Post-production has commenced on ‘Brilliant Creatures’, a two-part documentary series by Mint Pictures & Serendipity Productions that ABC TV Arts has commissioned as a co-production with BBC4.
‘Brilliant Creatures’ traces the lives of four iconic Australians – Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer, Clive James, and Robert Hughes – who each left Australia in the 1950s and 1960s to become cultural giants on the international stage.
This landmark series is hosted by Booker Prize-winning author Howard Jacobson, who emigrated from London in 1964 to take up the academic position vacated by Germaine Greer at the University of Sydney.
For Jacobson, this series is personal – not only because he knows these exceptional Australian expats, but also because he has been infatuated by Australia since his first visit in the ’60s.
“’The Children of Paradise’ was how Clive James described Australians who left home for Europe and America in the 1960s. Though Barry Humphries left a little earlier, I add him to the list of Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes and Clive James himself – those marvellously gifted writer/critic/entertainers who, I like to think, yelled to me from the deck of an ocean liner as I was travelling to Australia in 1964, warning me I was going in the wrong direction.”
“They were wrong,” says Howard Jacobson, “for me at least – I loved the Australia they left. And I have often wondered since, not only about their reasons for going, but about the part Australia played in their genius, their confidence and the words with which they carried all before them.
“I am very excited by this opportunity to pay tribute, not only to their achievements but to the paradise I found Australia to be at the very time they were leaving it.”
Brilliant Creatures is an ABC TV Arts commission that has been filmed in London, Cambridge, New York, Sydney and Melbourne.
Head of Arts, ABC Television, Katrina Sedgwick, says that Greer, Humphries, James and Hughes represent “a high water mark in Australia’s social and cultural history.”
“That four such towering intellects could emerge from a country largely defined by a strange combination of brash confidence and cultural cringe is a remarkable thing. The story of the Australia they left in the sixties, and the impact they would have on the world stage is well worth reflecting on. We’re excited to be working with Howard Jacobson on his very personal account of our four most renowned intellectual exports.”
The series is directed by Paul Clarke (Whitlam, Wide Open Road, Mother of Rock) and produced by Serendipity Productions and Mint Pictures.
Brilliant Creatures is being financed by ABC, BBC, ABC Commercial, Screen Australia and Screen NSW and is being distributed by TCB Media.