Bad wigs, salacious romps and lawyers: Australia’s obsession with biopics

Dodgy wigs and a tsunami of social media outrage aside, the greatest revelation about the Warnie series was how little there was left to reveal about the cricketer.

And that’s despite the very obvious disclaimer at the start of the series alerting viewers that “some characters and events” had been “fictionalised”.

Alex Williams stars as Shane Warne in the two-part biopic miniseries Warnie.Credit: Nine

From the “sexting” and diet pill scandals to his long-suffering ex-wife Simone and the over-exposed relationship with British bombshell Liz Hurley, nothing on the small screen was ever going to compare with what we witnessed in real life when it came to the too-short life of Shane Warne.

And yet, despite the naysayers, our fascination with Australian celebrity television biopics remains just as strong as it ever was, with over a million people watching on free-to-air and catch-up streaming. By any measure, it was a decent hit in an era of increasingly fragmented television audiences.

Nine, the owner of this masthead, confidently called it “the most-watched new Australian drama of the year”.

Well, there wasn’t much to compete against with so little Australian drama making it to prime-time free-to-air.

Shane Warne (Alex Williams) with Simone Callahan (Marny Kennedy) in happier times.Credit: Nine

According to Alex Williams, the 32-year-old actor (he played Julian Assange in the 2012 film Underground: The Julian Assange Story) who portrayed Warne over a 25-year span of the cricketer’s life, his performance can be broken down into three phases: “There’s early-mullet; mid-mullet; late-mullet. You can sort of date the different eras by the earrings and the Oakleys.”

It was probably the hardest-working mullet on Australian TV this year, but sadly that’s about as deep as the series got in unravelling Warne’s compulsive life. The posthumous narration lurched from one train wreck entirely of his own making to the next – all in a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, she’ll be right tone.

In real life, Australia loved Warne and forgave him. Again and again.

But Warne’s family may not be as forgiving when it comes to their reception of the show. Daughter Brooke called it “beyond disrespectful”, and former wife Simone Callahan slammed it as “mean-spirited”.

Callahan and Warne’s children did not take up an offer by Nine to see the series before it went to air, but his father Keith and brother did, and for the most part, there has been little negative reaction from the extended family since the series aired.

Australia’s track record when it comes to TV “event” biopics has a chequered history.

Back in 2017, Eileen Bond told me she was so underwhelmed with the much-hyped House of Bond mini-series that she “walked out after 10 minutes”.

Collingwood president Jeffrey Browne with the real Eileen “Red” Bond in 2018; (right) Actor Adrienne Pickering plays Bond in House of Bond.Credit: Jesse Marlow; Nine

She was married for 37 years to the late Alan Bond, played by Ben Mingay, and had attempted to watch the two-part series with her daughter, Jody, and their legal team. Eileen was played by Adrienne Pickering and, again, the real-life “Red” is far more entertaining than anything that audiences go to see on the small screen.

It’s just one of the many biopics produced for Australian television.

It all started in 2010 when Channel Ten kicked off the biopic trend with its Hawke telemovie. Richard Roxburgh played former prime minister Bob Hawke (in another truly hilarious wig) and Asher Keddie was lover Blanche d’Alpuget, the pair of them engaging in some truly hysterical romps.

Richard Roxburgh as Bob Hawke.Credit: Ten

For many years the various Underbelly series proved to be a big hit and, while that franchise may have run out of steam, the John Ibrahim-inspired series King Of The Cross has just been renewed for a second series on the global streaming platform Paramount+.

We’ve seen everyone from Ita Buttrose and Kerry Packer immortalised in the magnificent Paper Giants on ABC to Peter Allen: Not The Boy Next Door being visited by the ghost of Judy Garland on the Seven Network.

Paper Giants: Rob Carlton as Kerry Packer and Asher Keddie as Ita Buttrose in the TV mini-series.Credit: ABC

Huge audiences tuned in to watch Seven’s Never Tear Us Apart: The Untold Story of INXS which managed to bolster the band’s archival music sales.

A House of Hancock publicity shot.Credit: Channel Nine

Delta Goodrem attempted to transform into Olivia Newton-John in Hopelessly Devoted To You, with mixed results, while Samuel Johnson completely disappeared into the character of Molly Meldrum for Molly.

Paul Hogan got similar treatment in Hoges (yes, that one featured another truly dreadful wig), but it offered little insight into the performer – unlike Stephen Curry’s much darker portrayal of Graham Kennedy in The King or the struggles of Helen Reddy as played by Tilda Cobham-Hervey in I Am Woman.

Not all of these projects go quite so well, especially when the subject material is still very much alive, and very wealthy.

Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart made sure 2015’s hit TV mini-series House of Hancock would not be broadcast or streamed again after Channel 9 apologised for its portrayal of mining magnate Gina Rinehart and her family.

Billionaire Rinehart sued Channel Nine and production company Cordell Jigsaw over the two-part series for injurious falsehood and misleading and deceptive conduct.

Before reaching a settlement, Rinehart was seeking damages and a permanent injunction to prevent the program and about four minutes of cuts from being broadcast again. She also wanted an injunction preventing the DVD copy of the program from being advertised as a “true story”.

Unimpressed: Gina Rinehart.Credit: Eddie Jim

During an earlier hearing, the court heard Rinehart wanted to argue details such as her weight, whether her father Lang Hancock cheated at tennis and the colour of her mother Hope Hancock’s hair.

“This case was not about money,” said a statement on Rinehart’s behalf following the settlement.

“It was about Mrs Rinehart standing up for her deeply loved family members to try to stop the further spreading of unfair and grossly disgraceful falsehoods about her family, especially when certain of her family members are no longer here able to defend themselves.”

Sadly, we will never know if Shane Warne feels the same way.