Local productions are notorious for repeating the same old storyline and basing on previous materials, repackage them and thrown them onto the screen as new products. There were some good ones here and there. I totally enjoyed the first season of "The Secret Life of Us" and the first season of "Love My Way" was pretty good too. However, both of them seemed to have lost their steam after the first season. The following seasons became melodramatic and characters behaved ridiculously out of character. I tried "Tangle" but there was nothing grabbing my attention. In terms of cop shows, the subtleness of "East West 101" won miles against "Cop LAC" anyday. I'm never a fan of the "Underbelly" series because I don't believe in glorifying criminal acts on TV screens. Yes they met their demises in the end but that's because they had to since they were based on "true" stroies.
Up till this point "SeaChange" is still the Australian series that I watched again and again and still find it refreshing. I didn't get to see it when it was first aired but was highly recommended by my agent and friend. I checked it out from the library and BAM I was hooked on to it. I bought the whole series after I a job interview at ABC (a job which I obviously didn't get) and watched it all over again. It is still my favorite show to be put on my TV when I do my weekend ironing (I prefer to iron all the clothes for the week in one go) and I still tune in to Foxtel during its occasional rerun - that is how good "SeaChange" is.
What made "SeaChange" so great is its originality and the embracing of ethnicity with a bunch of colourful characters delivered by a superb cast. Chemisty among characters is just bouncing off the screen in every single scene and there is no one dull moment in the show. This is without a doubt mostly contributed to the superb writing from Andrew Knight and Deborah Cox. They created this imaginative small town and detailed it with one interesting story after another. It was just a work of magic.
After "SeaChange", there was nothing that really grabbed my attention. Writing in most shows were dramatic for sake of being dramatic, characters don't really make sense, the screen has become Anglo-centric again, ethnicity became a pinch of stereotypical comic relief. We got too many cop shows, too many medical shows, too many teenagers sleeping with each other shows and too many reality shows.
"East West 101" was a great production but sometimes far too serious that it inevitably gets you unnecessarily depressed. Life is depressing enough so if I have a choice I prefer to watch something that lightens me up at the end of the day. "Packed to the Rafters" was good but as a single guy whose friends are setting up their own families, I kinda became resistent to overly warm and cosy family dramedies. So there was a void for me for quite some time until my agent (once again thanks to her) mentioned "Rake" to me.
"Rake" is a legal dramedy about a dysfunctional lawyer who knows he is dysfunctioned but did not mourn over it. He instead tries to live the most out of it. He tries to fix problems just to find out that he complicated them more. There is no right solutions for him in life or professionally and he just lives with it. The main cast with Richard Roxburg, Matt Day and Adrienne Pickering delivered a superb performance and once again you really see an ensemble that lives off and bounces of each other. As the 8 part series proceeds, you find out more about these characters - you laugh with them sometimes, you shed a tear with them sometimes or you even despise them a bit sometimes. We used to say that audience loves flawed characters, but completely flawed characters nowadays are so cliche that when you met a bunch of characters who are lovable but flawed, you just get right into it.
"Rake" doesn't only have a great main ensemble cast, it has great guest casts such as Hugo Weaving, a never seen before Lisa McCune, Sam Neil, Rachel Griffiths etc who completely spice up your screen with firey performance that reminds you how many great talents this country has. It also has a lot more variety in ethnicity display. Yes most non-Anglo actors are still in the back e.g. among the jury, but it shows a greater diversity of people in a lot of its frames. It is completely refreshing to see something that great on Australian screen again. Oh one last thing, it is written by Andrew Knight - the guy who delivered "SeaChange" to us some years ago.
So check it out if you have a chance.
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