Serangoon full of Eastern promise

Veteran television producer Paul Barron is no stranger to working in Singapore. His big-budget science-fiction family series Stormworld was partly filmed there in 2008 and he made the Singapore Sling series of telemovies starring John Waters on the island state in the 1990s.

Barron, whose prolific output during the 1980s and 1990s included Nicole Kidman’s Bush Christmas, Heath Ledger’s Sweat, A Waltz Through the Hills and Blackfellas, has now set and filmed an entire prime-time drama in Singapore, with Serangoon Road set to premiere on ABC1 and HBO Asia on Sunday.

“It’s a genuine co-production with genuine shared stories, not just using some place as an exotic location,” Barron said from his office at Great Western Entertainment in Claremont.

“No Australian network has commissioned a long-form drama series set outside of Australia for as long as I can remember. The only one I can remember was the ABC one many years ago, Embassy. It was set in another country but was all shot here.”

Co-produced by ABC Television and HBO Asia with the assistance of ScreenWest and the Media Development Authority of Singapore, Serangoon Road was created by Barron and made by Great Western Studios and Singapore’s Infinite Studios.

Named after one of Singapore’s major roads, Serangoon Road is set in the mid 1960s against the backdrop of political, social and racial tensions in the region. Sam Callaghan, played by Offspring and EastWest 101 star Don Hany, was interned with his mother in Changi Prison during World War II. His mother died in Changi five months before the war ended; his father was an Australian army major sent to work on the Burma Railway when Singapore fell to the Japanese, and never returned.

After the war Sam was sent back to Australia to live with relatives, but he enlisted when he turned 18 and served during the Malayan Emergency, using his multilingual skills to work in intelligence before being dishonourably discharged.

Sam runs an import-export business with his gambling- prone business partner Kang (Alaric Tay), while conducting a clandestine affair with Claire Simpson (Maeve Dermody), the lonely and bored wife of an expat company executive (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor).

Life takes some dangerous turns when Sam agrees to help his neighbour Patricia Cheng (Joan Chen of The Home Song Stories, Twin Peaks), whose husband was killed while working on a case for their detective agency. Sam has valuable contacts among Australian, British and American expats and with the local Chinese and Malay communities, but he’s also battling demons and carrying baggage that is slowly revealed as the series progresses.

“Let’s face it, this is a detective series,” said Barron, who serves as executive producer with former ABC and Network Ten head of drama, Sue Masters.

“I picked the genre deliberately because I have always loved detective series and I wanted to make sure it was in a genre that was very popular worldwide because there have been no long form series of this kind shot in Asia for a worldwide audience.

“It was a time of race riots, it was a time of Australians being part of a jungle war in Borneo and using Singapore as a staging ground, it was a time when the CIA and KGB were in direct conflict in South-East Asia.”

Other familiar Australian faces include Michael Dorman, Tony Martin and Rachael Blake. About 50 per cent of the major roles were filled by Asian actors, more than 60 per cent in supporting roles rising to 90 per cent of extras.

“We were all united on this, HBO, ABC and me — that we be authentic,” Barron explained. He also secured some of Australia’s best talent behind the scenes, with Peter Andrikidis (Wildside, Bikie Wars: Brothers in Arms) and Tony Tilse (Crownies, City Homicide) directing and WA’s Herbert Pinter and Joseph Pickering as set designer and director of photography respectively.

Filming took place from last September until early this year at locations including heritage houses, schools and the iconic Raffles Hotel, while all the Chinatown scenes were shot on Indonesia’s Batam Island, to the south of Singapore.

“The man worked miracles under extremely difficult conditions,” Barron said of Pinter.

“Infinite Studios, over on the island of Batam, they built a back lot, a Chinatown back lot. This is old-school Hollywood, nobody builds back lots anymore.

“We wanted to make the Singapore audience watching it say ‘My God, that’s real’.”

Serangoon Road airs on Sunday at 8.30pm on ABC1.

Serangoon full of Eastern promise