This was published 1 year ago
Fisk a global hit on Netflix as Aussie TV shows win over the world
By Karl Quinn
Kitty Flanagan’s brown-hued legal comedy, Fisk, has become one of the top 10 shows on Netflix globally in its second week on the platform.
In its first week on the streaming service, season one of the comedy about a newly divorced lawyer who takes a job at a shabby suburban firm specialising in the least glamorous aspects of the business hit the top 10 in seven countries.
Kitty Flanagan as Helen Tudor-Fisk in the surprise global hit Fisk.Credit: ABC
Season two of the ABC-commissioned show is now available on iview.
In its second week, Fisk crept onto the list thanks to adding a top 10 placement in the US, Kenya, Sri Lanka and South Africa, in addition to a second week in the top 10 in Argentina, Canada, Uruguay, Ireland, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
It was the No.1 show in its second week in Australia and New Zealand, and currently sits at No.2, behind the global No.1, the Oxycontin drama series, Painkiller.
“I think stunned is the best word to describe how I’m feeling about it. Absolutely stunned,” said Flanagan, who co-created the show with producer Vincent Sheehan, co-writes it with sister Penny, and co-directs it with Tom Peterson.
“As a natural-born pessimist, I keep waiting for someone to say, ‘I’m sorry, there’s been a terrible mistake. These figures aren’t for Fisk, they’re actually for a new dating show called Frisk where contestants dress up as cops and hope to find love by patting down strangers in the street.’ I mean, come on, who wouldn’t watch that?”
But Fisk is far from the only local show making waves in foreign territories.
On Wednesday, Amazon revealed its drama series, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, had recorded the biggest opening weekend viewership globally for any Australian original launched on its Prime Video platform.
“The series has reached the top five in 78 countries, and top three in 42 countries, since launching on Friday, August 4,” a spokesperson for the company said.
Tilda Cobham-Hervey and Alyla Browne in The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart.Credit: Hugh Stewart
“The series is officially Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes currently at 80 per cent, with an audience score of 95 per cent, as well as receiving an 8.1/10 score on IMDb.”
A month earlier, the service had another home-grown hit with Deadloch, which was the No.1 show in Australia and New Zealand for several weeks, and hit the top 10 in the US (where it was the No.4 series), UK (No.3), Canada (No.5), South Africa, Ireland, Spain and France.
Disney+ also had a hit with its first Australian drama commission, The Clearing, an eight-part series inspired by the true-life Melbourne cult, The Family.
Though the platform has not released any official figures, net traffic monitor Parrot Analytics claims that, over the past 30 days, “audience demand for The Clearing is 7.1 times the demand of the average TV series in the United States”. That puts it in the top 8.6 per cent of all shows in that market.
Miranda Otto in the Disney+ series The Clearing.Credit: Disney
In terms of drama, Parrot claims the series “has higher demand than 95.8 per cent of all drama titles in the United States”.
Other territories where it has performed especially strongly include Brazil, the UK and Russia, where demand was running at a factor of 8.4 times the average TV series over the past month, putting it into the “outstanding” band.
Logies star Colin From Accounts, meanwhile, was the most popular comedy launch of the year on the BBC, outperforming local efforts.
It is also on Amazon’s streaming services in France, Germany and Central Europe. Sources suggest a US sale for Foxtel’s most successful local drama or comedy ever is imminent.
Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, creators and stars of Colin From Accounts.
And of course, Bluey continues to sweep all before it, having racked up 21.1 million minutes of streaming time in 2022 in the US alone.
What makes this wave of success so gratifying for local producers is that it comes with content that is so definably and defiantly Australian.
“When you try to shape a show to be appealing to a broader foreign audience, that’s when mediocrity takes over,” says Fisk producer Vincent Sheehan.
“The specificity of stories of place and culture, and an original comedic voice like Kitty’s, is what makes them interesting.
“That’s not new,” he adds. “What is new is that the streamers are willing to put those shows out there.”
Contact the author at kquinn@theage.com.au, follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin, and read more of his work here.
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