Muster Dogs 2 coming to ABC this year

EXCLUSIVE:

Hit ABC series Muster Dogs is returning to ABC in 2023.

Outside of that other popular pooch Bluey, Muster Dogs is the biggest show in ABC iview history, with over 8 million views across ABC.

Speaking at the Australian International Documentary Conference, Monica O’Brien, Executive Producer at Ambience Entertainment said, “The concept originated from producer Michael Boughen, who is my colleague at Ambience. Due to COVID, he also directed some of the series along with Sally Browning, and myself, and he came up with this desire, because he had a tree change. Like a fish out of water, once you enter an environment, everything is new and fascinating.

“He discovered in a very intimate way, the regional world of agriculture and grazing, and he was so fascinated by these working dogs. Regional people just took it for granted that ‘These are our best mates. We rely on them, they save us money!’ All these wonderful things. But they never saw the majesty in that and how amazing that was.”

Ambience pitched the show to ABC but the original vision was reshaped through development.

“We said, ‘We’ve got this really great story, it’s about these working dogs, it’s regional Australia, and it’s going to be character driven and go into depth and highlight the entire grazing industry, A+B stories and all of that stuff.’ And it was in that discussion and subsequent developments with (ABC) that we actually established that there was a vehicle here to effectively tell the story in the form of a competition show. So Michael has been intrigued by the Seven Up model, which was following people over 12 months.”

She added, “It was a definite collaboration. The kernel of the pitch was not the end show. It was a rigorous development period. It. I hate development. It’s so exhausting! We were interrogated, but the interrogation was essential. We did that through the entire production process.”

A return date is yet to be announced.