William McInnes

The Newsreader is set in the maelstrom of a commercial television newsroom in 1986. Dale Jennings is a diligent young reporter who is desperate to become a newsreader and Helen Norville is a notoriously 'difficult' star newsreader determined to build credibility. Over three months, the pair cover an extraordinary chain of news events from the shock of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, to the hype of Halley's Comet and the complexities of the AIDS crisis. A deep bond is formed that will upend their lives and transform the very fabric of the nightly news bulletin.

The drama unfolds when detectives Tori Lustigman (Yael Stone) and Nick Manning (Noah Taylor) are assigned a brutal murder case. They begin to uncover mounting evidence to suggest the killing is connected to a spate of unexplained deaths, "suicides" and disappearances throughout the 80s and 90s. Is this the result of shoddy police work, indifference, or something far more sinister? Haunted by the disappearance of her teenage brother, Tori's fascination with the case soon turns to fixation. And when more ritualistic murders occur with the same bizarre signature, Tori and Nick will need to put their relationships, their careers and their lives on the line to finally reveal the truth.

Our thirties and forties are the busiest time of our lives. The extended Tivolli clan is right in the thick of it - kids, career advancement, home ownership, settling in with the one you love; still trying to find the one you love; getting away from the one you used to love. It's the time of our frantic, messy, frustrating, funny, sometimes awful, lives.

The show is set around the Major Crime Squad in metropolitan Sydney. It is based upon the experiences of actual detectives in a crime unit in Sydney's western suburbs. It is filmed on location, in Sydney suburbs such as Auburn, Lidcombe, Redfern, Chinatown and Sefton.