LITTLE more than 12 months after the blast that killed Hunter winemaker Trevor Drayton and left fellow winemaker William Rikard-Bell fighting for his life, their families will be reminded of the tragedy when it is brought to life on prime-time television.
Until yesterday the Drayton family and Mr Rikard-Bell were unaware the explosion at Drayton's Family Wines at Pokolbin last January had inspired tonight's episode of Channel Seven drama All Saints.
The show's producer, Bill Hughes, said the program was based on the idea of the explosion and characters did not relate to Drayton blast victims.
But it will still hit too close to home for Mr Rikard-Bell.
"I certainly don't intend on seeing it tomorrow on telly," Mr Rikard-Bell said yesterday.
A promotional clip on the program's website, which billed the episode as "one heart-stopping hour", shows a man with burns to 70 per cent of his body found writhing in a pool of water.
It was the same extensive burns suffered by Mr Rikard-Bell, who was found in a dam after the Drayton blast.
"It is inappropriate, especially if there is a coronial inquiry going on and it's still fresh in the minds of the family," Mr Rikard-Bell said.
John Drayton said he was upset the program's producers did not tell him or his family they were using the blast that killed his brother for inspiration.
"I didn't know anything about it until this morning . . . a friend told me," Mr Drayton said yesterday. "They [producers] didn't tell us anything about it. My parents don't know and I don't want them to, for obvious reasons."
Mr Drayton said he would wait to make further comment after he saw the episode of All Saints tonight.
"I will be watching it, just to see it," Mr Drayton said.
Mr Hughes said all episodes of the Australian drama were drawn from "past headlines", with the Draytons' story discovered when All Saints researchers searched for "unusual explosions" online.
"We googled in 'unusual explosion' and from that we got 'wine factory explosion'. We thought OK, let's do a wine factory explosion and that's about it," Mr Hughes said.
Admitting the timeline between event and episode was shorter in this case, Mr Hughes said he hoped it did not offend the Draytons or Mr Rikard-Bell.
"I suppose in a way the Drayton's explosion is closer to this episode than most of our research usually is. We usually pull out things that happened many, many years ago," Mr Hughes said.
"But if we were to steer away from every single thing that's ever happened so we didn't offend someone, we wouldn't have a show."
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