Molly Meldrum TV Drama Tipped For 2015

A TV series based on the life of music industry icon Molly Meldrum and the influential Countdown program is currently being developed for Channel Seven, according to The Australian.

The show has not yet been green-lit but is being developed by Mushroom Pictures, part of Michael Gudinski's Mushroom Group. The newspaper reports that the script is being written from Meldrum's autobiography Molly, which industry folklore swears was completed years ago by journalist Jeff Jenkins but is being held back by Meldrum himself.

One of the industry's most recognisable figures, Meldrum recently returned to presenting on Foxtel's Max music channel. It is his first full-time job since a fall at his Melbourne home left him in a critical condition in December 2011.

Mushroom's synopsis of the project – as seen by The Aus – says the show will tell the story of “the music, the bands, the parties, the celebrities, the politics, the girlfriends and boyfriends, the hat and, most of all, the story of Molly himself.”

The show was in development before the ratings success of the INXS mini-series INXS: Never Tear Apart (in which Meldrum was a character), but the race to dramatise the music industry on the small screen is now heating up. Meldrum's contract with Channel Seven (rather than the ABC, where Countdown aired) leads pundits to speculate it could open the ratings period for the network – just like INXS did this year – in February 2015.

Countdown has previously toured as a musical theatre production.