Dr Damien John O’Meara for Queer Stories in Australian TV Drama, Luke Mazzaferro for Parky and Extra Geography review

For this Out Takes, we featured two interviews and a review that focused on an academic exploration of queer drama in the local television industry and two films featured in the British Film Festival that highlight the diversity on offer in this years program. First up, we spoke with Dr Damien John O’Meara about his new book ‘Queer Stories in Australian TV Drama – Production Culture, Policy, and Distribution’ which examines how such expectations manifest through hidden production processes for queer stories in Australian scripted television. Through analysis of 18 original interviews with Australian television industry professionals, along with political-economic, content, and textual analysis of queer television content from 2011 to 2021, this book demonstrates how Australian television’s once-pervasive industry perceptions that queer stories would not appeal to broad audiences changed throughout the decade. Our long-form discussion digs into many of the themes covered in the book and how Australia’s television industry has changed in relation to queer stories appearing onscreen. We then spoke with Luke Mazzaferro, a Sydney based filmmaker, writer and Academy Award nominated producer whose latest film ‘Parky’ that he co-directed is a revelatory and intimate portrait of Sir Michael Parkinson – Britain’s king of the chat show and the man behind the beloved ‘Parky’ icon – as told in his own words and from those closest to him. We ended this program with a review of ‘Extra Geography’, a very quirky and quite queer feature film from BAFTA-winning director Molly Manners which is described as a coming-of-age story and an intimate snapshot of the challenges and joys of teenage girlhood.

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