'The right team. The right time.' How The Killings at Parrish Station stuck to their creative guns
Screen Australia PodcastShow Notes
Horror is having a moment, and so is creator Ben Jenkins with the recent release of the cosmic horror, crime drama The Killings at Parrish Station. Like creators of horror hits across the globe like Get Out, Weapons, Talk to Me, and more recently Obsession and Backrooms, Jenkins started in comedy. "Horrible things sometimes happen to quite funny people. […] People are naturally funny, even when bad things are happening to them," hey says. "And that, to me, is drama."
He credits the collaborative and improvisational nature of his sketch comedy past with shaping production of the series, instilling confidence to back the concept and landing the right market fit with Stan and ITV. Jenkins shares the development and delivery of the series from its ideation in Soviet urban myths and working with Helium and Stan, to building a shared creative vision with director Daniel Nettheim, writers Tim Pye, Catherine Smyth-McMullen and Yolanda Ramke, as well as leading cast Mia Wasikowska, Heather Mitchel, Xavier Samuel, Robert Taylor, Alan Dale and Doris Younane. The series investigates the gruesome murder of four scientists in a remote Australian desert research station. Set across the original mystery in 1987 and the fallout of a potential copycat spree killer decades later, Detectives Georgia Cooke (Wasikowska and Mitchell) and Michael Thorne (Samuel and Taylor) grapple with the uncanny mystery that threatens their families, careers and sanity. The Killings at Parrish Station is available now on Stan.
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