Born: Established: 1969 ;
Gender:
Male
Film and television script-writer.
Blake Ayshford studied playwriting at the University of Technology, Sydney, and starting writing for television with scripts for Home and away in 1988.
However, his best-known works have come in the last decade. Between 2004 and 2006, he wrote a succession of scripts for such programs as The Cooks (2004-2005), The Alice (2005), Love My Way (2006), and McLeod's Daughters (2005-2006). One of his scripts for The Cooks won the Queensland Premier's Literary Award (for television).
Between 2006 and 2009, Ayshford wrote for long-running hospital drama All Saints, a script-writing stint that he followed with work on My Place (2009), Crownies (2011), and The Straits (2012). One of his scripts for The Straits was nominated for the Queensland Literary Awards.
Ayshford's forthcoming script is An Accidental Soldier (scheduled to air in 2013), based on the Miles Franklin Award-nominated book Silent Parts by John Charalambous, produced by Kylie du Fresne (producer of The Sapphires and Lockie Leonard) and directed by Rachel Ward.
His work as a script editor includes All Saints (2006-2009), the film Restraint (2009), and the television series I Rock (2010).
'Set among the turquoise waters and lethal wildlife of Australia's Far North Queensland and the Torres Strait, The Straits is an exotic, darkly humorous crime drama.
'The Montebellos are not your average Australian family. Modern day smugglers, their family business is transporting drugs into Australia and guns and exotic wildlife out, making use of ties of blood and loyalty in the Torres Strait Islands.
'When Harry, the head of the family, starts to plan his succession, a power struggle is sparked between brother and brother, wife and daughter. Under attack from ambitious bikies and mercurial PNG Raskols, the family must hold together through torture, assassination and imprisonment.'
Source: ABC1 website, http://www.abc.net.au/tv/thestraits/
Sighted: 30/01/2012