Foxtel orders Tasmania mystery

Australia’s Foxtel has commissioned a mystery drama set in Tasmania from Porchlight Films, with BBC Worldwide handling international distribution.

The Kettering Incident (8×60’), which follows the disappearance of two girls in identical circumstances 15 years apart, is receiving funding from Screen Australia.

The Oz agency has also announced support for various other TV and film projects, including The Secret River (2×90’), which follows an emancipated English convict who stakes a claim on land owned by a clan of Aboriginal people in 1810.

It is based on a Kate Grenville novel and stage play and is being produced by Ruby Entertainment’s Stephen Luby for ABC-TV. ABC Commercial holds the international rights.

Playmaker Media is making Hiding (8×60’), a drama for ABC about a Gold Coast criminal who, with his dysfunctional family, enters witness protection and finds himself in a strange city with a new identity. ITV Global Entertainment is handling international sales.

Also receiving funding is the previously announced Gina (2×120’), bound for Nine Network. The producers are Claudia Karvan, Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder’s Michael Cordell and Paul Bennett.

Finally, Screen Australia is supporting a second season of Luke Jurevicius’s animated children’s show The New Adventures of Figaro Pho, a copro from Oz’s Ambience Entertainment and Canada’s Chocolate Liberation Front for ABC3. ABC Commercial has foreign rights.