Writer, producer and director Michael Jenkins – who brought Heartbreak High to Australian audiences, as well as ABC crime dramas Blue Murder and Scales of Justice – has died aged 77.
Jenkins died on Monday afternoon, his partner, Amanda Robson, confirmed to his management. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2020.
“Jenkins’ contributions to the entertainment industry and his legacy as a film-maker and storyteller will be well remembered,” his management agency wrote.
A prolific director who became known for his frenzied, fast-paced style and depictions of vice and delinquency, Jenkins was described as “warm, fair and empathetic” by his colleague and fellow director Ian Barry.
“Unequivocally, Mike has been a prodigious creator of excellent and groundbreaking film and television spanning five decades,” Barry wrote in a tribute for the Australian Directors’ Guild. “I’d long marvelled at Mike’s talent as a film-maker and his ability for capturing truth in performance and to achieve startlingly realistic visual styles.”
Born in Sydney in 1946, Jenkins studied philosophy at university and undertook a cadetship at the ABC after graduation. He spent a few years working as a reporter in the Canberra press gallery, but soon transferred back to Sydney and began working as a production assistant at the ABC – before he got his start as a director on the ABC soap opera Bellbird in the late 60s.
Over the next decade he continued to write and direct a number of shows and TV movies on the same network. In 1983 came one of his breakouts: the ABC crime miniseries Scales of Justice – controversial at the time for its focus on police corruption.
Over three episodes, it followed a young constable whose idealism is slowly eroded as he witnesses malfeasance within the force. The show introduced Jenkins’ unsparing, unvarnished tone to broader audiences.
Two years later, he made his feature film debut in a completely different genre: the second world war musical Rebel, starring Matt Dillon, Debra Byrne and Bryan Brown. It went on to win five AFI awards.
Jenkins helmed two more films in the following years: the 1988 David Williamson adaptation Emerald City, featuring a young Nicole Kidman in one of her earliest film roles; and the 1991 family drama Sweet Talker, which reunited Jenkins with Bryan Brown.
In 1993, he struck gold again with The Heartbreak Kid, a romcom based on a stage play following a teacher (Claudia Karvan) who falls in love with her student (Alex Dimitriades). The film became a box office success in Australia and received international recognition at the Montreal world film festival, where it won best screenplay.
It also became a precursor to Heartbreak High, which Jenkins – along with producer and longtime collaborator Ben Gannon – developed as a spin-off from The Heartbreak Kid.
On Heartbreak High, which premiered on Channel Ten in 1994, Jenkins worked as both executive producer and director. Set in a Sydney high school, the show became a cult hit for its barbed dialogue, gritty realism, and distinctly multicultural cast that set it apart from the stylised polish of other teen series.
It ran for 210 episodes and was syndicated in over 70 countries, though Jenkins himself left after three years.
The show kicked off a winning streak in the late 90s. In 1995, a year after Heartbreak High launched, Jenkins directed the ABC crime miniseries Blue Murder, returning to the same themes of corruption and disillusionment he had explored on Scales of Justice.
Based on the true story of a disgraced police officer and a gang kingpin, the show was a critical success, picking up four AFI awards and three Logies – including for its lead Richard Roxburgh. In a recent retrospective, Guardian critic Luke Buckmaster called Blue Murder “a visceral skewering of Australian machismo” that remains “startlingly fresh”.
From 1997 to 1999, Jenkins and Gannon again worked together as creators of Wildside, another resoundingly acclaimed crime drama.
Like much of Jenkins’ previous work, it leant into a documentary style, with semi-improvised dialogue and frenetic camerawork as it followed the lives of an inner-city detective and the staff of a crisis centre.
Throughout the 2000s, his output slowed, though he did make headlines in 2007 when he was announced as the director of a film based on a real-life case about the gang-rape of a teenage girl.
“It’s an incredibly sympathetic investigation and exploration of these events,” Jenkins said at the time – though the film was later shelved after criticism from then-NSW premier Morris Iemma.
Jenkins’ last credit was as a producer on Netflix’s 2022 reboot of Heartbreak High, where he consulted on scripts. He is survived by his partner Amanda Robson. In his later years, he retired to Tasmania, though he had recently moved back to Sydney to be closer to family.
