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Claudia Jessie,Rachel Griffiths and Richard Roxburgh are teaming up for a Stan/Nine series about the Bali bombing. Credit:Stan

Production onBali 2002 began on Wednesday in western Sydney,where a set featuring replicas of Paddy’s Pub and the Sari Club,where the bombs were detonated,has been constructed.

The series is being co-produced by Screentime,the makers of theUnderbelly franchise,and Endemol Shine Australia,better known for its massive slate of reality shows –MasterChef,Big Brother andMarried at First Sight among them – but whose intent to re-enter the drama space was perhaps signalled with last year’sRFDS for Seven.

The series is billed as “an inspiring drama that explores how everyday heroes from Bali,Australia and beyond defied the odds to bring order from chaos and hope from despair”. It will star Rachel Griffiths,Richard Roxburgh,Sean Keenan and Ewen Leslie,with British actress Claudia Jessie (Bridgerton,Line of Duty) alongside a host of newer faces from Australia and Bali.

Executive producer Tim Pye said it was “an Indonesian and Australian story,an event that devastated both countries but also brought them together,so it was really important to us to have Indonesian voices and input from both countries’ point of view”.

It has been developed,Stan chief content officer Cailah Scobie says,by creatives in Australia and Indonesia,“and in consultation with those directly impacted”.

The series will be helmed by veteran director Peter Andrikidis (East West 101,The Straits,Serangoon Road,Eden) and Indonesian-Australian director Katrina Irawati Graham.

This will not be the first attempt to bring the story to the small screen,and not even the first with which Richard Roxburgh has been involved.

In 2017 the actorshared with this masthead his belief that an ABC series on the events surrounding the terrorist attack,whichBlue Murder writer-producer Michael Jenkins had developed for the ABC in 2005,just might have been the best piece of Australian television never made.

“It was ballsy,” Roxburgh said,“it did a masterful job of balancing that thing where you could empathise but you didn’t sympathise – and nor should you because the outcome was an indescribable horror.”

The series was in the early stages of production in 2005 when real-life events took over. A second bomb attack in Bali killed 20 people. Concerned that the world would conclude Bali was a willing home to extremism,the Indonesian government shut the production down.

Bali 2002 is not that series,and everyone involved will be hoping it enjoys a far less troubled production.

Email the author atkquinn@theage.com.au,or follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin

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