Factual

Abacus Media Rights (AMR), the new distribution company headed by Jonathan Ford, has sold the shocking Australian true crime story The Night Caller, a STAN Original Production, to AMC Networks’ streaming service Sundance Now in the US and Canada, Sky’s home of true crime documentaries – Sky Crime – in the UK, and DR in Denmark ahead of its official launch at MIPCOM.

The Night Caller (4 x 1 hour) depicts and explores a killer’s harrowing legacy – of tragedy, grief, responsibility and redemption – as seen through the eyes of a filmmaker returning to his childhood home in Perth Australia, and spending time with those closest to the killer and his victims, whose lives he altered irrevocably.

Creator and director Thomas Meadmore commented “I’ve returned to Australia, the place where I was brought up, to examine an urban legend that shaped my parents' existence, and thus me too, in ways I hadn’t realised until I shared time with those most deeply affected by Cooke and explored how the trauma of these events still live on in these people, as well as the broader community today. The team at Abacus, EQ Media and Salon Pictures have been an extraordinary support and I can’t wait to share it all with you.”

Jonathan Ford adds, “This is a particularly heart-rending and alarming true crime documentary series that goes deep behind the facts of a terrifying case to the heart of the people involved and reveals the traumatic repercussions of a serial killer’s appalling actions on a community now seeking redemption.”

In the early 1960s, Perth was a sunny, peaceful and innocent city, until suddenly devastated by a spate of horrific, disparate, seemingly senseless killings, which local police failed to connect and attribute to one man until it was far too late with tragic consequences.

With unprecedented access to the killer’s wife and the two men wrongly convicted of his crimes, this is a series about the devastating aftermath of serial murder, and how his victims, which include his wife and those wrongly convicted of his crimes, have come together through grief and injustice, in the pursuit of closure and redemption, which includes finally holding the police to account. Produced by EQ Media Group and Salon Pictures.