Unsung Auteurs: Daniel Nettheim

By Erin Free

Though incredibly prolific, Australian director Daniel Nettheim (like most of his local peers) remains an Unsung Auteur, largely because the bulk of his work has been done in television. The small screen, unlike the cinema screen, for the most part does not exalt the director as the prime “creator” of a work. On TV, the producer, showrunner or writer is king, while the director is viewed more as a functionary who merely comes in and moves the pieces around on the proverbial chess board. This, however, is a somewhat reductive and unfair school of thought. Though they might not be celebrated for it, a study of the output of top Australian TV directors (Glendyn Ivin, Daina Reed et al) undoubtedly shows a cohesion of style, particularly with regards to their visual imprint and approach to performance. This is certainly the case with Daniel Nettheim, whose stylish, lyrical and inventive imagery permeates not just his two feature films, but also the large selection of TV mini-series he’s helmed.

After graduating from NIDA, Sydney-born Daniel Nettheim made his first splash in the local industry with two short films in 1995: The Third Stroke and The Beat Manifesto. This led to work on the children’s TV series Driven Crazy and a number of video games, and eventually to Nettheim’s debut feature film with 2000’s Angst. Running off a punchy, funny, deeply personal screenplay from first-time feature writer Anthony O’Connor, Angst is the edgy, pop culturally astute tale of Dean (Sam Lewis), a cynical, unlucky-in-love video store clerk who falls hard for Abi Tucker’s Goth chick May, while staggering through a slacker-than-slack existence with his two flatmates, wannabe comedian Ian (Justin Smith) and hopeless pothead Jade (Jessica Napier). Nettheim worked well with his young cast of largely untested actors, and also gave Angst a winningly grungy look, while also providing what would eventually become his trademark stylish visuals. “Daniel Nettheim did such a great job making the film visually appealing,” Angst screenwriter Anthony O’Connor told FilmInk. “It’s really a gorgeous-looking flick. I showed Angst to the great Tom Savini after we’d worked together on the horror flick Redd Inc. (aka Inhuman Resources) and he said it was ‘beautiful.’”

Though Angst wasn’t a huge hit upon release, the high quality of the film saw Daniel Nettheim instantly tapped to helm individual episodes of popular local TV series including The Secret Life Of Us, All Saints, Satisfaction, Rush, White Collar Blue and many, many more. Nettheim worked consistently for over ten years on the small screen before he made his follow-up film to Angst with 2011’s The Hunter. Based on the novel by Julia Leigh (who wrote and directed the controversial film, Sleeping Beauty), and shot against the lush, artfully tangled Tasmanian wilderness, The Hunter stars top-tier import Willem Dafoe as Martin David, a mercenary sent by a biotech company to the Tasmanian wilderness in search of the last Tasmanian Tiger. Martin’s mission becomes increasingly complicated, however, when he begins what could become a tentative romance with the emotionally damaged Lucy (Frances O’Connor), and takes a shine to her two kids, Sass (Morgana Davies) and Bike (Finn Woodlock).

Unspooling at an unhurried pace, and with the complex, slow-burn mercenary at its heart a truly fascinating figure, The Hunter is a beautifully directed film, with Nettheim crafting stunning visuals and a true sense of mood. “The Hunter means a lot to me and to the other people closely involved, particularly Julia Leigh, whose novel we adapted, and Vincent Sheehan, who was the producer,” Nettheim told FilmInk in 2022. “I have stayed in contact with Willem over the years after that and we’d catch up every so often. I’ve got a lot of fond memories of it. Every so often, I see it come up in critics’ list of favourite Australian films which is always really thrilling. You set out to make the best film you can and one that’s kind of meaningful to you as filmmakers. It’s always gratifying when that translates across to wider audiences; that’s what you’re hoping for. But also, I think that film definitely boosted my television career to another level as well. That film launched my UK career and led me to be considered for much more ambitious and interesting work, which was great.”

Daniel Nettheim on the set of *The Tourist*.

It was while doing publicity for the UK release of The Hunter that Nettheim’s career in high quality television began in earnest, with the Australian director handed two episodes of the acclaimed show Whitechapel. “I met with agents at the same time,” Nettheim told FilmInk in 2022. “I ended up signing with an agency. I went back and did a round of meetings about potential TV work and ended up getting offered my first UK job by a producer who I’d known already for ten years. It was helpful to have a contact to make my first break, but then once I’d done my first job over there, the interest just kept coming, I think just by virtue of being a new face in the industry but with lots of experience, which definitely helped.”

From there, Nettheim didn’t stop, eventually directing episodes of popular, highly regarded series both internationally (Doctor Who, Ash Vs Evil Dead, Broadchurch, Hunters, Line Of Duty, Cursed, Safe and many more) and in Australia (Harrow, Secret City, Doctor Doctor). It was on a number of local mini-series, however, that Nettheim would really be able to flex his creative muscles, setting the visual template and really driving the sense of style on three excellent shows in The Tourist, The Twelve and The Messenger. “If you’re setting up the series, if you’re doing the first couple of eps of a new show, that is closer to working on a feature than just doing middle episodes of a show because there’s more creative input in the casting and setting the style and tone,” Nettheim told FilmInk in 2022. “Generally, you get a bit more time to shoot a feature, than to shoot a couple of episodes of TV, but that’s the nature of it. There is also something really rewarding about the immediacy of working TV in that as a director, kind-of gun-for-hire, you’re not involved in the long development process to get the series commissioned. You’re hired when they’re ready to go and they’ve got production dates, and within six months to a year, it’s on TV. There’s something really rewarding about that narrow gap between getting started on the job and seeing that. In my experience with films, say in the case of The Hunter, Vincent Sheehan and I optioned the novel ten years before that film made it to screen. So, you wanna be really committed to the projects that you’re doing as a feature director. For me, being a set-up director is probably the most desirable part of working in TV, when you get to set up the tone for the whole series. I’m also very open to doing middle blocks of a show or the final block if it’s a project I believe in.”