CHARACTER BUILDING

Bringing Jane Halifax, one of our most iconic screen characters, to life in print was no easy feat.

- CRAIG SISTERSON

The first time “was pretty terrifying”, admits Roger Simpson. The longtime writer-producer, who has been a cornerstone of the Australasian television industry for half a century, isn’t referring to chucking in his job at a top Auckland law firm in the early 1970s to try TV writing, moving abroad with no job, or anxiously waiting for audience feedback.

He’s talking instead about going deeper inside the head of a character he’s known since the early 1990s. A character who looks like a real-life friend and can’t help but remind him of the most important woman of his life. That’s Jane Halifax, a middle-aged psychiatrist in Melbourne. Or Halifax f.p. as she’s better known to millions of television viewers. And now, readers.

“I’ve never before gone inside Jane’s head like I did when writing Transgression,” says Simpson, talking about his first novel starring a beloved character who had already starred in 21 telemovies from 1994-2002, then returned in a new seven-part TV series in 2020.

“When you write prose you’re required to talk about what she’s thinking, but in screen drama you portray it, you don’t say it,” says Simpson. “Because if you say it, that’s exposition, a no-no. You have to imply what she’s thinking by action and dialogue. But in a book you want people to see what’s going on inside her head. So in a way I was now exploring a whole new side of Jane Halifax I hadn’t been obliged to explore before.”

It was an opportunity Simpson never expected but relishes.