TasWeekend: Kettering Incident creator Vicki Madden channels Tasmanian gothic

THRILLED with the local talent and seductive scenery, the cast and crew of The Kettering Incident believe their new series can thrust Tasmania onto the scene as a prime filming location.

THE Kettering Incident is still shrouded in so much secrecy that not even the cast know exactly how it ends. At a recent media screening in Hobart of the first two episodes of the Tasmanian shot series, cast members were still trying to piece it together.

Most of them had not even seen a completed episode. “They told us hardly anything,” Tasmanian-born actor Alison Whyte says.

“After we finished filming we were saying to each other, ‘But what actually happened in the end?’ As characters, we were left totally in the dark about our arcs and journeys. It was quite deliberate. It was mysterious to the end, even for us.” This tactic was so intentional, in fact, that series creator, writer and showrunner Vicki Madden says she ensured the climactic sections of the script for the final episode were redacted on most copies. People were briefed on a need-to-know basis.

“We did actually have a spoiler leak early in filming,” Madden says. “We were about to start work on episode three when one of the actors came into the meeting and said they had heard something about what was going to happen to their character. I was absolutely furious. From that day on, not even the directors knew the big picture of the story. I kept it very secret.”

The Kettering Incident, which premieres on Monday, is the biggest TV production ever shot in Tasmania, representing a huge financial commitment from Foxtel, Screen Australia and Screen Tasmania. A uniquely Tasmanian story – part mystery drama, part supernatural thriller – it was filmed entirely in the state and features many local cast and crew, making it a vital showcase of the quality of television we are capable of creating.

Filmed in the gloomy gothic style of so-called Scandinavian-noir dramas such as The Bridge and The Killing, the eight-episode series was shot in southern Tasmania in 2014, with locations including Bruny Island, Mountain River and the titular town of Kettering.

Mountain River and Sleeping Beauty are among the moody locations featured in The Kettering Incident. Picture: BEN KING

It is the story of Anna Macy (Elizabeth Debicki), who left Kettering after the disappearance of her childhood friend. Now a doctor in London, Anna has returned home — under equally mysterious circumstances — and finds the locals have not forgotten what happened 15 years ago, and still treat her with suspicion.

Adding to the mystery are strange lights in the sky on the night of the girl’s disappearance and a second disappearance, shortly after Anna’s return.

The series stars Matt Le Nevez as detective Brian Dutch, and Henry Nixon as kind-hearted cop Fergus McFadden, but Debicki carries the show.

This story relies heavily on building and maintaining a persistent sense of mystery and suspense, giving the audience only little pieces of the puzzle at a time, much as the cast and crew were left to discover the story.

“As well as guarding against spoilers getting out, the other reason for telling the cast very little was to make sure the character [development] was driven by the actors,” Madden says. “It isn’t important that they know where their character is going, as long as they know who that character is and what they want, their desires and needs.

“The best actors in the world, if they know where they’re going, can lose a bit of that desperation. And that’s like real life: we don’t know where we’re going so [we] have to deal with things as they happen.” Madden says the tactic gave the actors great ownership of their characters and intensified their connections with them. “Matt Le Nevez said to me at one point that after reading each script he just wanted to spend time on his own and work out what was going on in Dutch’s head. He said he could feel the pain coming through and was worried about him,” she says.

Detective Brian Dutch, played by Matthew Le Nevez, at the country police station. Picture: BEN KING

“And Anthony Phelan [who plays Anna’s father] was getting so concerned about Anna, Elizabeth’s character, it was quite touching. He said to me once how worried he was about her, he asked me why his character was the way he was and we talked it through. It was a fascinating process.” There is a bit of Madden’s life experience manifesting in The Kettering Incident as well. Now living at Newstead in Launceston, Madden grew up at Rushy Lagoon in Tasmania’s North-East, where her mother worked as a cook for jackaroos on a farming property.

A single parent, Madden’s mother was forced to move around a lot looking for work, resulting in what Madden refers to as a “very fluid lifestyle” full of long road trips across the state, always discovering new towns and places.

“There are lots of images I remember from childhood that have become very influential,” she says. “One of those was Kettering, the first time we drove into that town with the harbour. Being from the hot, dusty North-East, that place looked like paradise to me as a child.

“Seeing the darker side of life when I was younger also influenced me to enjoy those kinds of things, like fairytales that are darker. Red Riding Hood is a big influence in the opening scenes of the show.

“Whenever I talk about growing up in Tassie, I feel the noirish gothicness of the place. I’m attracted to that. For me, Tasmania represented a clannish tribal way of life in a way, where the people of the town run the town. That was very true where I grew up. When decisions needed to be made there were town meetings with the heads of the families present. All of that has been distilled into The Kettering Incident.” Madden and her mother moved to Victoria when Madden was 17 and, apart from a brief return to Hobart for a few months as a young woman, it was the last time she lived in her home state until just a few years ago. After channelling her love of writing into working in the Channel Ten newsroom, she decided she didn’t have the aggression she needed to become a journalist.

Whenever I talk about growing up in Tassie, I feel the noirish gothicness of the place. I’m attracted to that

When one of her colleagues left to work for iconic Australian TV production company Crawfords, Madden applied for a job there as well.

In 1989, she started working with Crawfords in the scriptwriting section, where she worked on The Flying Doctors. The string of screenwriting credits that followed included Heartbreak High, Water Rats, Stingers, McLeod’s Daughters and Blue Heelers.

She later moved to the UK, where she worked on The Bill, then to Ireland where she was series producer and scriptwriter for popular drama The Clinic.

It was while living in Ireland she got homesick and started wondering if the same kind of production could be made in her home state.

“The whole time I worked on The Clinic I was studying it and realising how similar Ireland was to Tasmania in many ways, a little island separated by a stretch of water from the main body of the creative world,” she says.

“I think we all get called home at some point in our lives — that was mine.

I came back briefly in 2009, went away again, and then came back home in 2011 again, and that time I decided to stay in Launceston.” But having spent so long away from her home state, Madden felt like a stranger in her own land. Despite her achievements overseas, she still felt like “that little girl from Rushy Lagoon” in the presence of her family friends. She had not kept in touch with any of her school friends from Launceston.

“I had no real base because we moved around so much,” she says. “I realised I didn’t belong here anymore. It was a devastating thing. I had a three-month meltdown after moving home, thinking, ‘What have I done?’ “People were disconnected from me and I was from them – even my mum to some degree. So, being a writer, I started trying to capture that and put my finger on it. That was the formation of Anna Macy.

Elizabeth Debicki stars as a woman who returns to her home town 15 years after her friend mysteriously disappeared. Picture: FOXTEL

“That is why the biggest thematic baseline in The Kettering Incident became one of people feeling isolated but trapped in their small home town. Anna wanting to belong to the town where she grew up, but the hostility she experiences, highlights that desperate loneliness of having nowhere to call home.” As she channelled her feelings of alienation into her writing, Madden also kept in touch with Screen Tasmania, making sure they knew she was living locally again and still creating. Fortunately for her, it was about this time producer Vincent Sheehan was in Tasmania shooting feature film The Hunter, starring Willem Dafoe. Sheehan had fallen madly in love with Tasmania during that project and was keen to do something else here, so when he approached Screen Tasmania asking what other possible projects were waiting in the wings, Madden’s name came up.

“Vincent had been back to Tasmania after The Hunter, looking for something else he could do here, but he found it was very hard trying to get anywhere without a local beside him. Without that insider knowledge and connection, people sort of close down, they won’t talk,” Madden says. “So he was asking Screen Tasmania if there was anyone creative around who he could work with on a new project and they said, ‘Well, as it so happens, there is someone’.

Kettering Incident producer Vincent Sheehan and writer Vicki Madden in Kettering in 2014. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

“He came to visit me, we went out for lunch and he asked me, ‘What sort of stuff do you like?’ and it all took off from there.” The Tasmanian landscape is an essential ingredient in the story and Madden says the visual style of the show was clear in her mind as she was writing. Sheehan shared her vision and, with the help of talented cinematographer Ari Wegner, they created a distinctive visual style. The desaturated gloom perfectly reflects the Scandi-noir vibe Madden had in mind, and is contrasted in places with a gothic fairytale look.

“Ari read my first two scripts and then spent a couple of weeks in south-east Tassie with a small crew, looking for images like the ones I’d described,” Madden says.

“She put together a mood board and when she showed it to me I found it very emotional. She had captured my childhood memories perfectly, right down to these dollops of light coming down through the trees to the forest floor and those puddles of reddish water. She called those puddles ‘Kettering blood’ and that was when I knew I’d fallen in love with her. It tied in perfectly with the song Crimson and Clover, which is used throughout the series. It’s my mother’s favourite song and it’s also very haunting, nostalgic and melancholy, which is exactly the mood I wanted for the series.” With her vision so perfectly realised on the screen, Madden is immensely proud of The Kettering Incident and is satisfied that Foxtel, the major investors, are every bit as thrilled with the end product.

One of the many scenic filming locations for The Kettering Incident. Picture: BEN KING

A second season will depend on the success of season one but Madden is hopeful she will get the chance to revisit the inhabitants of her highly stylised “Kettering District”.

It is a view shared by everyone involved. The interstate cast members are united in their soaring praise for Tasmania, both as a filming location and as a place in general.

“We had a great time,” actor Damien Garvey says. “We were all brought in from places like Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne and so we all landed together in this place we’d never been to and bonded over it really quickly.

“It was a really good experience making this show, not only because we were going to these fantastic locations, but we also had this really great script where everybody had a very important part to play.

“We all felt like we were very lucky to be here. That’s very different from filming something in Melbourne or Sydney where you’re just driving down the road, going to work. This was an adventure.

“It’s such a unique situation. Filming in Tasmnania is rare, but I don’t think it will be rare for long. I think that’s going to change.” Even for Whyte, who grew up here, filming in Tasmania was a first.

“And I’ve been doing this for a while,” she says. “So it was fabulous to be down here working in my home state.

“And Tassie looks magnificent in this story. This place definitely has its own distinct mood and feel, not only to do with its history but also just that it is so ancient. This show captures that. But it’s Tassie, how can you not capture that? You get the weather, the vastness, the wilderness, all of it.”

For local Hobart actors Brad Kannegiesser and Katie Robertson, it was an exciting experience. “It feels like the beginning of something big, because we have so many talented professionals here, ready to go, but they just need the opportunities,” Robertson says.

HOW CAN I WATCH IT? The Kettering Incident will be screening exclusively on Foxtel’s Showcase channel, so if you want to experience it for yourself, you will need to be a subscriber. And with the show premiering on Monday night, you don’t have much time to get organised. So if you’re keen, here is the simplest way to get set up to watch. The quickest and cheapest option is to sign up for Foxtel’s online streaming service, Foxtel Play, all you need is a high speed internet connection. Signing up online gives you instant access to start streaming content to your smart TV, tablet, computer or smart phone and if you sign up now, the first two weeks are free. After that, it will cost $45 per month to subscribe, but with no lock-in contract, you are free to cancel at any time. When you sign up you will need to pick one starter genre pack, at $25 per month, plus the Premium Movies and Drama pack, which includes Showcase, for a further $20 per month. That means it will cost you $90 to watch The Kettering Incident in its entirety. By doing so, you will be supporting the Tasmanian film and TV industry and bolstering the case for a second season. Visit www.foxtel.com.au/foxtelplay/index.html

Kannegiesser also hopes it’s the beginning of ongoing work in the state. “People are starting to discover this is such a great place to film,” he says. “With the scenery, the talent, the crew, everything, the word is getting out. And this show really is something pretty special – I can’t wait for it to get out there.”

Leading man Le Nevez is especially glowing in his praise for the show and its setting. “It is rare as an actor to be given a script that surprises you from scene to scene — you’re usually a step ahead,” he says. “I’ve never seen a more inspired read-through than the ones we had on Wednesday mornings with each new script. It stands alone, it is unique.

“And I think that is relevant to this state itself. Reading this story was a gift for all of us; bold and majestic, a most beautiful experience.

Tasmania doesn’t have to compare itself to the mainland. It is unique in its energy, its people and its storytelling.” With ABC series Rosehaven in production in Tasmania and feature film Lion recently filming here, Madden is confident our film and television industry is poised to grow.

“A lot of the cast and crew from Kettering are now working on Rosehaven, which is wonderful because it means they are still working, they have been able to move from one production to the next,” she says. “Not everything made here will be as big as The Kettering Incident but they don’t all need to be, as long as there is something happening which keeps people employed in the sector, to keep that spark alive.”

The Kettering Incident premieres on Monday, at 8.30pm, on Foxtel’s Showcase channel.

UFO incidents

There is a point early on in The Kettering Incident where you will hear the frantic mayday transmission from a ship in peril.

If parts of the dialogue sound hauntingly familiar, that is because it is based closely on the final radio transmission from pilot Frederick Valentich, who disappeared in 1978 while flying over Bass Strait.

In his final transmission Valentich said he was being followed by a strange metallic aircraft with bright lights. Moments before loud metallic scraping noises were heard and radio contact was lost, he said “it’s not an aircraft.”

The Kettering Incident writer/creator Vicki Madden says the reference to Valentich in her script was a deliberate homage to a UFO case that has intrigued her for many years.

UFOs are a prominent motif throughout the series, and while this aspect lends a deliciously eerie paranormal edge to the series, it is also based on a real event.

A shiny dome-shaped object was reported to have landed in a clearing at Little Oyster Cove near Kettering in 1976, leaving a scorched circle of grass where it landed.

A 39-year-old man said he woke at night to see what he thought was a plane coming down nearby. Thinking it was a crash, he rushed to the area to find a dome-shaped object with bright lights glowing from its windows standing on the ground.

He described watching it for about seven minutes before it took off with a loud whirring sound and disappeared into the night sky with increasing speed.

Tasmania has long been something of a hotspot for UFO sightings, and southern Tasmania in particular, and Madden says she has been fascinated with them all her life.

“My mother is Welsh and I think the Welsh look through a darker lens and are highly superstitious, much like the Irish, very steeped in mythology and fairytales.

“Growing up, my mum wouldn’t step on a crack or walk under a ladder, she took it very seriously, and she was also very open to otherworldly things like UFOs.”

And Madden has had a strange experience of her own.

“When I was young, mum was driving me home from boarding school in Launceston one weekend, and we were going along this long dirt road on the way to our property at Rushy Lagoon, in complete darkness and open countryside.

“We saw this incredible bright light behind a massive group of trees. We couldn’t see what it was. We slowed down and watched for a while, we felt really scared. It was too high off the ground to be a four-wheel drive and too low to be a helicopter. And it was just sort of hovering there.

“So mum put her foot on it and we went home in a real hurry! We were both very shaken by it and I still have no idea what it was.”

Madden says something that has always charmed her about Tasmania — and something which is referenced in the TV series — is the casual acceptance among so many Tasmanians of strange things in the sky.

“It’s quite amazing that in Tassie you can sit around with other people and talk about UFOs and that sort of thing and someone might pipe up and say ‘I’ve had an experience like that, too!’ and it’s not considered to be that weird,” she laughs. “I kind of like that.”