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Exclusive: More cast has been set for Good Cop/Bad Cop, the one-hour procedural dramedy starring Leighton Meester, Clancy Brown and Luke Cook.

Devon Terrell, Grace Chow, Blazey Best, Philippa Northeast, William McKenna, Shamita Siva and Scott Lee have all joined the series, which is for The CW and The Roku Channel in the U.S. and Stan in Australia.

They will join Meester and Cook, who play an odd couple brother and sister detective team Lou and Henry in a small Pacific Northwest police force who work under police chief Big Hank (Brown), who happens to be their father.

Terrell will play charming but nerdy Detective Shane Carson, Best will be Big Hank’s somewhat cryptic Russian girlfriend Nadia, Lee plays the loveable and long-tenured Officer Joe Bradley, McKenna is nervous wreck new boy Officer Sam Szczepkowski, Siva has been cast as fearless and overly devoted Officer Sarika Ray, Chow...

Breakout Australia comedy Colin From Accounts is back in production.

An official green light of Season 2 of the hit Binge sitcom came in August, after writers and stars Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer chose to down their pens in solidarity with WGA strike in the U.S. over the summer.

Exec producer Alison Hurbert-Burns from Binge told Deadline in October production would begin in “coming months,” adding: “As an Australian program it was outside of the strike, but they just felt it was the right thing to do.”

Brammall and Dyer finished the scripts once a deal was struck at the end of September. Production is now back underway across Sydney, with Easy Tiger Productions and CBS Studios returning the produce.

The show follows the lives of two flawed and funny people who begin an unconventional romance after being brought together when Ash (Dyer) spontaneously flashes her nipple at Gordon...

Anousha Zarkesh and Nathan Lloyd each took home two gongs from the Casting Guild of Australia (Cga) Awards on Saturday, leading the night’s winners.

Bert and Amanda LABONTé hosted the ceremony, virtual this year due to Covid-19.

Lloyd snared Achievement in Casting for the second season of children’s series The InBestigators, as well as Best Casting in a TV drama for Wentworth.

Yet again, Zarkesh won Best Casting in a TV Comedy for the fourth season Black Comedy (she won last year for the third innings of the show), as well as Best Casting in a TV Miniseries & Telemovie for Operation Buffalo.

Following on from their Aacta win on Friday night, the feature film award went to Kirsty McGregor and Stevie Ray for Babyteeth, which stars Eliza Scanlen, Toby Wallace, Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn.

Best Casting in a Short Film went to Daniella Friedman for the Aacta nominated The Mirror.

The Casting Guild of Australia (Cga) has named its ten ‘Rising Stars’ for 2020: Luca Sardelis, Lily Sullivan, Yazeed Daher, Sophie Wilde, Ayesha Madon, Patrick Jhanur, Daniel Monks, Ratidzo Mambo, Thomas Weatherall and Bridie McKim.

It’s the sixth year the guild has compiled the list, which has previously identified talent such as Eliza Scanlan, Katherine Langford, Tilda Cobham-Harvey, Geraldine Viswanathan and Alexander England.

Cga President David Newman said: “Each year all Cga members nominate and then vote for 10 emerging artists they see as Rising Stars, those who we believe are most likely to cut through at an international level.

“In 2020, these actors have gone from all work stopping, thinking they may never work again to now being presented as some of the most promising of their generation – what a roller coaster! We’re extremely proud to present 10 emerging artists who aren’t only amazingly talented but also represent the...

Fiona Press and Kelton Pell in ‘The Heights’ (Photo credit: Ashleigh Nicolau).

Something remarkable happened to Fiona Press when she played Hazel Murphy in the first and second seasons of the ABC serial The Heights.

For the first time in the actress’ 37-year career after graduating from Nida, Press felt she wasn’t just a “survivor,” despite more than 50 screen credits and dozens of plays.

“Hazel is the role of my life. Until she turned up, I don’t think I realised I had a career,” she tells If. “As a female of my type in the Australian industry, to survive is actually a career. I’m a jobbing actor.”

Matchbox Pictures’ Warren Clarke, the showrunner who co-created The Heights with Que Minh Luu, tells If: “The choice to cast Fiona really came from how grounded her audition was. We knew this character would be a foundation stone for the...

Rosemary Blight.

Distributor All3Media International, New Zealand’s South Pacific Pictures and Norway’s Maipo Film have boarded Dark Victory, Goalpost Pictures’ political drama to be directed by Matthew Saville.

Goalpost Pictures’ Rosemary Blight and Saville pitched the project at Co-Pro Series 2020 at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Adapted by Saville from the book Dark Victory: How a Government Lied its Way to Political Triumph by David Marr and Marian Wilkinson, the five-hour drama will chronicle the story of the Howard government’s refusal in 2001 to allow Norwegian freighter Tampa to enter Christmas Island.

It will follow Captain Arne Rinnan, the master of the ship that rescued 438 Afghan refugees from their sinking boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The government’s refusal to give them safe passage sparked a political crisis.

All3Media International signed a first-look deal with Goalpost in 2018. The screen adaptation has been in development...

‘Hearts and Bones’.

The casting directors behind Hearts and Bones, Judy and Punch, The Nightingale and Unsound will duke it out for the feature film prize at the upcoming Casting Guild of Australia Awards.

To be held November 29 in Melbourne, the awards will be hosted by actors Zahra Newman (Wentworth) and Mark Coles Smith (Picnic at Hanging Rock), with special guest Aacta Award-winning producer Todd Abbott from Guesswork.

In TV drama, the casting directors behind Diary of an Uber Driver, The Heights (series 1), Total Control and Wentworth (Season 7) have each been recognised with nods, while in the TV Miniseries & Telemovie category it will be a battle between those who worked on Lambs of God, On the Ropes, Secret Bridesmaids Business and The Hunting.

Casting Guild of Australia president Kirsty McGregor leads with seven nominations, three of which are shared with Gemma Brown and one with Stevie Ray (Diary of an Uber Driver...

‘Diary of an Uber Driver.’

New German streaming service Joyn has commissioned a local version of RevLover Films’ ABC dramedy Diary of an Uber Driver.

It’s the first international remake of the format based on Ben Phillips’ popular blog and e-book which was scripted by Thomas Ward and directed by Matthew Moore.

International distributor all3Media’s production label Bon Voyage Films will produce the remake, to be shot in Hamburg. Kostja Ullmann will play the lead.

A joint venture between Discovery and German broadcaster ProSiebenSat1, Joyn aims to become the largest free-tv service in Germany with live streams of more than 50 channels plus an on-demand section with original productions.

All3Media International is shopping the ABC series and format at Mipcom in Cannes this week.

Produced by Martha Coleman and Lauren Edwards and co-funded by Create Nsw, the series starred Sam Cotton as Uber driver Ben with Zahra Newman as Beck,...

Genevieve Hegney and Tim Minchin in ‘Upright’ (Photo credit: Foxtel).

Playing strangers who meet half way across the Nullarbor and have a brief but passionate encounter in Foxtel’s upcoming series Upright was a lot of fun for Tim Minchin and Genevieve Hegney.

Friends since they attended the University of Western Australia and its dramatic society Uds, they had not been on stage or screen together before, although she did direct him in a Uds production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, in which he played The Player.

In Upright Hegney’s character Frankie is travelling from Perth while Minchin’s Flynn is coming from Sydney with teenage runaway Meg (Milly Alcock) as they lug a piano across the country.

“We were both good sports about the love scene,” she tells If. “After 20 years in the business we were being very technical, like ‘you put your hand...

Rose Riley (L) and Emma Harvie in ‘Diary of an Uber Driver.’

Rose Riley is getting ready to have her first crack at Hollywood amid the most successful year of her career since graduating from Waapa in 2013.

This week the actor is heading to the Us for the first time for meetings with producers, casting directors and other players set up by her Us agent, Authentic Talent & Literary Management’s Jessica Morgulis.

Rose met Morgulis when the agent visited Sydney, arranged by her Oz rep United Management, before she started work in Stateless, the six-part ABC drama about four strangers in an immigration detention centre in the Australian desert, co-created by Cate Blanchett, Tony Ayres and Elise McCredie.

“I will always be very passionate about Australian stories and Australian cinema, TV and theatre but working overseas would be a total dream; ideally I will find a balance,” she tells If.

Sam Cotton in ‘Diary of an Uber Driver.’

When Sam Cotton landed the title role in the ABC/RevLover Films’ dramedy Diary of an Uber Driver, he approached the job with some trepidation.

It was his first lead after playing Bruce, the nemesis of Luke McGregor’s Daniel in the ABC’s Rosehaven, and son-in-law Wayne in Sbs’s The Family Law.

He plays Uber driver Ben, whose life had always been in cruise control until his newish girlfriend Beck (Zahra Newman) gets pregnant in the six-parter scripted by Tom Ward, based on Ben Phillips’ blog.

He got the gig after doing a self-tape when he lived in Brisbane (he is now based in Sydney), followed by a call back in Sydney a few weeks later.

“At the outset I was kind of terrified but the director Matt Moore did so much to make me comfortable,” he tells If. “He...

Zahra Newman, Thomas Ward and Sam Cotton.

After Josh Thomas’ Please Like Me ended after four seasons on the ABC, his co-writer and co-star Thomas Ward realised there was something lacking in his career.

Having spent the best part of six years in that “bubble,” Ward worried that he did not know any other producers.

So he introduced himself to a number of producers including – fortuitously for him – RevLover Films’ Martha Coleman. She told him she had optioned Ben Phillips’ blog and e-book Diary of an Uber Driver.

After reading the blog he says: “I really liked the idea of doing a show that explores a community, the intimacy that comes with Uber rides and the fact that the protagonist was the same age as me and from a similar background.”

So he prepared a pitch outlining how he would turn the blog into a half hour series and work-shopped...