Close to The End

Created and written by Samantha Strauss (Dance Academy), The End is a 10-part series looking at how three generations of a family deal with issues surrounding life, death and everything in between.

Frances O’Connor plays Dr Kate Brennan, an Australia-based specialist in palliative care who is passionate in her opposition to euthanasia. On the other side of the world, Kate’s mother, Edie Henley (Harriet Walter), feels just as strongly about her right to die.

Kate has little choice but to ship Edie out from England and deposit her in a nearby retirement village in the Gold Coast – Edie’s worst nightmare. And while Kate struggles with her own problems, her children are trying to work out who they are, and who they want to be.

In this DQ interview, Strauss and See-Saw Films executive producers Rachel Gardner and Jamie Laurenson reveal their ambitions to tell a story around the assisted-dying debate and how the story was inspired by real-life events.

They also talk about using a half-hour format for the series and finding the balance between comedy and drama around such a sensitive subject.

The End is produced by See-Saw Films for Sky Atlantic, Now TV and Foxtel, and distributed by Endeavor Content.

tagged in: Endeavor Content, Foxtel, Frances O’Connor, Jamie Laurenson, Rachel Gardner, Samantha Strauss, See-Saw Films, Sky Atlantic, The End