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New Seven drama pilot, Hartman’s Solution.

Seven set to make a rare move with a new drama Pilot with a surgeon looking for his mojo.

sevenTV Tonight hears Seven has a new drama project in the pipeline, Hartman’s Solution.

The series is understood to centre around a brilliant city-based thoracic surgeon whose marriage falls apart, causing him to move to the country to start again.

He moves to a wine-growing area and tries to find his mojo by getting involved with the local community.

The Southern Star script is understood to have a black sense of humour.

The title is also a play on words with Hartmann’s Solution a compound commonly used by anaesthetists.

What makes the project rather unique is Seven’s plan to film a drama Pilot for Hartman’s Solution, a rare move in the current television landscape. So often networks greenlight dramas for full seasons without ever having tested it through a Pilot first.

Seven’s home-grown drama slate continues to perform, dominated by in-house productions A Place to Call Home, Home and Away and Winners and Losers.

In 2014 it adds The Killing Field and the Shine-produced drama INXS: Never Tear Us Apart.

If Hartman’s Solution proceeds to series, it could well be a new 2015 series.

Production gets underway in Victoria next week.

16 Responses

  1. Please let it not be Erik Thomson. I don’t have a problem with him as an actor but this piece needs somebody who can do comedy and be sexy. To win over the ladies young and old and to have a mischievous grin, not Eric. Needs someone like a Matt Passmore or even Jonny Pasvolsky or maybe someone who is also a bit of a crooner like Tim Draxl. I know that not all these actors are available but just to give ideas. Many female friends like Erik but as a nice married man not some sexy single about town. Sorry.

  2. On the other hand Seven have gone right out on a limb with a Rebecca Gibney crime vehicle and an Erik Thompson country doctor vehicle. After the success of Rafters it will be interesting to see if the Seven audience accepts these actors in different roles. Seven are playing very safe – they’ll have a one-off and a pilot to test. A sensible investment for them.

  3. Finally an Australian TV network has the guts to make a TV show about a doctor in the country!

    Hopefully this will encourage networks to make a show about police in the city.

  4. Pilots can be cheaper too if you adopt the American practice of paying actors a lot less for doing a pilot and then compensating them if the show goes into series. A show like Tricky Business probably cost Nine 5 to 6 million. Advertisers love to know that show will run 13 episodes in first series but when it bombs the network has to go into compensation mode for them. Nine are starting with shorter lengths series such as House Husbands so the penny has dropped. But still think Seven strategy makes more sense.

  5. Country Practice 2014…at least Seven is making a series with a male star for a change. I hope they can find a scriptwriter to write for a leading male character. It is so rare on Seven.
    Making a pilot shows how nervous they are to have a male lead in a Seven drama…
    Let’s hope it succeeds & may bring some gender balance to Seven.

  6. Australian commercial networks traditionally made series as cheaply as possible to meet the local drama points system. They have generally been medical or police soaps designed to get x number of points with the cost spread across all the episodes. If they didn’t rate they just got bumped to 10:30pm to get the points and they tried a different one next year.

    They made their money out of buying up US dramas cheaply and getting large audiences for the hits.

    Things have changed, high cost local series are the dramas that are rating best. But this is high risk. For every A Place To Call Home there has been many Crownies. Serangoon Road, Tricky Business, The Straits, White Collar Blue, Cops LAR etc.

    So now piloting becomes safer.

  7. Seven drama leads the way again with a pilot instead of a full series. It is surprising the other networks aren’t doing this. Then we might have been spared Tricky Business, The Strip, Crownies and Wonderland to name a few. McLeod’s Daughters was also made as a telemovie pilot which did extremely well but even then its producer had to battle with Nine to get it into series. Cash strapped Ten should do a couple and see what works. The US model does work.

  8. ‘Hartmann’s Solution’, as with ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, seems like they came up with the pun title first and then made a show around it.

    It’s not that rare that 7 would make apilot however. They made one for Packed to the Rafters, pretty sure they did for Winers & Losers too though I’m not certain. In fact they have a track record of making drama pilots while the other networks have largely stopped doing it. And 7’s drama usually end up being more successful because of it. I would love to see Australia hold a ‘pilot season’ like the US does, and see what better stuff comes out of it. It all costs money, yes, but so does a series that is greenlit without a pilot and then tanks.

  9. @Trulse, yep, sounds very much like a Doc Martin knock-off. Seven generally have the Midas touch with local drama productions (Wild Boys excepted) and they are the masters of creating hype and buzz for their shows so it will probably do well.

  10. It does sound a lot like Doc Martin and I was just thinking it was time for Seven to cycle back to a medical style drama! Kudos to Seven for doing a pilot – and giving the project every chance of succeeding by providing the space for some tweaking if necessary – it’s just so hard to get everything right all at once. More proof, if any was needed, of how confident Seven are.

  11. Erik Thomson is playing the lead role according to Inside Film.
    What’s happened to the other Shine drama series “Catching Milat”.? No mention in Seven’s upfronts – perhaps it’s scheduled for 2015.

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