bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Almost two years in the making, Australia's big budget answer to The Sopranos has become one of the most keenly anticipated TV shows in decades.
But this week's premiere of Underbelly - a crime drama based on Melbourne's brutal gangland war - is suddenly in doubt after a judge expressed fears it could jeopardise an upcoming murder trial.
Producers have been ordered to hand over all 13 episodes, even though 11 are still being edited.
Over the next few days lawyers from Victoria's Office of Public Prosecutions will cast a close eye over the tapes before deciding what to do. Problem is, the first two-hour instalment is due to hit Australian TV screens on Wednesday night.
It is a distraction the Hong Kong-based owners of Australia's struggling Nine Network could have done without. The once-dominant commercial channel was already on the slide when private equity firm CVC Asia Pacific spent A$4.5 billion (HK$31.5 billion) buying into the Packer family's extensive media assets in late 2006. At that point plans for the A$13 million gangland drama were already under way, and network bosses surprised many by announcing it would kick off in the first week of the cut-throat ratings season.
Nine's hopes for a 2008 recovery are based almost exclusively on Underbelly.
The series has been adapted from the book Leadbelly, written by award-winning Australian journalists John Silvester and Andrew Rule.
Their riveting account of the bloody decade-long feud that left, by some estimates, up to 30 people dead seemed the ideal basis for a crime  series. The location of all those killings, the chic and hitherto genteel Melbourne, may have been surprising - not least to people living there - but the characters were all too familiar to anyone who had watched an American mafia movie.
Underbelly's central character, chubby Carl Williams, was the man around whom the real-life underworld war revolved. After the bodies started to pile up in earnest - following the shooting of self-styled Godfather Alphonse Gangitano in 1998 - Williams, a mid-ranking drug dealer, seized the chance to become a gangster kingpin.
As the tit-for-tat killing spree raged, and suspicion flew faster than the bullets, big Carl regularly told reporters he was just a wrongly accused suburban dad.
The fall of the man who police nicknamed Fat Boy was as swift as his meteoric rise. Implicated in several killings by one of the hitmen he contracted, Williams is now serving a 35-year sentence for four gangland murders. Police believe he was involved in up to 10.
For script writer Greg Haddrick, telling Williams' story and how it related to the violent turf war for control of Melbourne's lucrative amphetamines trade inevitably meant playing fast and loose with the truth. 'We have bent reality in a few places,' he told  The Age newspaper. 'But we tried to be  behaviourally accurate at points where we haven't been factually accurate.'
Although the network's lawyers were looking over his shoulder and  giving advice 'every step of the way', a Victorian Supreme Court judge last week expressed concern that potential jurors could be influenced by conversations involving real-life characters that never took place.
And while Williams' arrest effectively brought the war to an end, related court cases are still active and some charges still to be laid.
Melbourne University media law expert Andrew Kenyon said the show was treading a legal tightrope.
'If the programme prejudges guilt or innocence, if it reveals things that might be kept from the jury in the trial ... I think there is a risk of contempt,' he told the ABC. 'Another risk [is] where the courts have power to make specific orders not to identify particular pieces of evidence or to name particular people. And it might be in this instance that there are also some specific orders that there's concerns the programme might breach.'
In court last week the show was discussed in connection with the pending trial of an alleged hitman, who is accused of the 2004 murder of an underworld boss.
This weekend CVC Asia Pacific boss Adrian MacKenzie will be nervously awaiting the Office of Public Prosecutions' verdict on the drama's ability to hinder future proceedings.
There is a worrying precedent. Twelve years ago the mini-series Blue Murder, which was based on real-life police corruption, screened around most of Australia to widespread acclaim.
But because of outstanding hearings and charges in New South Wales, another six years passed before it was screened in the nation's most populous state.
Nine will be praying Underbelly avoids the same fate.



Real-life Sopranos tale may be cut