Tony Ayres knows he has a problem. The creators behind Netflix hit "Click -Bait" and "Stateless" with challenges: Jane Harper's bestseller The Survivors aired in about two hours of screening time, but Netflix wants six episodes. Solution? Raise emotional temperature between an inner gui son and his ruthless mother until their broken relationship becomes the heart of the murder mystery of Tasmania's most ruthless landscape.

The six-episode limited series follows Keellie Vickers, who returns to his fictional Tasmanian homeland Evelyn Bay, where a devastating storm takes away three lives, including his older brother. When the body of a young woman is found on the beach, the tragedy forces the close-knit community to face unresolved grief and bury secrets with Kieran’s father (Damien Garvey) (Damien Garvey)’s father (Damien Garvey) who has dementia.

"Jane's book has this dual structure, so I'm kind of like I have to respect that. The book is very compelling. It's really a page Turner, so I really need to try to reflect that effect in the TV series," Ayers told type.

Adaptation presents a major challenge as Harper's novel contains material in a limited six-episode format. "The book itself is about an hour and a half for screen time. We tried to play six episodes. So, there are a lot of inventions, but it's all part of Jane's original novel," Ayres noted.

Perhaps the most significant creative challenge includes transforming the protagonist’s inner guilt and sadness into visual storytelling, which requires careful adaptation to create compelling TV.

“To make the inner journey of the core character, Kieran, externally, I need an opponent, or someone who wants to make it difficult for him to return home,” Ayers explained. “What really shocked me is that the person who fits that best is his mother, Verity (Robyn Malcolm).

This creative decision transforms family dynamics into the emotional core of the series. “I kind of made their relationship warmer, making it more contradictory,” he said. “For me, the theme of the series is a story of a young man desperately trying to have his mother’s forgiveness and love, and a mother who is actually just holding on to his own survival.”

Verity cannot provide forgiveness for what Kieran seeks to be a situation that stems from her own. "She was unable to give up on her story about the past, her narrative of the past, which included blaming Kieran for what happened," Ayers explained. "It was a way for me to externalize his internal journey."

The decision to shoot in the Hawk Neck area of ​​Tasmania proves the transformational tone and theme of the production. “Once we found the neck of the Hawk and the spectacular landscape, it became very clear that these positions are crucial not only to the tone of the show, but to the theme of the show,” Ayers said.

Gothic landscapes are more than just backgrounds. "It's quite Gothic and big, and you feel the scale of nature and its cruelty. It feels like, the big event that causes all these trauma is a storm. So it seems that the neck of the eagle itself is a metaphor for the storm, which is a shocking event."

Ayers describes how the landscape is integrated into storytelling: “We have always blended this series with this sense of cliffs that are not like this kind of cliffs, from this sense of progress, seeing the caves and the ocean, the ferocity of the ocean, all these things, all of these things absolutely make them like storms, but they are miraculous about the symbols of these series, and these things are also excited about the image of these series.

The emotional range of the story requires this grand setting. "What I'm most interested in survivors is the scale of the mother's grief...but also the father's grief, it feels like a Greek tragedy, like "Trojan women" or 'Medea or 'Medea, (both Euripides' drama) or one of the big stories, but in a small setting, the landscape seems to be eCho eecho eecho eecho eecho eecho eecho echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo ”

Unlike typical landscape shots, these visuals serve the narrative. "Sometimes you put these shots in, they're just decorative, like landscape porn, just useless, not necessary. But when we put these shots into our series, they're there throughout the series, and the landscape reverberates emotionally," Ayres explained.

The casting process led by Jane Norris prioritizes the finding of actors with complex emotional landscapes. "In fact, it's just looking for actors who might be very real," Ayers said.

Charlie Vickers is known for "Lord of the Rings: The Ring of Power" and is immediately associated with the character. “When Charlie Vickers walked into the door, Cherie Nowlan (a series directed by Ben C. Lucas), I knew he was Kieran.

Korean-American actor Yerin Ha plays Mia Chang. Adaptation greatly expands the role of MIA. “We managed to keep feeling like an outsider, or different from the rest of this very white town, while also giving her a more investigative storyline because we felt we wanted to really make her a co-leader in the series,” Ayers said.

"Survivor" represents Ayers' exploration of loss and grief. "What really attracted me to Jane's book is that there are people trying to atone for them and they don't even have the idea of ​​ingui," he explained. "The stories I've told in the past are about how you deal with your losses? Although this book, and the show is not only about losses, but actually a guilty feeling of survival."

The “Survivor” is deeply rooted in Australian culture and aims to resonate internationally through real stories. “I think you can only really try to make this thing the best thing in its own way,” Ayers said. “From my experience, if it feels real, if it feels real, if it feels real, if the character feels real, then the truth is how the audience connects with the character.”

While discussing Netflix strategy, Ayres explained, “Let’s give people a real, twisty, fun, engaging murder mystery.” The spectacular Tasmanian setting provides an extra traction. “I also think Tasmania’s novelty will help us because I think people are expected to be impressed or seductive by the landscape,” Ayers noted.

The series is made by Tony Ayres Productions, which is powered by Matchbox Pictures and Universal International Studios. VicsCreen provides additional support through the Victorian Production Fund and Victorian Digital Screen Discount, which produces support from Tasmanian Screens.

"Survivor" will premiere worldwide on Netflix on June 6.