BTS Insight - Erinsborough High
Why I believe Erinsborough High is well worth a watch.
Written by Venn co-founder Jonathon Dutton
In many respects, ‘EHigh’ was a big experiment. Can an established show of 35 years like Neighbours make a spin-off series that looks and feels different, whilst utilising a lot of their existing resources? EHigh was not only an experiment, but a great challenge.
This challenge felt manageable knowing that we had a dedicated and passionate producing and writing team, who from the outset, were excited to be creating something different. Importantly though, there was a focused intention during development to tell stories that explored issues that affected teenagers today. We wanted to consider the pressures, expectations and anxieties experienced by graduating high school students; the nuances and impacts of bullying; and the experience of a transgender girl embarking on a new relationship with a boy – though told from both perspectives. In this day and age, this is an important and underrepresented perspective that we should be normalising, and what better way to do it then through an intriguing, entertaining and charming drama series? In my view, this is when TV drama serves audiences and society best.
It certainly helped that Georgie Stone was at the heart of this story. Georgie is a remarkable young woman, who is not only talented, diligent and a delight to work with, but an influential transgender activist and advocate. The writers and producers were very careful therefore to ensure that Georgie’s knowledge was embedded in the telling of this story. Lachie Millar played her love interest, Richie, and he did a wonderful job in honestly depicting a heterosexual teenage boy processing the realities of having a relationship with a transgender girl who is pre-surgery (that he is incredibly attracted to).
The character of Jeremiah, played by Darius Amarfio Jefferson gave the audience insight into the experience of sustained bullying at school. Because Jeremiah was a new character in the ‘Erinsborough High’ world and his tormenter, Ollie (Ellmir Asipi) had a smaller role, we indirectly explored the perspective of the ‘bully’ through another lead character, Hendrix (Ben Turland). This was an interesting way to access the psychology of a bully, as we the audience are sympathetic to Hendrix and travel with him throughout the series. Jeremiah ultimately points out however that Hendrix’s misguided aggression and persecution of a teacher parallels what is happening to him, alluding to the fact that a bully’s behaviour is often in response to what’s happening in their own lives.
For me, what unlocked these stories was being able to access our characters’ inner thoughts and feelings, which can be quite tricky to do without being obvious. Throughout EHigh, the students were filming video diaries that were part confessional, part self-counselling, and allowed us to really explore how our characters felt in relation to the issues they were dealing with. The characters did this as part of a school project that would enable them to look back in ten years’ time and reflect on where they were at when they finished high school. Ironically, the video diaries were introduced as a means to save the production money by shooting a lot of screen time quickly, without the need for a full crew. This idea turned out to be not only a great way to shoot screen time quickly, but also a powerful device that we may not have thought of otherwise. Orson Welles famously said, “The enemy of art, is the absence of limitations” – I really do get what he meant now.
What was probably most notable throughout this whole process was seeing how these stories fuelled an energy and a passion for this project, which appeared to give everyone working on EHigh a sense of purpose and a sense of ‘this is something special’. This really brought out the best in everyone, despite shooting in the depths of a Melbourne winter and under the pump to get it all shot in seven days – yes, the schedule required us to move as quickly as a normal Neighbours schedule!
Whilst the challenges were hectic, EHigh was a thrill to direct and I hope it finds the audience it deserves.
Neighbours: Erinsborough High premiered on the 11th of November 2019 on My5 in the UK and on the 12th of November on Ten Play in Australia.