-profit organisation Safe Theatres Australia with the aim of highlighting sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying in the workplace, and making theatre and the arts a safe place. Norvill says the organisation 'really activated my politics and made me aware of social activism and how that has always been a big part of my life. I got that side from both of my parents, and I was really proud of that achievement. It felt impossible to do, but it was successful.' 'Being in London is allowing me to be curious about what sort of person I am and what is meaningful to me again.' Eryn Jean Norvill, actor Norvill has since stepped back from the day-to-day running of Safe Theatres Australia 'because I felt I needed some space from that kind of work to do some personal healing and processing'. Part of that stepping back – and moving on – has been a temporary shift to London, where she has been working through a process of finding out who she is again, making new friends and leaning into the unknown. 'I know I won't be here forever,' she says of the UK. 'Australia makes incredible art – we have a courage I don't recognise in many other places. But I didn't expect to be starting again at my age, essentially asking myself why, what for, and is it meaningful. 'I wish I was told more about this as a kid – that in this business there are lots of starts and ends, and it will never stop throughout your life.' Norvill is Zooming from the London flat she shares with Australian musician Georgia Mooney (from Sydney outfit All Our Exes Live in Texas), the pair on a similar journey of seeing what might come their way. She is also dog-sitting, spinning her camera to show me a curled-up ball of fur by her side. 'We have a piano in the home and Georgia plays it a lot,' Norvill adds. 'And we go to a lot of gigs together.' Born in Sydney, Norvill recalls her teen years in Malabar, a seaside suburb in Sydney's south-east, including snorkelling at nearby Long Bay, where the MV Malabar was shipwrecked in 1931. 'I'd find pieces of crockery that belonged to the ship all the time,' she says. Unlike the gentrified suburb it is today, the Malabar of Norvill's childhood had a grittiness she holds dear. 'There's a sewage works, a rifle range, the beach, a golf course, cliffs and Long Bay Jail. The inmates would run a nursery every year, and we'd buy trees and play soccer with them.' Her mother, Anita, taught child studies at TAFE, while her dad, Greg, was a marathon runner and engineer who also turned his hand to home renovation. She has an older brother, Ben, with both siblings equally drawn to the arts. 'Ben plays the five-string bass,' says Norvill. 'He is annoyingly talented and loves prog-rock.' Despite growing up in Sydney, Norvill graduated from Melbourne's Victorian College of the Arts and built her name starring in productions for both the Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company, including The Picture of Dorian Gray (before Sarah Snook took over the role), Three Sisters, All My Sons, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. Prior to the defamation saga, Norvill had co-written, co-directed and starred in Niche with her best friend Emily Tomlins, the sci-fi thriller garnering rave reviews for their company, Elbow Room. 'I am lucky to have my long-time collaborator and friend Emily with me in life,' Norvill says. 'We have always made things together, and Niche is something we spent five years creating. It was incredibly vulnerable and hard; a hyper-feminist piece in which I grew up a lot and got to trust myself as a female maker.' Trusting other female makers is a large part of what drew Norvill to The Twelve. Still, arriving at a career juncture like this comes with plenty of self-doubt and big questions, but Norvill is learning to trust the process. The Twelve has helped her see things differently, too. 'I am actually glad that I am at the point in my life where I have to start again,' she says. 'I think it's because I have had a lot of stop-starts in my career.' In 2019, Norvill went with her brother Ben to Download Festival in Sydney to see UK heavy metal band Judas Priest perform. 'Everyone I met there was so sweet and gentle,' she says. 'I had beautiful conversations, which I haven't had at a festival before. I felt like I got a warm hug from the crowd that day. Who would have thought a metal crowd is where I'd be?' Loading Norvill's curiosity for life has seen her dabble in drawing cartoons, which she does to relax and distract herself from acting. 'Being in London is allowing me to be curious about what sort of person I am and what is meaningful to me again,' she says. 'Finding out what I'm like at 40 feels weird, but I'm reminded that I'm lucky to have deep friendships, a moral circumference, good taste and boundaries – because these people in my life reflect that back in me.'
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
‘I'm glad I'm starting again': Eryn Jean Norvill on finding herself at 40
This story is part of the July 27 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories. Eryn Jean Norvill is no stranger to taking a stand. Throughout her stage career, she has advocated for actors' rights, especially women, and approached her roles with a depth that has earned her critical acclaim. Now, as she takes on her first major TV project, she's even advocating for a dead woman, albeit a fictional one. 'Playing a female victim is something I had a lot of queries about,' Norvill, 40, says of her role in The Twelve: Cape Rock Killer, the third season of thecrime drama series. 'I had all the questions. Is it nuanced? Is it smart? Is it saying the things we want it to say about victimhood in the world right now?' In The Twelve, Norvill plays Amanda Taylor, an English teacher turned wannabe crime author who is murdered while researching a book about the alleged homicide of two young women in 1968. The Sydney-born actor was determined to get the part right, which included asking tough questions of director Madeleine Gottlieb and writer Sarah L. Walker. 'Madeleine and Sarah had all the answers for me, and were open to me having big opinions on what I needed the role to be in order to play a woman who is killed,' says Norvill. 'Playing Amanda gave me the opportunity to activate her agency every step of the way. She is an incredibly strong woman, but learning that a strong woman can be a victim as well is very confronting.' Another drawcard for Norvill is her co-stars, who include Danielle Cormack and series lead Sam Neill. Norvill says Neill was great company on the four-month shoot in Perth, the pair debriefing over burger lunches and beach walks. 'I was grateful to have Sam knock on my door and ask me to get a bite to eat and check in while filming,' she says. 'He is a very generous person. It was a real highlight to hang with him and hear about his life.' Switching mediums in midlife is an emerging theme for actors; Neill, for example, got his start in film. Norvill says she is relishing her break from the stage – 'I have loved coming into a new medium mid-career' – while acknowledging that it will inevitably call her back at some point. Before The Twelve, Norvill had only had a few small TV parts, including in Home and Away (2010), Preppers (2021) and It's Fine, I'm Fine (2022). The switch to television is proving therapeutic for Norvill, whose theatre career was at times consumed as much by what happened off stage as on it. In 2017, she reluctantly became a household name when she made a private complaint about actor Geoffrey Rush to the Sydney Theatre Company, alleging he behaved inappropriately towards her during a 2015 production of King Lear. Details of the complaint, which Rush denied, leaked to Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper. He sued the paper for defamation and was awarded $2.87 million in damages (Norvill was subpoenaed to give evidence at the trial). It's an episode she doesn't wish to relive, or discuss. However, it spurred her to join with her friend Sophie Ross to launch the not-for-profit organisation Safe Theatres Australia with the aim of highlighting sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying in the workplace, and making theatre and the arts a safe place. Norvill says the organisation 'really activated my politics and made me aware of social activism and how that has always been a big part of my life. I got that side from both of my parents, and I was really proud of that achievement. It felt impossible to do, but it was successful.' 'Being in London is allowing me to be curious about what sort of person I am and what is meaningful to me again.' Eryn Jean Norvill, actor Norvill has since stepped back from the day-to-day running of Safe Theatres Australia 'because I felt I needed some space from that kind of work to do some personal healing and processing'. Part of that stepping back – and moving on – has been a temporary shift to London, where she has been working through a process of finding out who she is again, making new friends and leaning into the unknown. 'I know I won't be here forever,' she says of the UK. 'Australia makes incredible art – we have a courage I don't recognise in many other places. But I didn't expect to be starting again at my age, essentially asking myself why, what for, and is it meaningful. 'I wish I was told more about this as a kid – that in this business there are lots of starts and ends, and it will never stop throughout your life.' Norvill is Zooming from the London flat she shares with Australian musician Georgia Mooney (from Sydney outfit All Our Exes Live in Texas), the pair on a similar journey of seeing what might come their way. She is also dog-sitting, spinning her camera to show me a curled-up ball of fur by her side. 'We have a piano in the home and Georgia plays it a lot,' Norvill adds. 'And we go to a lot of gigs together.' Born in Sydney, Norvill recalls her teen years in Malabar, a seaside suburb in Sydney's south-east, including snorkelling at nearby Long Bay, where the MV Malabar was shipwrecked in 1931. 'I'd find pieces of crockery that belonged to the ship all the time,' she says. Unlike the gentrified suburb it is today, the Malabar of Norvill's childhood had a grittiness she holds dear. 'There's a sewage works, a rifle range, the beach, a golf course, cliffs and Long Bay Jail. The inmates would run a nursery every year, and we'd buy trees and play soccer with them.' Her mother, Anita, taught child studies at TAFE, while her dad, Greg, was a marathon runner and engineer who also turned his hand to home renovation. She has an older brother, Ben, with both siblings equally drawn to the arts. 'Ben plays the five-string bass,' says Norvill. 'He is annoyingly talented and loves prog-rock.' Despite growing up in Sydney, Norvill graduated from Melbourne's Victorian College of the Arts and built her name starring in productions for both the Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company, including The Picture of Dorian Gray (before Sarah Snook took over the role), Three Sisters, All My Sons, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. Prior to the defamation saga, Norvill had co-written, co-directed and starred in Niche with her best friend Emily Tomlins, the sci-fi thriller garnering rave reviews for their company, Elbow Room. 'I am lucky to have my long-time collaborator and friend Emily with me in life,' Norvill says. 'We have always made things together, and Niche is something we spent five years creating. It was incredibly vulnerable and hard; a hyper-feminist piece in which I grew up a lot and got to trust myself as a female maker.' Trusting other female makers is a large part of what drew Norvill to The Twelve. Still, arriving at a career juncture like this comes with plenty of self-doubt and big questions, but Norvill is learning to trust the process. The Twelve has helped her see things differently, too. 'I am actually glad that I am at the point in my life where I have to start again,' she says. 'I think it's because I have had a lot of stop-starts in my career.' In 2019, Norvill went with her brother Ben to Download Festival in Sydney to see UK heavy metal band Judas Priest perform. 'Everyone I met there was so sweet and gentle,' she says. 'I had beautiful conversations, which I haven't had at a festival before. I felt like I got a warm hug from the crowd that day. Who would have thought a metal crowd is where I'd be?' Loading Norvill's curiosity for life has seen her dabble in drawing cartoons, which she does to relax and distract herself from acting. 'Being in London is allowing me to be curious about what sort of person I am and what is meaningful to me again,' she says. 'Finding out what I'm like at 40 feels weird, but I'm reminded that I'm lucky to have deep friendships, a moral circumference, good taste and boundaries – because these people in my life reflect that back in me.'
ABC News
6 days ago
- ABC News
Comedian Mark Humphries tackles housing crisis in documentary Sold! Who Broke the Australian Dream?
"If a D-grade celebrity like me can't afford to buy a home, who can?" It's a cracking first line from satirical wit and sometime ABC star Mark Humphries in his surprisingly jolly rage against the housing crisis, SOLD! Who Broke the Australian Dream? Fast Facts about Sold! Who Broke the Australian Dream What: A tragicomic documentary about the housing crisis Directed by: Mark Humphries Starring: Humphries, Alan Kohler, Purple Pingers and more When: Streaming on Binge now Likely to make you feel: Mad as hell, unless you already own ten houses Not that the Binge documentary, directed by Bill Code, is all about him. A huge swath of Australians, young and old, believe they'll be forever renters. Many who have managed to claw their way onto the lowest rungs of the property ladder are struggling to pay their mortgage. But it wasn't always this way. As bubble-bath-bound financial journalist Alan Kohler (they couldn't afford Margot Robbie) explains in the doco, everything changed in 1999. That's when former prime minister John Howard heavily discounted capital gains tax and ramped up negative gearing, with house prices spiralling ever upwards since. "Howard once said, 'No-one ever complained to me about the value of their house going up,' and that's the issue," Humphries says. "Owners outnumber renters two-to-one. And if you're a politician, you're obviously going to appeal to the majority." Especially when that majority includes roughly 65 per cent of our elected politicians who own at least two properties, with both Labor's Michelle Ananda-Rajah and the LNP's Karen Andrews having seven each. "You want to believe that those people are still capable of recognising the problem and seeing what they have to do," Humphries says. "But it's very hard to imagine change occurring when it's in so many people's best interests to keep things as they are. "But what sort of a system is that? It's grotesque." From The Feed on SBS to The Chaser's War on the ABC and The Project on Network 10, Humphries and regular co-writer Evan Williams have carved sterling careers out of channelling their indignance at injustice into snort-inducing comedy. "The reality is, people don't want to hear you ranting for over 52 minutes," Humphries says. "It's not appealing, so you try to help the medicine go down. But it's coming from a true place of anger." So, what does he believe is the cure for the housing crisis? It's complicated, but Humphries says course-correcting on capital gains and negative gearing is key. Former Labor leader Bill Shorten pops up in Sold! to defend his election-losing policies on that front (plus his democracy sausage-eating skills). "He was a good sport," Humphries says. As is Humphries' dad, former weatherman Allan. "My love of TV was probably a result of going and seeing him at the ABC studios when I was seven," Humphries says. "He did a great job considering he's used to adlibbing, rather than sticking to a script. Sold! also features Jordan van den Lamb — AKA Purple Pingers — the prominent (especially on social media) housing rights activist who also ran on a senate ticket for the Socialist Party in Victoria. "One of the things I really admire about him is that, although there is clearly seething rage underneath what he does, he has this ironic delivery that's so dry." Van den Lamb gleefully takes pot shots at greedy landlords and homes left purposefully vacant. "That really opened my eyes," Humphries says. "It's easy to be critical of someone because they're living in someone else's space. But isn't it more grotesque to have a house that's designed to house people and choose not to and just let it increase in value?" In Melbourne alone, 97,000 properties are vacant, with around 37,000 people homeless. Vast stocks of public housing were sold off in a fire sale lit by former PM Robert Menzies in 1956. And then there's the bogeyman finger-wagging at foreign buyers, who only account for 1 per cent of property purchases, according to the AFR. "The political answer is always, 'Supply, supply, supply,' but we might actually have a good chunk of that supply already there. We're just not using it," says Humphries. "The other thing is, if you're going to increase supply but still have these tax incentives in place, a big chunk will just be eaten up by investors. So how much do you really achieve?" There seems to be little political will to do what must be done to restore faith in the Australian dream. "It's been 25 years since those tax changes came in and this attitude of housing as something that increases in value, of investments and property portfolios," Humphries says. "People have forgotten that it's weird. That this wasn't how it used to be." Maybe things will change again. "I'm choosing to be hopeful because it's unsustainable," Humphries says. "Maybe it has to get worse before it gets better, but when we start seeing issues with social cohesion, and have situations where companies are under-staffed because no-one can live close enough to work, then the shit really hits the fan." Essential workers like nurses deserve to be able to afford a home of their own that's close to their work, Humphries says. Then, just as we're wrapping up, he confesses, full disclosure, that he has, in fact, managed to buy a home since filming Sold! "Don't hate me," he whelps. "I've just crossed the threshold, anxiously observing interest rate levels, but at what cost? I've completely wiped myself out, signing up for a 30-year mortgage at 39." He insists he's keeping it real (estate). "I want people like me not to forget that it's still f***ing shit and it shouldn't be this f***ing hard," he insists. "You should easily be able to afford a home and have money spare to buy an almond latte a day and dumb stuff like a Labubu."
