Smedsta

This show feels like it's angling to be a new Love My Way, but it falls short of it on most levels. Especially the writing.

I found the interactions of Bojana Novakovic's character in episode one to be completely unbelievable. She goes on a date with a nasty bloke who it turns out is only looking for sex, and then when she tells her close colleague friend and then her family about this awful experience, they tell her that she's just too picky with her men. What's stopping these characters from empathising with her, when these are people she's supposed to be closest to? Search me.

The supporting characters that interact with Hugo Weaving in the same episode, from the travel agent to the neighbour in the supermarket, are caricatured nasty people who are pricks only because the drama needs there to be a prick so we can feel sympathy for him. This means the dramatic tension doesn't come from any kind of intriguing clash of goals; it's just our protagonist good guys vs. Plainly nasty people.

Even the supporting character we meet at the end of the first ep is plainly set up to be Bojana's dream guy with zero subtlety. These characters feel so archetyped and the writing so forced to be entirely about their relationship status through the whole thing that it loses any sense of realism that prestige drama should try to aim for. Unlike, say, "Bump", which has their characters feel human and real because we see different sides of their life, not just talking about the exact same things for every scene.

Can't fault the performances of the actors, but surely we can produce better drama that's deemed to be at a "prestige" level.

Gritty and down-to-earth, almost kitchen-sink realism. Despite a cast of characters that feels like they've tried to check off every minority and ethnic group going, it doesn't feel laboured or forced. The show does a remarkable job of creating what feels like a community, where characters really can bump into each-other and have different connections via different people. It's essentially a soap opera, sure, but its an engaging one; not overly-directed tosh like Neighbours or most commercial network dramas. The writing is terrifically subtle, and with only occasional exceptions, spares us huge amounts of exposition. AND its funny. It almost feels like an attempt to follow-up Something in the Air, the last soap the ABC produced almost 20 years ago.

I'm only up to the ninth episode on iView but I really hope this show starts to grow its audience so they can justify a renewal. What were the ABC thinking by airing it on a Friday night? It would have done much better in the middle of the week. In the US they call it the 'Friday Night Death Slot' for a reason; people are less likely to turn on their TVs for a drama at the end of a long week.