TV pick: Devil's Playground

A scene from the TV show, Devil's Playground.

It may be a series about the Catholic Church but for veteran Australian actor Simon Burke his Devil's Playground represents a kind of reincarnation.

The acclaimed Australian drama is a sequel of sorts to director Fred Schepisi's 1976 film, set in the 1950s, in which the actor starred at the age of 13.

Burke reprises his role as Tom Allen who, 35 years on from the schoolboy in the movie, is a socially-conservative Sydney psychiatrist and widowed father. The series was Burke's idea, having successfully pitched the notion to producers of reprising Allen as an adult.

"He's a practising Catholic and he gets invited by one of the bishops at St Mary's to council a couple of priests who are having some problems," Burke says.

"At the same time a kid at his son's school goes missing. It's the son of a woman he's quite close to.

"Also at the same time the bishop who has asked him to see these priests is involved in a kind of ideological battle with a very conservative bishop over who's going to be the next archbishop.

"So you have a kind of political drama going on within the church, a family story about this guy who's just lost his wife and having the normal kind of dad problems and this really horrific incident where this kid goes missing. Over the course of the series those three plots intertwine and it gets pretty dark and pretty confronting but very compelling I think."

Though some of the controversies surrounding the Australian Catholic Church in the 1980s are now public knowledge, Burke says the story is told through the eyes of an initially devoted church-goer unaware of the scandal to come.

"In the 1980s there was a whole lot of stuff going on people wouldn't know about -- that people like Tom wouldn't know about," he says.

"Possibly he gets the opportunity to find out what's going on and possibly he gets the opportunity to become a kind of early crusader. It's really about one man trying to keep his faith in the face of some pretty big challenges."

Burke was an executive producer of the series which also stars Toni Collette, Jack Thompson, Don Hany and John Noble.

When: Sunday 9.35pm
Where: One
What: A serious test of faith

- TimeOut