By LOUISA CLEAVE
The New Zealand television drama Street Legal has been sold to an Australian network in a breakthrough deal.
It is the first local drama series bought by Australia, and effectively quadruples the amount of New Zealand content shown across the Tasman.
Channel 7, one of the three major commercial
networks in Australia, has bought 26 episodes of the hour-long show made by Auckland production company ScreenWorks.
Australia screened eight hours of New Zealand content last year.
The second series of Street Legal, starring Jay Laga'aia, starts on TV2 tomorrow night.
The sale is significant for New Zealand producers, as there has been some resistance from Australian broadcasters to buying our shows since the Blue Sky agreement in the late 1990s.
An Australian court ruled that the Closer Economic Relations treaty between the countries meant Australian content quotas must include New Zealand programmes.
"That generated a fair amount of feeling and resentment, and fear within Australia that New Zealand programmes were going to swamp the market," said Jo Tyndall, chief executive of New Zealand On Air.
Greg McGee, a partner in ScreenWorks, said the sale was negotiated by a London-based international sales agency.
Street Legal had been sold to a number of European countries already, he said.
Our national soap, Shortland Street, screened on Australia's minority interest channel, SBS.
