Q+A

New Zealand drama After the Party is a six-parter from Lingo Pictures and Luminous Beast for TVNZ that has also aired on ABC in Australia and Channel 4 in the UK, generating plenty of online buzz and binge-viewing, says Lingo MD Helen Bowden.

Name of the show: After the Party

Running length/eps: 6×60’

Short Logline: Acclaimed drama from New Zealand about a woman who loses everything when she accuses her husband of an awful crime and nobody believes her.

C21: What is the elevator pitch for the show?

HB: I’ll be honest, Robyn Malcolm and Dianne Taylor, the creators of After the Party, were angry. They wanted to tell a story that explored the question ‘What does it mean not to be believed?’. It is something women are very familiar with. All our lives we witness women not being believed, we experience not being believed ourselves, particularly when what we say goes against things our family and community hold to be true or when we find ourselves less valued in the world. And yes, it makes us angry.

So they created a story of a couple, where one is beloved and charismatic, the other spiky and contrary. And then they threw a grenade into their relationship. They asked if it is harder to believe someone who is difficult. And when difficult people do difficult things, alienating those who love them, what happens when trust is lost? What happens when you stop trusting yourself? These knotty questions and ‘hot button’ issues snake through After the Party and seem to be keeping the audience hooked.

C21: What makes After the Party unique?

HB: From the moment I first read the pilot I responded to the astonishing voice in the writing. It was somehow both angry and funny. And although the premise is dark, the very real connections between the characters draw you in. In the scripts the bonds between the three generations of women, the female friends, the teachers and students, and the grandparent and toddler all feel so real that you invest deeply in them.

To reinforce that, the director Peter Salmon chose a very naturalistic style for After the Party. He wanted every element to be as naturalistic as we could make it – performance, camera, design, editing and music. It was a style that he and the cinematographer Dave Cameron had been honing over a few projects together and it was perfectly suited to this material. Ultimately, I think the total unity of the story and the style is what makes this show grab hold of the audience in the way that it has.

Also, Wellington… We moved the setting from Dunedin to Wellington for budgetary reasons but the little wooden houses, stacked on top of each other on the steep hills around Wellington Harbour seem almost metaphorical in the story. As does the weather that keeps blowing in from the Antarctic as Penny battles the wind on her bike. It was an incredible place to shoot and audiences are loving this part of the world that they haven’t seen before.

C21: What are the auspices for the show, including key talent, writers, directors and producers?

HB: I grew up in Aotearoa but have been producing drama in Australia for three decades. I love the landscape and the talent and had always wanted to make a show there. Robyn Malcolm had worked on Lingo’s Wake in Fright a few years earlier, so when she and Dianne were looking for a producer, they sent me the pilot and outline. Jason Stephens and I immediately knew we wanted to make it, especially given that Robyn would play the force of nature that is Penny. It just jumped off the page.

However, financing the series out of New Zealand was a huge challenge and it was only thanks to Jacinda Ardern’s Covid rescue package – the Premium Drama Fund – and ITV Studios coming on board, that we could make it work. We then put together a writing team led by Dianne Taylor and were very lucky to get one of New Zealand’s leading novelists, Emily Perkins, on the team along with the very talented script editor, Emily Anderton. I’d worked with Peter Salmon when I was at Matchbox Pictures and thought he would be a perfect fit as director. But when he also came on to produce it with me, we really had a team. Peter had worked a lot with Robyn over the years too and so they had a great relationship.

Robyn Malcolm, having met Peter Mullan on Top of the Lake, agreed to try and get him to come on board to play her ex-husband Phil. It was a hell of a squeeze as he only had a 22-day window from the Lord of the Rings shoot in the UK and he worked on 21 of them with us!

I really could not have been more delighted with the talent behind the camera in Aotearoa, the crews were amazingly astute, responsive and hardworking. And as for the talent in front of the camera, they were just astounding. The two young actors – Tara Canton who plays Grace and Ian Blackburn who plays Ollie – were both still at drama school and needed to get released from class to come to the set. But we were blown away by all the New Zealand cast, many of them living in Wellington.

C21: Who do you see as the audience for the show?

HB: After the Party is aimed very squarely at a female audience of 35+ who like complex stories that are rooted in real life. It’s by women, for women, if you like. And while women are definitely flocking to it, the multi-generational aspects of the story and the gripping narrative seem to have drawn in lots of people outside that demographic too.

It is not since I made The Slap that I’ve had such an intense reaction to a show. From the moment the first episode went out, people started furiously arguing with each other online about our characters’ actions. It’s been sparking the same passion in New Zealand, Australia and now in the UK. The data is in – once people start watching the show, they just can’t stop. The ABC says they have never seen such a fast completion rate for a series since the launch of iView. As a producer, it is an absolute thrill to have such heat around a story you’ve made.