Federal election perfect time to release Secret City: Under the Eagle season 2 says producer

An election is a bonus for television executive Penny Chapman. With a federal election looming, timing couldn’t be better for the release of the second season of Foxtel political drama Secret City: Under The Eagle.

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An election is a bonus for television executive Penny Chapman.

With a federal election looming, timing couldn’t be better for the release of the second season of Foxtel political drama Secret City: Under The Eagle.

“An election is an amazing bonus because it focuses people on what is going on in the world in Canberra,” the executive producer told Confidential.

“And Canberra can be a fascinating place, never more so than now with the power of the independents exerting itself left, right and centre.”

Penny Win and Penny Chapman. Picture: Dylan Robinson

Under The Eagle is the second season of the hit drama that returned to Foxtel’s Fox Showcase on March 4. The series tells a fictional story of politicians and their minders and is set in Parliament House in Canberra.

“There is much less party alignment these days,” Chapman said. “And so the whole of this series plays into that.”

Chapman mused that some of the real stories of politicians in parliament would not work on the TV drama.

“Reality is stranger than fiction,” she said. “In fact if we wrote some of these stories, we would be laughed out of town told we were writing a soap.

“So it is really hard to replicate what sometimes goes on in that place. We have looked at those real stories and thought we couldn’t tell that story because it feels too far fetched.”

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Jacki Weaver and Louisa Mignone shoot a scene for Secret City. Picture: Supplied

Anna Torv and Jacki Weaver return to the series that also stars Danielle Cormack, Don Hany, Rob Collins, Sacha Horler, Marcus Graham and Louisa Mignone.

“What we have been trying to do is reach into the humanity and you’ve got to do it with credibility and not with something that just looks like a whole lot of shrieking headlines,” Chapman said.

“It is a most fascinating collection of human behaviour — Parliament House The human dynamics in parliament are so potent.”

Originally published as Federal election perfect time to release Secret City: Under the Eagle season 2 says producer