Wolf Creek TV series brings the evils of Mick Taylor to the small screen

It was ten years ago this week that I first watched the Australian fright flick Wolf Creek, and man was I impressed. "Low-budget horror doesn’t get much better than this," I raved in my review of the film about a sadistic freak in the Outback who preys on innocent backpackers.

Little did I know that two weeks or so later I'd have to cringe at the sight of more attractive young people being tortured and killed when Eli Roth's Hostel cut its bloody swath across North American theatres.

Of the two, I preferred writer-director Greg McLean's Wolf Creek, which relied more on suspense than Roth's did on repulsion. Anyone else who loved it--or its 2013 sequel, which I haven't seen yet--might want to know that a new, six-part TV miniseries will carry on the twisted exploits of serial killer Mick Taylor (Aussie film vet John Jarratt).

“I think he’s a fascinating character," McLean told the Sydney Morning Herald in a story posted yesterday. "Basically we’re fascinated by evil and bad people. Anything to do with true crime and people’s fascination with that kind of storytelling, even a detective story, it ultimately just proves the fact that people are just fascinated by other people and particularly by people’s motivations.

“When people reach that level of evil it is compelling," he added, "because we’re just trying to understand why and how. When we hear about these things that people do in the world, we try to understand it. What could happen to make someone do that? What happened to them to be able to be so cruel and so violent?"

The bad news is that the Wolf Creek miniseries will be released on streaming service Stan, which is like the Netflix of Australia, so it might take a while to get over to these shores, if ever. 

Then again, if you know anybody Down Under who owns a TV, it's only a short, 17-hour flight from here.