by Leslie Morris
Producer and actor Steve Bastoni fills us in on Bean King, a new, semi-autobiographical TV series from creator John Raftopoulos (Take My Hand) about the surprisingly cutthroat world of Melbourne’s fruit and vegetable night markets in the 1980s.
It’s a cold morning in Clayton, just off the Princess Highway, about 20kms outside Melbourne. We arrive at a large storage facility and walk left towards a gate. You’d never expect a warehouse to be hidden behind it, let alone a massive one being used as a set. The huge warehouse is broken up into several different sets. There’s a Greek café set that looks like something straight out of the 1980s, with classic blue Greek key border patterns and a Mediterranean coastline mural on the wall. There’s also a brothel, an office with vintage props, and a toilet, which looks absolutely miserable: raw, rusted sheet metal, the kind of place you wouldn’t even want to die in. I quickly discover that these are all production designed sets.
There are also rows and rows of tables where the actors and crew are sitting around between setups. This is where we meet producer and actor Steve Bastoni, forever known for playing the much-loved Constable Yiannis “Angel” Angelopoulos on TV’s Police Rescue, and for decades of appearances in film (15 Amore, The Matrix Reloaded, Broke, The Water Diviner, Drift) and TV (Blue Murder, Fires, Australian Gangster, Underbelly) since.
“Nobody’s ever told this story,” says Bastoni with his trademark passion. “From our perspective, it was like, ‘Let’s just show them. We believe in it.’ We knew we could get the best of the best in Australia to play these roles. So, let’s just make it look like $5 million. We’ve achieved that. That’s the game.”
The game in question is Bean King. When you hear that it’s an independent pilot that hasn’t been picked up by a TV network or streamer yet, you naturally brace yourself and adjust your expectations. But this is a full-scale professional production, and feels just like any other film set. There are two cameras rolling: one locked-off and one on a gimbal. When FilmInk visits the Clayton set, the team is in its third and final week of shooting, but everyone looks like they could keep going forever. There’s no sense of exhaustion. The energy is electric, and from the main stars down to the runners, it genuinely feels like everyone is enjoying being there. There’s a great mood on set.
Steve Bastoni is producing and starring in the proposed series which comes courtesy of creator John Raftopoulos, with whom he worked previously on the affecting drama 2024 Take My Hand. That film’s Claire Jensz is also Executive Producer on Bean King.
“While we were shooting Take My Hand, where I played his character’s father, John said to me, ‘Oh, I’ve got this other project that I want to work with you on. It’s the story of my father and my upbringing in the markets.’ When I heard that, I was like, ‘Nobody’s ever done this. Nobody’s ever told this story from a historical perspective, from the migrant’s point of view.’ The fruit and vegetable market in Melbourne is a microcosm of a world that’s never been seen before. Nobody knows the inner machinations and workings of the market. We all eat the food that comes from the market. The market feeds Victoria. The market literally provides the food base for all of Victoria and Australia. It’s an integral part of Australian industry, but it’s a very secretive and closed world.”
Okay, if you’re scratching your head and thinking, “Fruit markets?”, just back up a second. Back in the 1980s, this was a tough scene populated by Greek and Italian migrants with a burning desire to succeed and move up the societal ladder, with the long shadow of organised crime starting to creep in amongst the potatoes and lettuce leaves, while various law enforcement figures hovered ominously in the background. Though John Raftopoulos takes the life of his father as a kick-off point, Bean King is very much a fictionalised take on his story.
“John first came to me saying, ‘I want to tell my father’s story,’” Bastoni tells FilmInk. “And I said, ‘Well, yeah, this is great, but this isn’t your father’s story. This is your story. It’s got to be told through your eyes… it’s your father’s life through your eyes.’ I also said to John that we needed to take artistic licence and embellish this for dramatic purposes. We need some people to get fucked up. We need some action in there because his father was actually a pretty strait-laced businessman who survived in a very cutthroat world. He was one of the few Greeks who was able to succeed in a very Italian dominated market. He became the Bean King for a period… hence the title of the series.”
Part fact and part juiced-up fiction, Bean King is the story of Nick Varthos, a charismatic yet ruthless Greek-Australian fruit and vegetable wholesaler who navigates Melbourne’s chaotic night market with razor sharp instincts and an iron grip. As he battles competitors, organised crime, and internal betrayals, his empire – and family – teeters on the brink of dominance and collapse. With echoes of everything from Underbelly, Succession and The Sopranos through to cultural touchstones like The Godfather, the potential is certainly there for Bean King to be something special.
“When you think, ‘Oh, well, beans…where are the stakes in that?’, consider this,” Bastoni smiles. “When you’re moving $80,000 a day worth of beans, it becomes a lot. A billion dollars went through that market every year. Beans. This is our currency. This is our world. This is what people are willing to live and die over. And suddenly, the stakes are huge when you realise the volume and money that’s involved and the pride and the ego that these men had in having the best produce. Nick Varthos thinks he’s The Bean King. There’s a lot at stake. There’s also a theme of succession that runs through the series. We’re planning for the second and third episodes to introduce Nick’s son a lot more. The first episode really sets up Nick’s world and how he rose to power.”
Taking on the role of Nick Varthos is Melbourne-born actor Costas Mandylor, who hit the international stage back in the late eighties and early nineties with a supporting role in Robert M. Young’s Triumph of the Spirit opposite Willem Dafoe and then a major part in the popular series Picket Fences. “We brought Costas back,” Bastoni says of the actor, who boasts a decidedly aged and authoritative on-set presence. “He hasn’t worked in Australia for 35 years. He did Picket Fences and then he did the Saw franchise and he’s been doing action movies in Bulgaria! He’s a solid actor and he has the gravitas that this character needs. You need to feel for this guy.”
Steve Bastoni has a pretty solid role himself, taking on the character of Carlo, Nick’s principal antagonist in the heady world of Melbourne’s night markets. “The main dramatic arc is the conflict between Carlo, my character, and Nick,” Bastoni explains. It’s a race for supremacy in this market… there are all kinds of shenanigans going on, with people undercutting each other and sabotaging each other’s deliveries. All kinds of Machiavellian stunts are pulled in order to reach the top. And all the while, Nick Varthos is also caring for his young son, and he’s married to a beautiful woman. He’s seemingly got the perfect life, but he’s got this internal thing going on. It’s a little bit like Murdoch… this unquenchable thirst for power. It’s not really about the money anymore because he’s got the money… or the beans. It’s not about the beans! It’s about the natural human pull to have power.”
Bastoni and John Raftopoulos have gathered a strong cast for the series, with Neighbours up-and-comer Nikita Christos taking on the role of Nick’s son, Christian, and Georgina Haig playing The Bean King’s headstrong queen, Marie. Supporting roles are played by an impressive array of Aussie talent, including Damian Walshe-Howling, Justin Rosniak [left, with Joe ‘shaddap you face’ Dolce (!!) on the set], Vince Colosimo, Shane Jacobson, Alex Dimitriades, Elle Mandalis and many more. “It’s just awesome to see them all together working on this,” Bastoni smiles. “Everyone’s got a story relating to the markets too. They all go, ‘My dad worked there. My uncle worked in the markets…’”
With the pilot episode shot but yet to be edited, Steve Bastoni sees a lot of potential in the proposed series that is Bean King. “It’s unique,” the actor/producer says. “It’s going to have a much wider appeal than just a Melbourne audience. For starters, the 1.5 million Italian and Greeks in Australia are all going to be tuning into this. The Vietnamese and the Sudanese and the Indians are all going to be going, ‘Oh, that’s like my father.’ And hopefully it reaches a broader audience through the themes of succession, the rise to power, the human thirst for power, the complexity of family relationships, and the family dynamics. It’s a fascinating insight into a world that’s never been seen before.”
Stay tuned for more on Bean King.
