of Australia. A third expedition, 1969's Open Boat to Adventure, saw them retrace the maritime voyage of Matthew Flinders from Darwin to Sydney in a small open boat, which took six months to complete and along the way saw Mal electrocuted and the brothers rescued from rough seas by a prawn trawler. “What a cocky, arrogant pair of smart-arses Mike and I were", Mal Leyland later reflected in his 2015 memoir. A fourth film, The Wet, followed in 1972, documenting a journey through the Northern Territory to Kakadu National Park via Darwin. The Leylands initially edited their films in a makeshift editing suite in their basement. The brothers arranged film screenings at small cinemas and halls to show their documentaries, and would net up to $15,000 ($201,913 in 2020) from a two week showing. The popularity of their films lead to several television series being developed, the first being 1970's Off the Beaten Track. Their most popular TV series, Ask the Leyland Brothers, ran on Australian television on the Nine Network from 1976 to 1980, and again from 1983 to 1984. The show involved viewers writing in with questions and requests for places they wanted to see the brothers visit, in which they would do so in a Volkswagen Kombi van (and later two 4WD vehicles), often along with their wives and children. All 156 episodes were shot in the Super 8 mm film format, and edited in the style of a home movie. The show became extremely successful, and at its height attracted 2.5 million viewers an episode, which was about 40% of the audience at the time. The Leylands became famous celebrities, with viewers often recognising the brothers and their wives as they scouted for locations, sometimes forcing them to go incognito. Satirical television host Norman Gunston called them “the Starsky and Hutch of the dead centre” during an interview with the brothers on a 1976 episode of his popular variety program. The success of the series provided many Australian television viewers with their first look at some of the lesser-known parts of the Australian outback as well as New Zealand, and its theme song remains well known amongst older Australians. A documentary series called Leyland Brothers' World followed in the late 1980s. Rather than viewers writing in and asking the Leyland brothers to visit a particular place in Australia, it focused on exploration by the Leyland brothers