Donald Mackay’s son: Underbelly “lies”
"I don’t know how telling a lie helps them tell the truth," says Paul Mackay.
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The son of anti-drugs campaigner Don Mackay has again criticised Screentime’s version of events as depicted in Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities.
Paul Mackay had previously expressed concerns over inaccuracies in the program regarding a rally in which his character faces Bob Trimbole. That was enough for WIN to withdraw ads.
Now the show has aired he says he noticed a lot more inaccuracies.
“There are a number of historical inaccuracies, like the public meeting never occurred, and my mother never worked one day in the family business, while in the show she was in there answering phones,” he told The Area News.
“The interaction that they showed with the local police, as far as I’m aware, never occurred, and I’ve never heard of the character of the local police officer they showed.”
Screentime’s Des Monaghan has previouly said, “Paul was right, no such scene occurred, but the Mackay story covered so many years we had to find ways of simplifying it.”
Mr Mackay said he found the show difficult to watch.
“I realise the producers qualified it by saying it tells the essential truth of the story, but I don’t know how telling a lie helps them tell the truth.”
Griffith residents, reeling from Caroline Craig’s narration of their town as “Australia’s marijuana capital,” weren’t fooled by scenes of their town reconstructed in Richmond.
Mayor Mike Neville said, “I guess it was a mild attempt at providing a bit of drama on perceived events from years gone by.”
The series hit a high of over 2.5m viewers, the highest audience of any scripted drama or comedy since the introduction of OzTAM ratings in 2001.
Source: AreaNews
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15 Responses
look whos talking richoTB.
you must be so proud of yourself ponting that out. well done buddy!
vid, if you want to make yourself look big by putting down someone else, at least have the common sense to spell “you’re” properly, otherwise you just look insecure and silly. A bit rich calling someone an idiot when there’s a glaring idiotic mistake in your own statement
It’s a drama not a documentary.
fizzin…. your an idiot!
Who knows what happened.
I see nothing in the glorification of our criminals
For that reason – I have watched none of the last series and I won’t be watching any of this one either.
There are far more entertaining shows on tv for me
Those – who are watching – enjoy your fiction 🙂
TV Tonight said. “The series hit a high of over 2.5m viewers, the highest audience of any scripted drama or comedy since the introduction of OzTAM ratings in 2001” and of course what the free tv owned ratings wallah says is fact, when most thinking people know it’s about as factual as the moon being a lump of cheese, the sun revolves around Earth or pigs might fly
It’s not a documentary, it’s a dramatisation.
You can’t use the show as evidence of what really happened. However, within reason, it’s a fairly accurate account of the events.
But the point must be made ch9 is promoting this as the “Next True Story” so how true it is when events are being changed and made up?
You can’t make what might be a story that takes place over months or years and reduce it to a few hours of watchable television without having to cut out a lot of facts and details. Sometimes an entire plot point has to be moved to a different scene to accommodate the limited framework television has to work within. Budget, time, and storytelling principles all have to be taken into account when adapting a story.
In those cases, if the facts are right but the details are played with (changed locations, misquotes, characters present that weren’t there), it’s still a “true story”. Only when outright untruths, like entirely new plot strands that didn’t happen, or changing the ending, does it have to be considered only “based on true events”, and even then there’s some freedom allowed.
@ted. oscar winning films that are true stories may not be 100% accurate but they have to be based on the historically accepted version of events. to be labeled as a true story.
i have no problem with underbelly fictionalizing the whole thing but why do they then label it as a true story? wouldn’t it be more appropriate to have it “based on true events” it would save showtime and the people involved so much grief. and i’m sure it wouldn’t effect the ratings.
Yeah I always wondered what Mackay’s family thought of the CIA documentary.
Maybe I’m too much of a history purist, but I don’t get why true stories considered so fantastic have to be changed so much for film/TV. Are audiences that stupid they have to have all the dots joined for them? The whole ‘before Carl Williams….’ bit at the beginning of Underbelly 2 was lame.
I don’t see the big deal. Any good film or tv show based on actual events will fictionalise conversations and scenes to tell a good story. Just look at some of those Oscar winning films that were based on true a story!
If you want just facts, then watch the documentaries on this. Crime Investigations Australia did one on Donald Maykay’s disappearance recently.
Maybe while an inaccurate part of the show is being played they could show a logo with “BS” in the corner so we can differentiate truth from fiction? 😉
Adaptation. It’s a simple concept that so many people can’t seem to accept.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story 😆