AustLit

Television script-writer, producer, and director.

Deb Cox's earliest work in the television industry was with Skyways, for which she was production secretary in the late 1970s. She soon moved into an artistic role. According to the Crawford Productions' website, she was a script-writer with the company between 1979 and 1984. She worked as script editor on The Flying Doctors in 1986 and writing additional material for The D Generation in 1987.

From 1990, her work as a script-writer accelerated. Between 1990 and 1992, she wrote the telemovie Shadows of the Heart (1990), based on a novel by Joy Seager and nominated for an AFI Award for Best Television Mini-Series or Telefeature; contributed material to the ultimately unscreened pilot for a planned sit-com set in a 1950s' radio station, Turn it Up (1991); and co-wrote (with the director, Brian McKenzie) the film Stan and George's New Life (1992).

In 1993, Cox was one of the writers (along with such prolific Australian script-writers as Everett De Roche, Glenda Hambly, Graham Hartley, Graeme Koetsveld, and Tony Morphett) on the thirteen-part series Secrets, which follows four university graduate recruited into a top-secret organisation. She followed this with scripts for the Australian Children's Television Foundation's Sky Trackers (1994), crime drama Janus (1994), fire-fighting drama Fire (1995), mini-series Simone de Beauvoir's Babies (1997), 1960s' drama Kangaroo Palace (1997), film Dead Letter Office (1998), and pioneering drama SeaChange (1998-2000).

Kangaroo Palace attracted an AFI nomination for Best Mini-Series or Telefeature (for Cox, her co-writer Andrew Knight, director Robert Marchand, and producer Ewan Burnett), while Dead Letter Office won Cox a AWGIE Award (for Feature Film: Original, 1998) and Best Artistic Contribution (shared with director John Ruane) at Verona Love Screens Film Festival (1999), as well as attracting nominations for an AFI Award (Best Original Screenplay, 1998) and an FCCA Award (Best Screenplay: Original, 1999).

In 2003, Cox developed After the Deluge, the story of three sons struggling to come to terms with their estranged father's Alzheimer's. Written by Cox's Kangaroo Palace co-writer Andrew Knight, After the Deluge won an AFI Award (Best Telefeature or Mini-Series, 2003) and was nominated for another (Best Screenplay in Television), as well as winning Knight an AWGIE Award (Television Mini-series: Original, 2003).

Also in 2003, Cox co-created (with Andrew Knight) and helped write CrashBurn, the story of a disintegrating marriage told from the perspective of both partners. She followed this with scripts for Jonathan M. Shiff Productions' teen fantasy series H2O: Just Add Water (2006); for Satisfaction, set in a high-class brothel; and for East of Everything (2008-2009). Her most recent scripts have been for Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (2012).

Cox is also an experienced television producer, beginning with Simone de Beauvoir's Babies in 1997. She was associate producer on The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1998: written by Richard Flanagan after his own novel), co-producer on Dead Letter Office, associate producer on SeaChange (1998-2000), executive producer on Worst Best Friends (2002-2003), executive producer on Adam and Joe Go to Tokyo (2003), executive producer on After the Deluge, executive producer on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year (2004), executive producer on documentary Asian Invasion (2006), co-producer on East of Everything (2008), producer on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (2003-2010), executive producer on The Jonathan Ross Show (2012), and executive producer on Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.

She was also script editor for The Sound of One Hand Clapping.