In Development Limited Series 6 Episodes Forensic Drama

Yield

An Australian Limited Drama Series — 6 × 55 min — Lantern Court

An innocent man sits fourteen years into a wrongful conviction for his identical twin's crime in this Australian forensic drama series. Across six episodes, four institutions, two families, and a buried footnote, the case unravels from the inside out — told in turn by the junior scientist who found it, the twin who walked free, the detective who closed the file, and the director who kept the institution's reputation whole.

Read the Series Broadcaster Enquiry →

Logline

The wrong twin did the time. Now a buried footnote has surfaced — and everyone who knew, from the detective to the prosecutor to the brother who walked free, has fourteen years of silence to defend.

Target Audience

ANZ primary: adults 35–64, tertiary-educated, metropolitan, already watching ABC, SBS, Stan and Binge prestige crime. Cares about institutional-failure stories with emotional payoff.

Global primary: 30–60 prestige-crime audience who watched Unbelievable, Mare of Easttown, The Staircase. Procedurally grounded, morally argued, character-led.

Format & Delivery

Format: 6-episode limited series, 6 × 55 min.
Master: 4K UHD, ProRes 422 HQ (HDR available for streaming).
Aspect: 2.39:1 cinemascope with 16:9 broadcast crop.
Sound: 5.1 surround.
Delivery: AS-11 UK DPP for broadcast; IMF for streaming; DCP for festivals.

6
Episodes
55
Min per Episode
14
Years of Injustice
QLD
Setting
MA
Classification

The Story

A wrongful conviction. Fourteen years. One footnote.

Danny Carew has served fourteen years of a life sentence for a murder his identical twin brother committed. The conviction rested on DNA evidence from a Queensland forensic laboratory — evidence that was subtly, catastrophically wrong.

When Priya Nair, a junior scientist auditing old case files, finds a single buried footnote in the original report, she doesn't understand what she's looking at. Her supervisor tells her to leave it alone. She doesn't.

What follows is a six-episode unravelling — of a conviction, of a forensic institution, of a family, and of the justice system's capacity to admit when it got it wrong.

The World

Queensland forensic drama — truth the system can't afford.

This Australian limited drama series is set against the real and documented history of Queensland's forensic science laboratories — a world of underfunded institutions, career pressure, political interference, and the slow bureaucratic violence of a system designed to convict rather than discover.

The series spans two timelines: the original investigation in 2012, and the present-day audit that threatens to expose it. As Priya pulls on the thread, the characters from the past — the detectives, the prosecutor, the twins' family — are forced to reckon with what they knew, what they chose not to know, and what they still stand to lose.

The series picks up where Onus Probandi left off — taking the forensic thriller short film and expanding its world, its stakes, and its emotional scope into a full limited drama.

Episode Structure

Six Episodes of Australian Crime Drama. One reckoning.

01
The Footnote
Ensemble opener. Priya Nair discovers an anomaly in a closed case file during a routine audit. Her supervisor orders her to archive it. She photographs it instead. By the end of the hour, four institutions, two families, and a fourteen-year-old conviction all have something to lose.
55 min
02
The Submission
Priya POV. The audit closes. The system returns a verdict the evidence does not support. The careful thing has been done, and it has not been enough. A journalist who has been asking around the periphery for weeks now has a name. Priya, alone with the contradiction, has to decide what kind of person she is going to be next.
55 min
03
The Twin
Marcus POV. Danny Carew's identical twin has spent fourteen years building a life on the silence of not looking. The silence is no longer entirely his to keep. A drive to Wolston. A car park. A decision about whether to walk through the gate. The lie Marcus has been telling himself, and the man it was told about, finally sit at the same table.
55 min
04
The Witnesses
Reeve POV. The original investigating officer has spent twenty-five years as a good cop and a closed file in a hallway cupboard. The closed file has not been opened in fourteen years. The case the audience has been watching is reframed: this is not a thing that happened to Danny Carew. It is a thing Tanya Reeve did. What the institution built its reputation on has a name, and a hallway, and a drawer.
55 min
05
The Director
Halloran POV. The supervisor. The lifer. The woman with a folded 2012 memo in her personal desk drawer, signed by her, dated the same week as the original conclusion report. The institution answers the police answer. The audience finally lands inside the head of the person who has been running the careful non-answer since Episode 1 - and has to decide what the system can afford to admit, and what it cannot.
55 min
06
Yield
Ensemble close. The system decides what it can afford to admit. Danny's fate is decided — but the question the series poses has no clean answer: what does justice actually look like when the institution that convicted him is the same institution now reviewing its own verdict? The procedural sense of yield. The road-sign sense of give-way. The farming sense of the harvest. All three are in play. The season turns on an action, not a reveal.
55 min

Comparable Australian Titles

Where Yield sits in the Australian market.

Yield is positioned alongside three recent Australian prestige crime dramas that have broken out commercially and internationally — and within Screen Queensland's record-breaking production year, as Queensland became the #1 state for screen production in Australia for the first time.

Black Snow
Stan · 2023–2024 · 2 seasons · QLD-set cold case drama
The closest on-genre Australian comparable. Queensland-set cold-case forensic drama supported by Screen Queensland. Season 2 commissioned within six months of S1's premiere — the kind of fast-renewal arc that signals a market fit for limited-series forensic crime.
Harrow
ABC · 2018–2021 · 3 seasons · Brisbane-set forensic pathologist drama
The format and budget template for an Australian forensic drama series. Produced by Hoodlum Entertainment for ABC, filmed in Brisbane and SE Queensland, distributed internationally by ABC Studios International. Three consecutive seasons, warm local reception, internationally sold — the proof that an Australian forensic premise can sustain an audience and travel.
The Newsreader
ABC · 2021–2023 · 2 seasons · AACTA Best Drama Series 2022
The award and broadcast precedent for a prestige Australian limited drama. Won AACTA Best Drama Series, ranked top of iview on launch, sold to BBC Four, TVNZ and SVT (Sweden). Proof that an Australian prestige drama with serious subject matter can win locally and travel to European public broadcasters.

Industry context. Australian drama production reached a record $2.7B in 2024–25 (Screen Australia Drama Report, December 2025), with Queensland accounting for 34% of national spend — a record $925M, making QLD the #1 state for screen production for the first time. Cost-per-hour on TV/SVOD titles rose across the board, with subscription streaming and SVOD at $492M across 18 titles.

Proof of Concept: Onus Probandi

The short film Onus Probandi (12 min, completed 2026) was produced as a proof of concept for this series — establishing the visual language, interrogation-room tension, and forensic procedural tone that will define Yield. Available for screener on request.

View Short Film →

Pitch Package

What's available.

Series Bible

Full series bible covering character breakdowns, episode summaries, thematic framework, and production approach.

Proof of Concept Screener

Onus Probandi short film (12 min) available as a private screener on request from qualified industry contacts.

Pilot Script

Full pilot script for Episode 1 — The Footnote — available on request to broadcasters and co-producers.

Budget & Finance Plan

Indicative budget, co-production and financing structure available for qualified broadcaster and funding agency discussions.

To request any of the above, contact us directly.

Production Company

Company
Lantern Court
ABN
38 152 737 872
Email
admin@lanterncourt.au
Location
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Website
lanterncourt.au
Producer
Adrian Alback