"Ross River virus affects more than 6,000 Australians every year. If we can find a way to prevent the virus surviving in mosquitoes we can stop it infecting humans.”Ms Packard along with her two colleagues recently received two AWGIE‘s for their work on the Channel 9 series. Ms Packard has now received the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for a television script for episode 7 of Underbelly,‘wise monkeys’.
All three writers of the series have received the 2008 ‘Major Award and Peer Recognition Prize’ and the ‘Television and mini-series Adaptation’ award following the 41st Australian Writers’ Guild Awards.
“I’m chuffed to bits that our work on Underbelly’s been recognised, especially by our peers in the Australian Writer’s Guild,” said Ms Packard. “As a writer I spend so much time alone, tapping away on my computer so these awards are a reminder – a very pleasant one – that I’m not writing into a vacuum.”
The awards cap off the success of Underbelly following the announcement that the mini-series had become Australia’s most watched series.
“The process of writing this series was unlike any other show, in that we produced first drafts of the entire series before we finalised any one episode.
“We wrote 13 first drafts first so we could look at the whole piece. We had to fight hard to make the network let us do it, but the results have spoken for themselves,” said Ms Packard.
Australian audiences are now anxiously waiting to see if a second series, which looks at the rise of crime in Sydney and Melbourne from the mid 70s to the mid 80s will be commissioned by Channel 9.
