The true story behind the ‘addictive’ crime series that is called one of the best ever

A show that people have watched “more than 10 times” and is this good is actually inspired by real people and events.

If you’ve already seen Netflix’s crime docuseries that leaves people traumatized and need another chilling series to sink your teeth into, fear not as this one is being hailed as one of the best ever.

Not only that, but it is inspired by true events that took place in Melbourne, Australia in the 80s and 90s.

Animal Kingdom – available to watch on both Amazon Prime and Netflix – may have left some viewers a little surprised when they started watching to realize it wasn’t anything about animals – but it didn’t take long for people to get hooked.

The story follows what happens when 17-year-old Joshua “J” Cody moves in with his estranged grandmother living in a Southern California beach town after his mother dies of a heroin overdose.

However, J’s grandmother is not a normal older relative, but the Kris Jenner of a notorious Melbourne crime family, whose characters are inspired by real-life events and people.

The series is based on the 2010 film of the same name (TNT)

The Animal Kingdom series – which ran on TNT from 2016-2022 – is inspired by the 2010 film of the same name.

And the film’s writer and director David Michôd has previously spoken about how he drew inspiration from real-life events happening around him while growing up in Melbourne.

One event depicted in Animal Kingdom (2010) is an incident that became known as the Walsh Street shootings, in which two police officers were called to investigate an abandoned car but were shot.

Michôd told The Guardian: “That event seemed so horrifying and unusual. Cops all over the world die in the line of duty, but they don’t die. That way.

“It was so brutal and so cold that almost immediately I started imagining what the events might have been right before and after something like that, and that was the premise for the entire film.”

Although the shootings remain unsolved, it is widely believed that the Pettingill’s are behind the incident, led by matriarch Kath.

The film is inspired by events that took place in Melbourne in the 80s and 90s (Madman Entertainment)

Several members of the Pettingill family have been convicted of crimes such as drug trafficking, armed robbery and arms trafficking.

Two of Kath’s sons also stood trial in connection with the police shooting on Walsh Street, but both were later acquitted.

Michôd quickly noticed Animal Kingdom is fiction, and that he was inspired by many figures and events around him.

He said: “Most of these matriarchs, given the lives they’ve led, are quite grizzled, old, weathered ladies, and I had an image in my head of a character who would be disarmingly chipper.”

And in the end, it wasn’t really a specific family that inspired Michôd’s Animal Kingdom which has since given way to the TNT series, but a whole series of real-life events – the director grew up in an era in Melbourne that consisted of ‘a very serious antagonism between old-fashioned, hardened bandits and old-fashioned policemen’.

Animal Kingdom is now available to watch on Amazon Prime.

Topics: Crime, Entertainment, Film & TV, True Crime, Australia