Axe for McLeod’s Daughters
Channel 9 is axing its long-running rural drama McLeod’s Daughters.
The series that helped make household names of actors including Bridie Carter, Lisa Chappell and Aaron Jeffery, has delivered solid ratings for Nine for most of its seven season run.
The show costs about $500,000 an episode and its writers have found it progressively difficult to create strong storylines after the departure of a string of key cast members.
Series eight of McLeod’s, in production in the Barossa Valley region of South Australia, will be its last.
Nine is intent on investing in new drama concepts.
A second series of the Lisa McCune drama Sea Patrol is in production in Queensland and Nine is to deliver gangster drama Underbelly and Canal Road next year.
Nine also announced at the weekend it had commissioned Young Doctors, a modern take on its Aussie hospital drama from the early ’80s.
“I have always maintained that the series should finish on a high and while it was still loved by the audience,” McLeod’s creator and executive producer Posie Graeme-Evans said.