The right team. The right time.' How The Killings at Parrish Station stuck to their creative guns

The right team. The right time.' How The Killings at Parrish Station stuck to their creative guns 7 July 2026

Ben Jenkins

Creator and co-writer Ben Jenkins on finding the right collaborators and the comedy to horror pipeline.

Find this episode of the Screen Australia Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Pocket Casts.

Horror is having a moment, and so is creator Ben Jenkins with the recent release of the cosmic horror, crime drama The Killings at Parrish Station.

Like the creators of horror hits across the globe such as Get Out, Weapons, Talk to Me, and more recently Obsession and Backrooms, Jenkins started in comedy. Horrible things sometimes happen to quite funny people. [ ] People are naturally funny, even when bad things are happening to them, hey says. And that, to me, is drama.

Despite notes to downplay the horror and comedy - If you want to do some spooky stuff, you can, but for the most part, don't lead with that - he credits the collaborative and improvisational nature of his sketch comedy past with shaping production of the series, instilling confidence to back the concept and landing the right market fit with Stan and ITV.

Jenkins shares the development and delivery of the series from its ideation in Soviet urban myths and working with Helium and Stan, to building a shared creative vision with director Daniel Nettheim, writers Tim Pye, Catherine Smyth-McMullen and Yolanda Ramke, as well as leading cast Mia Wasikowska, Heather Mitchel, Xavier Samuel, Robert Taylor, Alan Dale and Doris Younane.

The series investigates the gruesome murder of four scientists in a remote Australian desert research station. Set across the original mystery in 1987 and the fallout of a potential copycat spree killer decades later, Detectives Georgia Cooke (Wasikowska and Mitchell) and Michael Thorne (Samuel and Taylor) grapple with the uncanny mystery that threatens their families, careers and sanity.

The Killings at Parrish Station is available now on Stan.

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