Tony Tilse's strength is finding believable feelings in unlikely creatures. His contribution to Farscape makes him a director worth seeking out, though the programme's early melodrama requires more patience than we would wish.
Fi1m perspective
In Farscape (1999), a puppet character's feelings deserve the same attention as anyone else's. Tony Tilse's direction, notably in the episode PK Tech Girl, takes that seriously, and it is the strongest reason to value his work. A creature can look peculiar without its emotional life being treated as a joke. We grew fond of this difficult company because the increasingly involved relationships gave us more to care about than the creatures' strangeness. Tilse's attention to performance helped the series move towards darker, more character-driven science fiction.
He came to it from Australian television, having directed children's programmes including Bananas in Pyjamas and the hospital drama G.P. in the early 1990s. An offer to direct one episode of Farscape became 19, with his work on the series continuing through 2002. He was working alongside writers and producers including David Kemper and Rockne S. O'Bannon, so the programme's achievements cannot sensibly be credited to him alone. His treatment of the puppet characters gives us something more specific to recognise as his contribution.
Farscape also supplies the caveat: it takes time to settle, its early melodrama can be wearing, and the effects have aged. Tilse brings visual ambition to episodic television, but that does not make the programme's rough patches disappear. Our recommendation rests on the relationships becoming absorbing enough to justify the patience. There is no need to pretend that the early excesses are charming. His performance direction is the more durable attraction, especially when the effects themselves have become an obstacle.
After Farscape, he kept choosing genre work alongside crime and period drama, directing episodes of Underbelly (2008) and the horror-comedy Ash vs Evil Dead (2015), then the feature Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020). The latter extended an existing television series onto the cinema screen. This is largely a career in episodic television, where a director needs to understand what the programme already does well before deciding what to change. Start with Farscape, provided you can give its difficult company time to become people you care about.
Biography
Tony Tilse is an Australian television director. He directed 19 episodes of the science-fiction series Farscape (1999–2002), more than any other director on the show.
His credits include multiple episodes of Underbelly (2008–2012), for which he won the Australian Directors' Guild Award for best direction of a TV drama series and mini-series in 2008. He has also directed episodes of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (2012), Harrow (2018–2021), Ash vs Evil Dead (2015) and the feature Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020).
Other notable work encompasses the television films The Postcard Bandit (2003), Murder in the Outback (2007) and the docudrama Scorched (2008).
