By Karl Quinn

Erin Patterson cooked lunch for four guests, three of whom later died. She has denied any wrongdoing.Credit: Artwork by Stephen Kiprillis

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There are many things yet to be revealed about the tragic mushroom-lunch deaths in Leongatha. But the one near-certainty about the case that has gripped the nation is that someone is already turning their mind to how, when, and in what form it can be told as a TV drama.

“Are there producers already working out ways to pitch it,” ponders Rick Maier, head of drama and executive production at Network Ten. “Very probably.”

“This mushroom story … it’s really interesting,” says screenwriter Justin Monjo, who has more experience than just about anyone else in the country in crafting TV drama from true-life stories.

“I suspect people are following the events in Leongatha really closely,” says Nine’s head of drama, Andy Ryan. “It’s a tragedy, make no mistake, and it’s gripped the imagination, but it’s still unfolding.”

Death cap mushrooms are believed to have been the cause of death of three people in Leongatha.Credit: iStock

And that, all three agree, makes it almost impossible to tell as drama … for now, at least.

Great stories ripped from the headlines are the stuff of Australian TV drama, and fall roughly into three buckets: the biopic (Molly, Brock, Olivia); the major cultural event (Beaconsfield, Bodyline or Heroes’ Mountain, about the 1997 Thredbo landslide); or true crime.

There’s a good chance this week’s story about the four surfing mates who became lost at sea is on some TV executive’s under-consideration list already, and a dramatised telling of the 2021 abduction of Cleo Smith might have been pitched too (though the roasting former WA Premier Mark McGowan received for suggesting such a thing the day she was safely recovered may be a deterrent for any broadcaster inclined to consider it).

“Many true stories that have captivated the nation lend themselves to dramatisation, whether it be for their extraordinary nature, intriguing characters, contemporary relevance or the emotional and visceral connection we have towards them,” says Seven’s head of drama, Julie McGauran.

Lincoln Younes as John Ibrahim in Last King of the Cross.

But it is true crime that has consistently been the most popular with audiences and programmers alike, giving us Informer 3838, The Last King of the Cross, Australian Gangster, the Melissa Caddick miniseries Underbelly Vanishing Act and so many more in the past few years alone.

“Audiences love it,” says Monjo of the true crime genre. “And networks love it because it has a built-in audience, and you can promote it, and that’s what they’re always looking for in TV, some sort of built-in audience that they can guarantee.”

“True stories have the added value of market awareness,” agrees Maier. “That can be very important in a crowded space.”

But true stories also involve real people, and that comes with significant risk, both moral and legal.

“As a producer, telling these stories with sensitivity and respect is always front of mind,” says McGauran.

“You have to be acutely aware that real people are going to be swept up in the story you’re telling,” adds Nine’s Ryan. “You have to treat that with respect and integrity.”

Where the subject is true crime, there can be major issues around subjudice, depending on the stage of the legal process a case is at. Nine (which owns this masthead) ran into major issues with its original Underbelly series back in 2008 while more recently Seven had to delay Australian Gangster by a couple of years as a result of delays in a case coming to trial.

Sometimes the risk can come from a minor character who is far from the centre of the narrative. “You’ve got to be really careful about the third spear carrier from the left,” says Ryan. “That’s the one you don’t see coming, and that’s the one who will stitch you up.”

Instagangster: Alexander Bertrand (centre) as Pasquale Barbaro in Australian Gangster.Credit: Seven

All of these factors will no doubt come into play if and when someone does try to dramatise the mushroom story. But to even begin that process, a producer (or producers – it is in the nature of these things that multiple versions often rush into production at the same time, though not all will see the light of day) will need to secure the life story rights of a player in the drama.

In the case of a true crime story – and it is by no means yet clear if that is what the Leongatha case is – that might mean a victim, a survivor or a detective involved in it. That will offer the production a point of view, vitally important in attempting to frame a complex story.

But how soon is too soon to tell a story like this?

Nine came in for heavy criticism for rushing its biopic Warnie into production less than a year after Shane Warne’s death. But its streaming stablemate Stan also copped some blowback on social media over Bali 2002, which aired 20 years after the terrorist attacks that left 202 people, including 88 Australians, dead. And it was 25 years between the Port Arthur massacre and Justin Kurzel’s movie Nitram. For some people, no amount of time is sufficient to allow some stories to be dramatised.

Saskia Archer, Elizabeth Cullen, Sophia Forrest and Sri Ayu Jati Kartika in a scene from Bali 2002.Credit: Tony Mott/Stan

But if there is no hard and fast answer to the question how soon is too soon, everyone spoken to for this story was of the view that the events in Leongatha are simply not translatable yet.

“It’s not a story because at this point no one knows what really happened, even though it has a lot of people engaged and interested,” says Maier. “Could it be told safely? Maybe, once the facts are known. Could it be told advantageously? Maybe, but maybe never.”

“I could write a fictional story about it today,” says Monjo. “But, you know, whatever the outcome is, three people have died and another has been made very sick. That’s real.”

Whatever conclusions people might have drawn, the woman at the centre of the story still has the right to be presumed innocent. If criminal charges are eventually laid, the possibility of dramatising the story becomes more real. But if they are not, it becomes far more distant, because the risk remains that charges might be laid at some point down the track, which would make screening any drama highly problematic.

Even if all the pieces do fall into place to allow the story to be told, the question remains: should it?

“I don’t buy into the public’s-right-to-know argument – this is drama, not journalism,” says Ten’s Maier. “But I do understand that if something is written about, tweeted about, podcasted about and generally well covered in other media there’s a reasonable view that it can be dramatised, providing you feel there is a story worth telling that may add some insight.

“That said, if a story doesn’t help us understand the human condition, or elevate discussion, then you may stop and question if it needs to be told at all.”

Nine’s Ryan says a big news story may help with the marketing of a related drama, “but there’s no point in just serving up the story people already know, we have to give them some greater insight”.

Research is critical, says Monjo, to try to understand the story in all its complexity. That might mean speaking with the key players – in the mushroom case, that could include the ex-husband and the woman herself – because to tell a true story well you need to tell it with as much fidelity to the facts as possible.

“Often you get people who say, ‘Oh, we’re doing a drama, we’re not doing a documentary’. And I go, ‘Well, we’re not doing a drama – we’re doing a dramatisation of a real event, and we have to respect that as much as we can’.”

Sure, much if not all, of the dialogue will be imagined, and some characters will be combined for the sake of narrative clarity, and timelines might be compressed. But, Monjo says, “you try not to make shit up”.

“This is the most important event in the lives of many of the people involved,” he says. “We have to do as much as we can to respect that.”

Contact the author at [email protected], follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin, and read more of his work here.

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