Tony Ayres knew he had a problem. The creator behind Netflix hits “Clickbait” and “Stateless” faced a challenge: Jane Harper’s bestseller novel “The Survivors” clocked in at roughly two hours of screen time, but Netflix wanted six episodes. The solution? Crank up the emotional temperature between a guilt-ridden son and his unforgiving mother until their fractured relationship becomes the beating heart of a murder mystery set against Tasmania’s most unforgiving landscape.
The six-episode limited series follows Kieran Elliott (Charlie Vickers) as he returns to his fictional Tasmanian hometown of Evelyn Bay fifteen years after a devastating storm claimed three lives, including his older brother. When a young woman’s body is discovered on the beach, the tragedy forces the tight-knit community to confront unresolved grief and buried secrets, with Kieran’s father (Damien Garvey) — who suffers from dementia — becoming the prime suspect.
“Jane’s book had this dual structure, so I kind of felt like I had to honor that. The book is very compelling. It’s such a page turner, and so I really needed to sort of try to mirror that effect in the TV series,” Ayres tells Variety.
The adaptation presented significant challenges, as Harper’s novel contained limited material for a six-episode format. “The book itself was probably about one and a half, two hours of screen time. And we were trying to cover six episodes. So there was quite a bit of invention, but it’s all invention from ideas that are part of Jane’s original novel,” Ayres notes.
Perhaps the most significant creative challenge involved translating the protagonist’s internalized guilt and grief into visual storytelling, requiring careful adaptation to create compelling television.
“To make the internal journey of the central character, Kieran, external, I needed an antagonist, or someone who was going to make it difficult for him to return home,” Ayres explains. “And it really struck me that the person who was best suited for that was his mother, Verity [Robyn Malcolm].”
This creative decision transforms the family dynamic into the series’ emotional core. “I sort of turned the temperature up on their relationship and made it much more conflicted,” he says. “The sub theme of the series, for me, is the story of a young man who desperately wants his mother’s forgiveness and love, and a mother who is really just kind of clinging on to survival herself.”
Verity’s inability to provide the forgiveness Kieran seeks stems from her own circumstances. “She can’t afford to let go of her story about the past, her narrative about the past, and that narrative includes blaming Kieran for what happened,” Ayres explains. “That was kind of my way of externalizing his internal journey.”
The decision to film in Tasmania’s Eagle Hawk Neck region proved transformative for the production’s tone and themes. “It became very clear once we found Eagle Hawk Neck and the spectacular landscapes that the locations were going to be crucial to not just the tone of the show, but the themes of the show,” Ayres says.
The Gothic landscape serves as more than mere backdrop. “It is quite Gothic and big, and you feel the scale of nature and its ferocity. And that felt like, well, the big event that caused all of this trauma was a storm. So it seemed like the place Eagle Hawk Neck was kind of in itself a metaphor for the storm, the disrupting event.”
Ayres describes how the landscape becomes integrated into the storytelling: “We peppered the series all the way through with images from this sort of sense of foreboding that you have when you’re standing on those cliff tops and seeing the caves and the ocean, the ferocity of the ocean, all of those things felt absolutely that they became emblematic of the storm, but also they felt metaphoric for the themes of the series.”
The emotional scope of the story demanded this grand setting. “The thing that I was most interested in in the survivors was the scale of the grief of the mothers… but also of the father, that it felt like a Greek tragedy to me, like it felt like ‘The Trojan Women’ or ‘Medea,’ [both plays by Euripides] or one of those big stories, but said in a small environment and the landscape seemed to echo those themes.”
Unlike typical landscape shots that can feel decorative, these visuals serve the narrative. “Sometimes you put those shots in and they just feel decorative, like landscape porn, just gratuitous and not necessary. But we found when we put those shots into our series, and they are there throughout the entire series, that the landscape echoed what was happening emotionally,” Ayres explains.
The casting process, led by Jane Norris, prioritized finding actors who could inhabit complex emotional landscapes. “Really it was just about looking for actors who could be very truthful,” Ayres says.
Charlie Vickers, known for “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” immediately connected with the role. “As soon as Charlie Vickers walked in the door, Cherie [Cherie Nowlan who directed the series with Ben C. Lucas] and I knew that he was Kieran. He just completely inhabited the role.”
Korean American actor Yerin Ha plays Mia Chang. The adaptation expanded Mia’s role significantly. “We managed to keep the sense of feeling like an outsider or feeling different from the rest of this very white town whilst also giving her a more investigative storyline, because we felt we wanted to really make her the co-lead of the series,” Ayres says.
“The Survivors” represents a thematic evolution in Ayres’ exploration of loss and grief. “The thing that really drew me to Jane’s book was this idea of someone trying to atone for something that they’re not even guilty of,” he explains. “Stories I’ve told in the past have been about, well, how do you deal with loss? Whereas this book, and this show is very much not only about the loss, but it is actually the guilt of having survived.”
While deeply rooted in Australian culture, “The Survivors” aims for international resonance through authentic storytelling. “I think that you can only really try to make the thing the best thing it can be in its own terms,” Ayres says. “And from my experience, if it feels authentic, if it feels truthful, if the characters feel real, then that truth is how audiences connect to characters.”
When discussing the Netflix strategy, Ayres explains: “Let’s offer people a really, twisty turny, fun, compelling murder mystery.” The spectacular Tasmanian setting provides an additional draw. “I also think the novelty of Tasmania will help us, because I think that people will be hopefully impressed or tantalized by the landscape,” Ayres notes.
The series is produced by Tony Ayres Productions, which is backed by Matchbox Pictures and Universal International Studios, a division of Universal Studio Group. Additional support is provided by VicScreen through the Victorian Production Fund and the Victorian Digital Screen Rebate, and production support is from Screen Tasmania.
“The Survivors” premieres globally on Netflix on June 6.
variety.com
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