AustLit

'This article examines adaptation as an industrial strategy in the context of Australian commercial broadcast television. I analyse Kriv Stenders’s 2017 mini-series Wake in Fright—based on Kenneth Cook’s novel – for Network 10, Australia’s third commercial broadcaster. Wake in Fright imitates the features of ‘quality’ television, and I read the commission, development, and production of the property as a strategic technique to compete in a local industrial landscape that is under rapid (and global) transformation. I examine this production through the ‘adaptation industries’, a critical approach to adaptation that puts texts in their industrial context. I first historicize the mini-series as a distinct form of Australian television production, then I analyse the formal innovation and style of Wake in Fright and suggest that the mini-series failed to cultivate an audience due to the pressures of commercial television. Although this production may ultimately be (commercially) unsuccessful, this article suggests that it crystalizes anxieties about the future of local content on Australian television in an increasingly globalized marketplace. Approaching Australian television production through the ‘adaptation industries’ helps understand the importance of identifiably Australian content in the face of increasingly globalized streaming platforms and an internationalized broadcast sector.' (Publication abstract)