Meet ‘Grunter’, the man behind ACA.

Grant Williams, Executive Producer of A Current Affair, was once knocked back on a job at Today Tonight.

The former fraud squad police officer came to television as a police advisor on Water Rats.

An excellent profile on Grant ‘Grunter’ Williams’ appeared in the Sunday Telegraph last weekend. I didn’t spot this article at the time, but it’s a well written piece by Jennifer Sexton, on the man behind ACA.

After leaving school Williams did a short stint as a cadet photographer, getting a taste for journalism.

He developed an ambition to work in television after almost a decade with the police and in 1997 he took leave without pay to work on police drama Water Rats. He advised on storylines and gave scriptwriters technical and operational information, checking for credibility.

Water Rats producer Hal McElroy says Williams stayed longer than most because he was able to balance the realities of police work with the demands of television drama.

“Police are evidence-based, regulation based, they do everything to the strict letter of the law. But TV bends the rules and it takes a very particular person to understand the sensibilities and the pragmatism of that,” McElroy says.

After Water Rats, he went for an interview with Today Tonight but didn’t get the job. He started a course at the Australian Film Television and Radio School and, at 30, he got work experience at A Current Affair.

“For the first couple of months I didn’t get paid at all and then I was thrown a bit of change to keep me ticking over. After three or four months they offered me a full-time job,” Williams says.

You can read the full article here.