Press release: For Immediate Release
Premiering on Nine next Month, fresh from its Emmy award-winning debut season in the US, is the hit drama Material Detriment, set in the high stakes, high pressure world of urban planning. The series follows the life – and loves – of planners in a tough inner urban municipality, as they battle petty one-off developers and the larger, more sinister Mendoza Development Group (MDG).
Material Detriment centres on the tumultuous lives of its four leads:
- Senior Planner Jack Detriment (Kiefer Sutherland) is a tough, street-wise planner. Abrasive and argumentative, he is committed to doing whatever it takes to keep his neighbourhood orderly and proper. He has little patience with the pen-pushing bureaucrats who seem to be emerging from Planning Academy, and just wants to get on with clearing the unresolved applications off his books. If he has to bend a few rules to get there, so be it.
- Cadet Planner Dwight Rosewood (Jesse Spencer) is an idealistic rookie planner, straight out of the Academy. He graduated top of his class and his knowledge of the key planning texts is unparalleled. Strongly committed to appropriate statutory process, he is partnered with Detriment in the hope of reigning in his senior officer’s more extreme methods. Out in the “real world” for the first time, he learns a few lessons about life, loyalty… and love.
- Team Leader John Taggart (Brian Dennehy) is the grizzled, cynical head of the branch, and the man responsible for pairing Detriment and Rosewood. Just 6 weeks from retirement, he is constantly exasperated by Detriment’s methods, warning him that one of these days, he’ll have to hand in his ID card. Yet he secretly respects his star officer, grudgingly acknowledging that without him, the branch’s processing times would be much longer. Gunned down in the 2 part series finale.
- Junior Planner Tiffany Summers (Katherine Heigl) is the rising star of the branch, still fighting to make headway in the testosterone-filled halls of the Planning Branch. Raised in an exclusive suburb and the daughter of the Planning Minister, she constantly riles against the assumption that her wealth and connections got her the job, and that she plans on sleeping her way to the top. Her love / hate relationship with Detriment (source of much “will they or won’t they” discussion amongst the series’ fanbase) comes to a head when they attend an interstate Planning conference together.