Sydney – In one his first moves since returning as the Nine Network’s Chief Executive, David Gyngell has pulled the plug on the long-running rural drama McLeod’s Daughters. Production will end at the completion of the eighth series. Creator and Executive Producer Posie Graeme-Evans (a one-time director of drama at Nine) said she always believed the series “should finish on a high, and while it was still loved by the audience.” Filmed in South Australia, the series, which premiered in 2001, regularly attracts more than 1.2 million viewers; it aired widely overseas, sold by Southern Star International. Nine is investing heavily in local drama, including the second series of McElroy All Media’s Sea Patrol; Screentime’s Underbelly, a 13-part dramatization of Melbourne’s gangland wars; and the Nine-produced Canal Road, also 13-episodes, set in an inner city medical and legal advisory centre; all of which will debut in 2008.