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Renewed: The Doctor Blake Mysteries

It's official. ABC's latest hit murder mysteries has been renewed for a second season.

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4dbrAs tipped by TV Tonight last week, The Doctor Blake Mysteries has been renewed by the ABC.

December Media’s Head of Drama and series creator, George Adams, said, “The audience response to the show has been overwhelming and we are delighted ABC TV want more. Tony Wright and I are beyond pleased the show has found such a loyal following so quickly. The show has been blessed with wonderful stories, a great cast, a tremendous crew and memorable locations. All of these elements plus Craig McLachlan’s finely tuned performance as Doctor Lucien Blake have helped create a classic murder mystery series for a Friday evening on the ABC.”

ABC TV Head of Fiction, Carole Sklan said “Doctor Blake not only has intriguing mystery stories and a fascinating lead character, the show also explores our social history in unexpected and entertaining ways”.

Craig McLachlan said, “I can’t even begin to express how thrilled I am to be traveling back to late 50’s Ballarat for another round of The Doctor Blake Mysteries. My heartfelt thanks to everyone for tuning in.”

Produced by December Media for ABC TV, The Doctor Blake Mysteries premiered on 1 February with a national audience of 1.8 million*. It is achieving a five city series average of 1.2 million, winning its timeslot each week for the first three episodes. It has also attracted a total of 160,000 plays on ABC iview across four episodes.

The Doctor Blake Mysteries series one has a further 5 episodes to run on ABC1 on Friday nights at 8:30pm and is also available for watching on ABC iview.

Production Credits: A December Media Production in association with ABC TV, Screen Australia and Film Victoria. Producer George Adams and Executive Producer Tony Wright. ABC Executive Producers Christopher Gist and Carole Sklan.

*Source: OzTAM metro consolidated data and RegionalTAM data.

6 Responses

  2. I hope it works out…great show….
    FYI…..all episodes are on Iview for the next 50 days….so if you have not seen it and want to dip your toe…go check it out…you will not be sorry.

  3. Doesn’t the incoming Director of Television at the ABC have any say in these future drama commitments? Agree with Victor – second series are going to be very tough to finance from now on.

  4. The interesting question is who will invest in series 2. Screen Australia, investor in series 1 ran out of money at its December 2012 Board meeting and will not even consider television investment until this August. Perhaps it is time for a big rethink amongst broadcasters making series drama that they can no longer rely on Screen Australia. That means expensive period drama series will not be viable for them. Interesting that Seven is about to program a new period drama which I think it funded without Screen Australia finance. Probably right that Screen Australia sets a limit on how many episodes it will continue to invest in. The networks should finance series drama themselves.

  5. From having years of no locally made murder mystery series, to three all going on at the same time, is an interesting development. They probably should’ve ventured down this route earlier instead of the absurd number of badly titled cop shows we had in the 2000s.

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