10-part Killing Time will have its world premiere in New Zealand tonight on Prime after the series was prevented from airing in Australia due to legal proceedings.

Australian actor Richard Cawthorne has flown all the way to Auckland to see the controversial mini-series he stars in because it cannot be shown in his home country.

The 10-part Killing Time will have its world premiere in New Zealand tonight on Prime after the series was prevented from airing in Australia due to legal proceedings.

It tells the story of disgraced Melbourne lawyer Andrew Fraser, who defended some of the country's most notorious criminals, before developing a crippling cocaine habit and being jailed for five years for drug importation.

Disbarred and bankrupt, Fraser later wrote two books about his life, which provide the basis for Killing Time. Critically acclaimed Australian actor David Wenham (The Lord of the Rings, 300, Van Helsing) plays Fraser.

Originally scheduled to screen in Australia last year, the mini-series was delayed because Fraser was appearing as a witness at a high- profile criminal trial.

A similar legal curtain was drawn over the original Underbelly, for Victorian viewers, to prevent any influence on court proceedings, suggesting Australia's penchant for true crime dramas hit close to home.

Cawthorne, who plays drug dealer Dennis "Mr Death" Allen - the eldest son of one of Melbourne's infamous crime families, the Pettingills, who died in prison awaiting trial for murder - believes there is still an appetite for the genre, despite the risk of underworld TV fatigue (there are three more Underbelly telemovies to air here and a New Zealand version is also in the works).

"Ultimately what's going to make any show stand out, whether it's a true crime thing or not, is the writing and the characters in it," Cawthorne says.

"This show is incredibly watchable. It's a little gruesome at times, but it's a great yarn.

"The voice of Killing Time and the voice of Andrew Fraser is a really relevant voice because we cannot ignore the fact that there was a period in Australia's history where the police force was corrupt and there was a lot of wheeling and dealing and drug and firearms trafficking was rife.

"I think if we ignore all that we're kind of looking at our own culture with rose-tinted glasses. When you do show the underbelly and the darkness as well, it really kind of gives you a fuller picture of who we are and I think people enjoy that."

During his career Fraser defended business tycoon Alan Bond, members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, footballer-turned-drug trafficker Jimmy Krakouer, the Melbourne crime family the Morans and those accused of the Walsh St police murders (which loosely inspired last year's award-winning film Animal Kingdom).



Killing Time opens with Fraser beginning his prison stint alongside crooks he may have once represented, before returning to the time when he first began to see a lucrative opportunity at being at the beck and call of society's most dangerous citizens.

Among them is Dennis Allen, who is fed up with the police raiding his house. He also has a dead junkie to deal with and a brother wanted for armed robbery.

"He was one of Melbourne's, if not Australia's, most infamous drug dealers and he was personally implicated in about 10 underworld killings so he's quite a frightening character," Hawthorne says of Allen.

"He was enormously paranoid. He had a massive amphetamine addiction and he had a very violent temper. He could switch on and switch off at the drop of a hat."