‘Underbelly full of inaccuracies’

Updated November 7 2012 - 11:35am, first published February 10 2009 - 10:32pm

THE son of anti-drugs campaigner Don Mackay has spoken out against Channel 9’s crime series Underbelly, after the show depicted his father’s violent murder in its premiere episode on Monday night.Paul Mackay believed the show was riddled with inaccuracies about his family and Griffith as a whole, with much of the two-hour debut episode taking liberties with the truth.Before the show aired on Monday, Mr Mackay had expressed his concerns over inaccuracies in the program, but he noticed a lot more in the episode.“There are a number of historical inaccuracies, like the public meeting never occurred, and my mother never worked one day in the family business, while in the show she was in there answering phones,” Mr Mackay said.“The interaction that they showed with the local police, as far as I’m aware, never occurred, and I’ve never heard of the character of the local police officer they showed.”With the double episode dealing with the build-up and aftermath of Don Mackay’s murder, Mr Mackay said he found the show difficult to watch. “I realise the producers qualified it by saying it tells the essential truth of the story, but I don’t know how telling a lie helps them tell the truth.”The controversial crime drama proved to be a big hit for Channel 9, with the 3.9 million audience the highest-rating non-sporting program in Australian history.

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