In episode six of On the Terrace, Vaya chats with Night Terrace head writer John Richards and episode writer Ben McKenzie about the show’s sixth episode: “The Last Hunt”.

Anastasia and Eddie are separated from the house in Australia’s distant past, just as they’re attacked by a vicious beast! Luckily for them, two local hunters are tracking it – and they’re happy to help our housemates get home along the way. Meanwhile someone else is telling the story of this last hunt to a group of children – including one little girl who has a lot of impertinent questions… The crew discuss their thoughts about being on the BBC, writing this episode, Australian megafauna, casting the series – including this episode’s Naomi Rukavina and Gnarnyarrahe Waitairie – and how it all came together.

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Episode six of Night Terrace, “The Last Hunt”, is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra for 30 days after broadcast. You can also listen to episode one for free, and purchase the rest of the series, via nightterrace.com or the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store. Find Vaya on Neighbuzz at neighbuzzpod.com.

Show Notes

• George Ivanoff still reviews books and DVDs on his web site, georgeivanoff.com.au, in his Literary Clutter and Viewing Clutter columns respectively. Ben came up with the idea that would become “The Last Hunt” as a suggestion which won one of his favourite Doctor Who stories, The Aztecs, on DVD, and you can read his original suggestion here.
• George appears in an episode of Hello! My Name is Eddie, a series of six mini-episodes produced thanks to the first season’s crowdfunding campaign. It’s a collection of Eddie Jones’ misadventures from before he met Anastasia Black. You can find it on our Buy page or in our Bandcamp store.
• The platypus ancestor at Melbourne Museum is part of the 600 Million Years: Victoria Evolves exhibit, but unfortunately at the time of writing the web site for that exhibit was experiencing technical difficulties! We’ll contact the museum and hopefully update this show note soon.
• The “marsupial lion” Thylacoleo carnifex was (as far as we know) the biggest carnivorous mammal to evolve in Australia. It’s extinction is dated to around 46,000 years ago – making Anastasia’s guess that the house has landed 50,000 years in Australia’s past a good one. While one of the theories for its extinction does involve climate change, the more favoured one is still hunting and habitat encroachment from humans.
• You might have seen Gnarnayarrahe Waitairie doing his version of Elvis as “Elvis Elvis” in 2003 Australian film The Wannabes, about a group of wannabe children’s entertainers who get hired by a political party. It was later released in the US as Criminal Ways after co-star Isla Fisher found bigger fame in Hollywood.
• Chantoozies are an Australian pop group formed in the mid 80s, comprising four female singers and four male instrumentalists. (The name is an intentional misspelling of the French word chanteuses.) Their biggest hit was their first single, 1987’s “Witch Queen”, a cover of a American rock group Redbone’s song “The Witch Queen of New Orleans”. They’re probably better known to most Australian listeners for their 1991 cover of “Love the One You’re With”. They disbanded in 1992, but reformed in 2012 and have since toured extensively, including with Rick Astley.
• Hunters & Collectors are a long-running Australian rock group formed in the late 70s. Their best known songs include “Do You See What I See?”, “Holy Grail” and “Throw Your Arms Around Me” (famously covered by the Doug Anthony All-Stars).
• The Facebook group Just not that many (rather than “But not that many”) is a “grassroots visibility initiative created to combat the idea that diverse artists are small in numbers”. Their next big photoshoot, as of the time of writing, will be on Monday, June 3rd at the Melbourne Arts Centre.
• The Bechdel-Wallace Test (as its creator prefers to call it) was invented by Alison Bechdel as dialogue between characters in her webcomic Dykes to Watch Out For. The original rules are: the movie has to have at least two women in it, who talk to each other about something besides a man. Most recent versions add the caveat that the women must be named characters, so “Lawyer #1” and “Bored Woman” don’t count. You can find out if a film passes the test at bechdeltest.com.
• Eryn Saunders is killing it on Instagram! Follow her now before she becomes the next Sophie Turner.
• Sonnigsburg was a six-part supernatural television series about a mysterious town in the forest which hadn’t been visited for seventy years. Eryn Saunders played Olivia, while Petra Elliott played Jade. Originally aired on Victorian community station Channel 31, you can now watch the entire series on YouTube.
• Get Krack!n is an Australian parody of morning television, and also a truly biting socio-political satire. It’s written by and stars Kate McClennan and Kate McCartney, who previously made The Katering Show. It’s not currently available on iView, but you can find the final episode for purchase on YouTube.
• Cleverman is an Australian-New Zealand-American co-production, created by Ryan Griffen for SundanceTV in the US and the ABC in Australia. It’s finished now after two seasons of a total of twelve episodes. It seems to be available on Netflix outside of Australia; here you can get it on iTunes and a few other places.
• Top End Wedding is a new Australian romantic comedy in which Lauren (Miranda Tapsell) and her fiancee Ned must find Lauren’s mother, who’s gone off into the bush in far northern Australia, before they can get married. It premiered in the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and is currently in cinemas in Australia.
• The Sapphires is a 2012 film adaptation of the 2004 play about a singing group of all Aboriginal women who find fame and go on to perform for Australian troops during the Vietnam war. Both the film and the play are based loosely on the story of a real group called The Sapphires, though there are some significant departures from real life. It stars Deborah Mailman, Jessica Mauboy (who was the first performer to represent Australia at Eurovision, though not in competition), Shari Sebbens and Miranda Tapsell as the singers, and Irish actor Chris O’Dowd as the (entirely fictional) talent scout who helps them rise to fame.