Former DPP gives Crownies the thumbs up

What does a former Director of Public Prosecutions think of ABC1’s new drama Crownies?

Nicholas Cowdery AM QC was the Director of Public Prosecutions for NSW from 1994 to 2011.

He has written a piece for the Sydney Morning Herald in which he gives his thoughts on the show.

On the whole he gives it the the thumbs up, but he does take issue with switching from Director of Public Prosecutions to Department of Public Prosecutions. This has been done as part of the artistic license of the show, in shifting the emphasis from being ‘actual’ about NSW to ‘fiction’ and a more generic Australian metropolis.

“While I am about it, let me get the other gripe out of the way: ‘D’ is for ‘director’ and to call it the ‘department of public prosecutions’ is just plain wrong,” he writes.

“But this is, after all and very definitely, fiction – and the viewer would be well advised to keep that firmly in mind. There’s lots of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll with which I am sure a real prosecution office would be totally unfamiliar – except for the files, of course! – and a very glamorous, attractive cast that, well, has some counterparts in real life.”

Cowdery, who also gave some of the cast background advice during the show’s development, says he’ll keep watching.

“This is fast-moving, tightly scripted, well acted and attractively filmed.”

It airs 8:30pm Thursdays on ABC1.

You can read more of his thoughts here.