McLeod's Daughters - Series History

Series History

Posie Graeme-Evans developed the idea for McLeod's Daughters in the early 1990s for her company Millenium Television in conjunction with the South Australian Film Corporation. She also developed the idea for children's television programs such as The Miraculous Mellops and Hi-5. The idea was for a television drama set on an Australian rural property with two half-sisters running the property inherited from their father with an all-female workforce. She developed the idea from stories from friends who grew up in the country and from the love of South Australian landscapes as shown in the paintings of Hans Heysen.

Graeme-Evans pitched the idea to the board of the Nine Network who agreed to film a telemovie in 1996 with Jack Thompson starring as the father Jack McLeod, whose death leads to the two half-sisters (portrayed by Kym Wilson as Tess and Tammy MacIntosh as Claire) inheriting the property. Following the success of the telemovie shown on Mother's Day 1996 the Nine Network board agreed to commission a 22 episode series, but the project was left on the shelf for four years. It was not until late 2000 after the Opening Ceremony for the 2000 Sydney Olympics featured a The Man from Snowy River theme, which highlighted the cultural significance of the bush to Australians. The first episode of McLeod's Daughters eventually debuted in August 2001 and proved to be a hit, attracting 1.89 million viewers. The first season was a success, attracting an average of 1.5 million viewers per episode in Australia. The show aired in New Zealand on TV2, one of TVNZ's free-to-air channels. The final season on TV2 began airing a month after Australia and eventually became 10 episodes in front of Australia until the finale. Re-runs from Season 1 are currently on Vibe in New Zealand, a channel aimed at woman's programming.

The second season of McLeod's Daughters was equally successful, being the third most popular drama on Australian television. By 2003, the show was the most popular drama series on Australian television. Lisa Chappell, who played Claire McLeod, left the show in October 2003 to further her acting and singing career. Her character was killed off in the landmark episode 72 (season 3, episode 28) "My Noon, My Midnight", but appeared in episode 73 "The Long Goodbye" (3.29) as a figment of Tess' imagination.

The popularity of the program in Australia was highlighted when the show won four Logie Awards (Logies), including Lisa Chappell winning most popular female actor and Aaron Jeffery winning most popular actor, with the show itself winning most popular Australian drama series in 2004 and 2005.

The show then began to decline in popularity and perceived quality. Cast turn-over was high, and increasingly far-fetched explanations were employed to explain the sudden departure of formerly important characters. Rachael Carpani's departure in 2007 meant that the show had only one original cast member left, Aaron Jeffery, who left in 2008. 2007 marked the point at which many viewers considered the show to have "jumped the shark" as the show had drifted into a new direction, that of a soap opera; at that point, the show began to experience low ratings. Aaron Jeffery commented to The Daily Telegraph that his desire to depart from the show was due to the new direction the show was taking, which he did not like.

The 200th episode of McLeod's Daughters aired on 3 October 2007, with Hugh McLeod (Grace, Jasmine and Regan's father) returning for this special event. An entirely different script was originally written when one of the original cast (speculated to be Bridie Carter) agreed to come back; however, it was pulled at the last minute. Ratings for this episode were very poor by Australian standards, with only 1,008,000 viewers tuning in; the highest that season was 1,415,000 for episode 16.

The eighth and final season began on 23 July 2008 with the episode 203, "Aftermath," but after two further episodes, Channel 9 pulled the show from its schedule due to extremely low ratings. The remaining episodes were eventually aired from December to January in a double-episode format, with the final two episodes ("Into the Valley of the Shadow" and "The Long Paddock") airing on 31 January 2009 with original cast members Rachael Carpani and Sonia Todd returning for the special event.

The final season began airing in the UK on the Hallmark Channel (now Universal Channel) on 12 October 2008 with double episodes every Sunday morning from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. The final two episode aired in the UK on Sunday 21 December 2008, a month before the episodes aired in Australia. The show continues to air repeat episode on the Universal Channel weekday mornings at 6.00am, usually only seasons 6-8 in rotation.

In Germany the final two episodes aired on 4 November 2008 in a German-dubbed-version, what is actually more than one month before airing in the UK in the original language.

In Ireland, RTÉ Two began airing the final season in mid-2010, with the final episode airing early 2011. This was the first time season 8 had been shown on the channel, as RTÉ had long period gaps between each season. In early 2011, the channel began airing the series from the beginning.

In the US, NetFlix made all 8 seasons available to US subscribers for instant viewing in 2009, and remains available as of 2012.