Move over, Liane Moriarty - Australia has a new book-to-screen queen rising

When Sally Hepworth read on her Facebook community group page that The Family Next Door was filming near her house, she just had to take a look. After all, it’s not every day your novel gets turned into a TV series.

But when she got there, the first thing Hepworth noticed was the truck with “prosthetics” written on the side.

Author Sally Hepworth, centre, with actors Bella Heathcote, left, and Teresa Palmer on the set of The Family Next Door.Credit: Jane Zhang

“And I thought, ‘that doesn’t sound like my book. Maybe they’ve changed it and they’ve added some prosthetic limbs. That’s cool. That’s fine’.”

But they hadn’t. It was a different shoot entirely, a horror film, not the domestic thriller set in a bayside Melbourne cul-de-sac that she had written.

She and her boyfriend drove a little further around the bay until they found more vans, and more crew. “I was thinking this has got to be it.” Again, it wasn’t.

She finally found her crew at Beaumaris Lifesaving Club, but by the time she got there she’d lost her nerve.

“I just said to the security guards, ‘Oh, are you filming something down there?’, and they said, ‘Yeah, but no one’s allowed in’. And I went ‘OK’, and started to walk off. I kind of thought ‘the universe says no’. But my boyfriend said, ‘This is Sally Hepworth’. ‘Oh, you can come on in’.”

The Family Next Door is Hepworth’s fifth novel.

Sitting in the lifesaving club at Half Moon Bay with stars Teresa Palmer and Bella Heathcote at her side, it’s clear how delighted Hepworth is to be part of the adaptation – written by Sarah Scheller, co-creator of The Letdown, and directed by Emma The Newsreader Freeman – that will make its way to the ABC next year.

“It’s so special because I was born in Brighton, I’ve lived in Hampton, Sandringham, Black Rock, and now I’m back in Brighton.

The Family Next Door is Hepworth’s fifth novel. She has published 10 so far, one a year since 2014, and collectively they have sold more than two million copies worldwide. Four of them, and one short story, have been optioned for the screen, by uberproducer Bruna Papandrea (Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers) and comedian Amy Poehler, among others.

This one is filming locally because the ABC wants Australian drama, and because the Victorian government, through VicScreen, supported it. But it’s easy to imagine future Hepworth adaptations will be set Stateside, rather than bayside.

Her work has been compared to Liane Moriarty, whose prolific book-to-screen pipeline practically constitutes a genre of its own.

Moriarty, who is a friend, once bristled at being compared with another writer, saying she didn’t want to be “the second-best Maeve Binchy”. But, Hepworth jokes, “I’m fine with being the second-best Liane Moriarty”.

She’s less keen on the term “domestic thriller” to describe the space in which she works. “If I were to give a genre to my books it would be ‘family dysfunctionality with a side serve of murder’.

“It’s long,” she adds with a smile. “I think that’s why it hasn’t taken off.”