Based on a True Story

The second series of Underbelly has hit New Zealand TV screens. The ads for the show say it's a true story, but now a journalist involved in breaking the Terry Clark story has come forward and said Underbelly's version of events is a heap of shit.

It's an interesting issue this whole education versus entertainment question. The series' creators will say they have bent the truth a bit to enable them to tell the story better. Maybe just so they can give Anna Hutchison's breasts more airtime. And anyway, they never said it was going to be a documentary.

This is true. But then, are they entitled to advertise it as a "true story"? It seems to me that filmmakers get around this by saying: "Based on a true story". But the idea that it's "based on a true story" is so tenuous that it would be more accurate to say "not complete fiction". Or "we got one of the name's right ... but it's spelt differently".

The best of these was admittedly the Cohen brothers' Fargo. The start of the film says the events are based on a true story. In fact, it wasn't. But who was to know?