Underbelly series 1
[2] The lead-up to Underbelly involved a heavy marketing campaign which covered radio, print, billboards and an increased online presence, including the use of social networking tools.
[6] The injunction was put in place to ensure that upcoming criminal trials were not unfair to the accused, because the series contained fictionalised re-enactments of several disputed events.
In the first episode, the Carlton Crew crime syndicate is introduced, comprising stand-over man Alphonse Gangitano (Vince Colosimo), Domenic "Mick" Gatto (Simon Westaway), loanshark Mario Condello (Martin Sacks), retired bank robber Graham Kinniburgh (Gerard Kennedy) and drug-dealing siblings Jason and Mark Moran (Les Hill, Callan Mulvey) and their father Lewis (Kevin Harrington).
Jason Moran's seemingly harmless and half-witted driver Carl Williams (Gyton Grantley) is also introduced, along with two police characters; Steve Owen (Rodger Corser) and Jacqui James (Caroline Craig), the most prominent members of Task Force Purana.
Alphonse Gangitano, the self-styled "Black Prince of Lygon Street", kills a man at a party over a small debt and with Jason injures 13 innocent people.
Carl kills Mark with the assistance of drug dealer Dino Dibra (Daniel Amalm) and L (Ian Bliss), who establish a false alibi.
Consumed by revenge for Benji's death, his friend, the convicted killer Lewis Caine (Marcus Graham), decides to kill Condello, the last survivor of the Carlton Crew.
The final voice-over was rerecorded during the production of Underbelly: Razor in preparation for the 2011 airing of the show in Victoria to also include information on Carl Williams' murder and Tony Mokbel's arrest in a "cheap wig" in Greece.
[1] As the Nine Network was interested in creating local and world-class television, they decided to invest in a drama series that told the story of the Melbourne gangland killings.
[17] Haddrick, Screentime's Head of Drama, felt that the challenge for the writing team was to "capture the essential truth of these extraordinary events in a compelling and coherent manner".
[22] The lead-up resulted in a heavy marketing campaign which covered radio, print, billboards and an increased online presence, including the use of social networking tools.
[24] It was announced that the full first episode would be available for download on the site on 10 February, three days before the show premieres on television,[25] but this option was made unavailable due to the Supreme court suppression case.
[27] According to its marketing, Underbelly "uses the framework of the murderous war between the two gangs, and the bigger moral war between the gangs and the Purana Task Force, to explore a complex array of individual stories and relationships—some touching, some incredible, all breathtaking—it is a mini-series that examines the kaleidoscopic nature of loyalty, love, revenge and pride when the normal and identifiable emotions of human attachment are moved from the context of social decency to social indecency.
[28] The series follows the lives of two late infamous drug lords, "Aussie Bob" Trimbole and Terry "Mr Asia" Clark, portrayed by Roy Billing and Matthew Newton respectively.
[33] The fourth series, Underbelly: Razor, began airing on 21 August 2011 and was mostly concerned with telling the story of 1920s criminal matriarchs Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh.
"[35] A review appeared in the Herald Sun on 18 January 2008, in which critic Paul Anderson quoted: "Whether you followed the Melbourne gangland war or not, there's a fair chance you will be blown away by the coming TV series Underbelly.
"[9] On 11 February 2008 the Australian Family Association (AFA), was publicly outraged that Underbelly would be screening at 8:30 pm, well within reach of children, after clips of the series were leaked onto the internet.
The Australian Family Association threatened to take the matter to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy if the content of the show was anything near that of an unauthorised promotional clip leaked from Nine's production department.
[37] The opening double episodes, which aired on 13 February, attracted an average of 1,320,000 viewers nationally, minus Victoria, making it the third most-watched show of the night.
[55] George Defteros, a high-profile lawyer, against whom criminal charges were dropped because the prosecution did not have enough evidence, disrupted the lead-up to the series' launch, when he threatened the Nine Network with a Supreme Court writ on 26 January 2008.
[56] The screening of Underbelly in Victoria was put into jeopardy after last-minute legal proceedings were instituted by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Jeremy Rapke, QC.
A Supreme Court judge called prosecutors and defence lawyers together after serious concerns were raised about whether the show could prejudice the jury in the trial of Evangelos Goussis, who had pleaded not guilty to the 2004 gangland killing of Lewis Moran.
[61] Justice King issued a suppression order on 12 February banning the Nine Network from broadcasting the series in the state of Victoria and on the internet until after the murder trial was completed.
[65] The ban expired the week ending 30 May 2008, with the conviction of Goussis for the murder of Lewis Moran, paving the way for Nine to begin screening episodes;[66] however, Andrew Rule, who co-wrote the book on which the series is based, says Underbelly will not be seen in Victoria anytime soon, saying "the problem now will be that Tony Mokbel is back in Australia and ready to stand trial on very serious charges.
A 9:30 pm timeslot allowed the airing of the 'Uncut' edition, based on the episodes as they appeared in the DVD/Blu-ray release, and a few further alterations were made to update the show's significantly outdated summary of current events.
It was not branded as Underbelly due to changes in funding with Screen Australia, but chronologically acts as a direct sequel to the first series of the show, with most of the same cast playing the same characters with only one or two exceptions.
Underbelly began airing in New Zealand on TV3 on Sunday at 9:30 pm,[2] but the network put the series on hiatus after three episodes because it was "not performing as expected in the time slot".
The series will be broadcast in Scandinavia, Canada, France,[74] the UK, Italy (Rai 4), Balkans, Korea, Pan-Asia, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Turkey and Germany.
Legal experts said Victorians who bought the box set interstate and watched it themselves at home would likely not fall foul of the law, but anyone who showed it more widely could be charged with contempt.
[68] In September 2008, a Limited Edition DVD was released, containing a numbered steel case and an extra disc with a documentary entitled Carl Williams – A Day of Reckoning.
