AustLit

'RAN: Remote Area Nurse is a six-part mini-series first broadcast on the Australian Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) in 2006. Described by co-producer Penny Chapman as ‘the first screen fiction set in Torres Strait islander [sic] culture’, the series is loosely based on the work of the health centre on Masig, a tiny island in the central group of Torres Strait Islands. This article traces the working modes of the largely non-Islander production team, as they followed the guidelines and strategies laid out in SBS’s ‘The Greater Perspective: Protocol for the Production of Film and Television on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities’ (1997). In light of interplay between protocol and the production team, the article explores how a modally conventional mini-series nevertheless successfully made space for Islander collaboration, and attracted online engagement and approval from both Torres Strait Islanders and others.' (Author's abstract)