John Edwards (producer)

Robert John Edwards (born 4 March 1953) is an Australian television drama producer.

Early life

Edwards grew up on the northern beaches of Sydney, counting football player Rex Mossop as a family friend. and his childhood football coach. His father was a car dealer.

Edwards was competent at school, and afterwards, he "drifted" through university and half-graduate degrees, before becoming a history teacher at both Swansea High School and Fairfield High School. After facing a personal glitch, he decided to explore the idea of working in television, and subsequently took leave from the education department.

Career

Edwards landed a six week job at Film Australia doing preliminary research on 1982 telemovie The Weekly's War, a co-production for the Nine Network about seeing World War II through the eyes of the Women's Weekly. He ended up co-writing the show, which led to a couple of years of short term contracts followed by a paid apprenticeship at Film Australia, developing and writing films.

Deciding writing wasn't for him, Edwards decided to explore producing. He optioned a couple of books, which were made as low budget films, including 1985 thriller The Empty Beach, starring Bryan Brown (marking Edwards' producing debut), and 1985 children's film I Own the Racecourse.

Following this, Edwards won a Creative Producers Support Scheme award from the AFC and was mentored through the industry. He landed a producer role on the 1986 miniseries Cyclone Tracy, which proved a ratings hit. Off the back of its success, he produced the 1988 ABC series Stringer, for which the soundtrack (featuring Kate Ceberano and Wendy Matthews) went double platinum.

Edwards then took over an ABC pilot which became the series Police Rescue, starring Gary Sweet, Steve Bastoni and Steve Bisley. This facilitated the beginning of his long-running relationship with Southern Star. He followed this with the Cody telemovie series (1994–1995) and drama series Big Sky (1997–1999), reuniting with Gary Sweet for both. He also produced the Golden Globe-nominated miniseries On The Beach (2000), starring Armand Assante, Rachel Ward and Bryan Brown.

Edwards next found success with critically-acclaimed drama series The Secret Life of Us, starring Claudia Karvan, Deborah Mailman and Samuel Johnson, which ran for four seasons from 2001 to 2004. Off the back of the success of Secret Life, Edwards and Karvan secured a development deal for a series which became Love My Way. After it was knocked back by Network 10, the pair took it to Foxtel. The series, starring Karvan, Asher Keddie, Dan Wyllie, Brendan Cowell and Ben Mendelsohn, garnered numerous awards, including six Logies and eight AFI Awards. It ran for three seasons, from 2004 to 2007.

Following this, Edwards produced numerous drama series including Dangerous (2007) with Joel Edgerton, Out of the Blue (2008) and four seasons of police procedural series Rush (2008–2011), with Rodger Corser and Callan Mulvey. Further credits during this period included Tangle (2009–2012), starring Ben Mendelsohn, Justine Clarke and Catherine McClements, Spirited (2010–2011) and Puberty Blues (2012–2014) both with Karvan and Corser and Party Tricks (2014), featuring Corser and Keddie.

Edwards produced long-running comedy-drama series Offspring (2010–2017), starring Logie winner Asher Keddie as the lead character of Nina Proudman. He was instrumental in launching Keddie's career, after a guest role in The Secret Life of Us led to him cast her as Julia in Love My Way, followed by her role in Offspring. She then played the lead role of Ita Buttrose in his 2011 miniseries ' for the ABC.

During this time, Edwards also produced several other miniseries including Beaconsfield (2011), Howzat! Kerry Packer's War (2012), ' (2013), Gallipoli, The Beautiful Lie (2015), and ' (2016).