Don't Steal, the upcoming Australian series that premiered three of its eight episodes at the Toronto International Film Festival, is an entertaining road trip that cleverly tells an original story using humor and dozens of instantly recognizable Australian stereotypes.
The series is set to air in eight half-hour episodes, which will be uploaded to Australian streaming platform Stan on October 17. International rights are being handled by DCD Rights.
Told through the eyes of a young delinquent Aboriginal woman (Robyn, played by Heartbreak High star Sheree Lee Watson), the film navigates an 1980s mix of toxic masculinity, alcoholism, barbecue trouble, respect for the outback and the quiet wisdom of Aboriginal people.
But it’s a fun, engaging ride as Robin and an awkward white teen (played by fellow Heartbreaker Will Macdonald) flee their small desert community in a stolen taxi. Following them—and sometimes ahead of them—is a snake-like ex-prostitute and the boy’s overbearing father, a charlatan preacher. The older duo are played with delight by Noah Taylor (Peaky Blinders, Game of Thrones) and Miranda Otto (The Clearing, Talk to Me).
Director Dylan River says the story came from things he saw around him growing up in Alice Springs – but with an '80s twist.
“This originally came from a series I did called Ruby Hood, which was for SBS. It was about how do I keep that tone and make it a little bit longer? I didn’t want to do the same story,” River says. diverse“Taking it back to the 1980s was one way [of making it different]“This game was really cool, and it had cool muscle cars. It was also an opportunity to get away from mobile and modern storytelling. Mobile is kind of an escapism when it comes to storytelling.”
River, the son of Warrick Thornton and producer Penelope MacDonald, is a star in Australian cinema and has previously directed Mystery Road: Origin. But his environment is clearly rich in history and cinematic opportunity. He says: diverse That the story came from a “place of trauma.”
“I want to tell stories that are close to home, stories that are relevant to me,” River says. “And that’s as true in this as it is in any of my other works.”
Although he was born in 1992, River grew up hearing stories about the 1980s through his family, and felt a kinship with that generation.
“My dad was very young when I was born, a teenager in the 1980s. My aunts and uncles would tell stories at family dinners and in the pub about what they used to do. I wish I had been around then,” he says. Especially in central Australia, it was a largely lawless place. It was fun, often illegal, and inspiring.
Courtesy of Toronto IFF
Typical of the Australian television commissioning environment, script development was initially a slow process, followed by a fast-paced process.
“During the Covid lockdown, I wrote a 300-page treatment about Robyn, who meets a young man named Gedge and goes on a road trip between Alice Springs and Adelaide. I always knew she would meet her white father who lives somewhere in the South. The treatment is different from the final result, but she definitely got all the locations on the page, the characters and the episodic structure right,” he says. The next two years were intense, working with Tanith Glenn Maloney (“Windcatcher,” “Finding Jedda”), the show’s co-creator and co-screenwriter, who also serves as executive producer. “I tried to bring people into this world that I could see, people who were older than me, people who could add a female perspective,” River says.
The process took off once the bid found backers from both the public and private sectors.
“We wrote the scripts for the first two episodes. The scripts changed, but we had already written them, and we had outlines for the first six episodes. And when we got the funding, we hit the nail on the head. We got the green light, two scripts, and a date. We had six months to write the first two episodes and four months to write the next six. And now, looking back, the energy that comes with a deadline is insurmountable.”
Set in the 1980s, the story follows the main character’s escape from a juvenile detention centre, bringing the story closer to Australia’s infamous “stolen children” era (c. 1900-1970), when federal, state and church authorities forced Aboriginal and mixed-race people to assimilate, often by removing children from their families. But River deliberately approaches the subject with humor, larger-than-life characters and instantly recognizable situations.
There are a lot of topics in this [show] “They’re movies that are similar to other movies made in Australia. But by approaching them in a comedic way, it makes them more accessible to a wider audience,” he says. “There are a lot of important movies made in Australia. They’re often shown to people who are already familiar with the message, and they love the movie and celebrate it. But if you’re preaching to converts, how do you educate the Australian population? Through comedy, we hope that people who don’t normally watch original Australian dramas will see this movie. They’ll see the humour in it. The cars, the road trip. They’ll see something else.”
“I definitely didn’t try to avoid being a little bit corny, being a little bit conscious, being a little bit over the top at times,” River adds. “I hope there are twists and turns that people don’t expect. But it was very conscious, like, let’s have fun.”
River believes that once viewers are drawn into the series, they will stay waiting for the journey to continue.
“We showed three episodes in Toronto. That was the beginning. [segment] “Then after that, we were supposed to focus on the story for the next five episodes,” he says. “And the response was really good. People laughed and clapped.”
The series is produced by Ludo Studio with Charlie Aspinwall, Daley Pearson (“Bluey,” “Robbie Hood”) and Sophie Miller (“The Family Law”) as executive producers, alongside Ludo Studio producer Sam Moor (“Bluey”) with Since 1788 Productions. Cailah Scobie and Donna Chang are executive producers for Stan. “Thou Shalt Not Steal” received significant production investment from Screen Australia with support from the South Australian Film Corporation, Screen Territory and the Post, Digital and Visual Effects (PDV) Incentive at Screen Queensland.
