Stateless is an urgent, searing Australian drama

If TV shows reflect back at us our world, Australians might not like what they see.

REVIEW

Who could forget the scandal of the Cornelia Rau story?

The German-Australian languished in terrible conditions in a detention centre, marked for deportation. Mentally ill and unable to communicate her true identity, it took 10 months to discover she was an Australian resident.

The revelations shocked Australia, unable to grasp how these circumstances came to pass, a gross indictment of not only the immigration department but the failings of our mental healthcare system.

It was compounded with the case of Vivian Solon, an Australian citizen who was deported to Philippines, an egregious error which took years to correct, despite multiple people within various government departments knowing about it earlier (and didn’t say anything).

In the mid-2000s, the two cases highlighted the inhumane mandatory detention policy, but in the 15 years since then, not much has changed.

Yvonne Strahovski plays a character inspired by Cornelia Rau

A new ABC drama series, produced by Cate Blanchett and starring The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne Strahovski, is inspired by the Rau story, but also by the stories of thousands of people trapped in detention centres indefinitely, demonised as a statistic or as “other”, rather than the people they are.

Stateless starts tonight, the first episode of six (it will be distributed by Netflix internationally after the broadcast run locally). It’s an urgent, searing Australian series that reflects back at us who we are. We might not like what we see.

Co-starring Jai Courtney, Asher Keddie, Fayssal Bazzi, Dominic West and Blanchett, the series is a co-production between Matchbox Pictures and Blanchett’s Dirty Pictures production company. Created by Blanchett, Tony Ayres (The Home Song Stories) and Elise McCredie (Sunshine), it was written by McCredie and Belinda Chayko (Safe Harbour) while Jocelyn Moorhouse (The Dressmaker) and Emma Freeman (Glitch) directed the episodes.

With those creative powers behind it, the quality shows in the finished product. It’s a considered, high-end drama with great performances and a beating soul that asks Australians if we’re comfortable with what gets done in our name.

Stateless has a ripped from the headlines feel

Stateless centres on a desert detention centre where the main characters converge.

Strahovski plays Sofie Werner, the Rau-inspired avatar, a flight attendant with a stern, disapproving mother who joins a self-help cult masquerading as a dance collective. Its charismatic leader (West) and his wife Pat (Blanchett) first take Sofie in but things turn ugly fast.

Soon she’s admitted to hospital, and then there’s a time jump in which we see Sofie at the Barton detention centre, condemned as an illegal alien.

In Indonesia, Ameer (Bazzi), his wife and two daughters have fled Afghanistan, desperate for a future for their daughters that don’t involve the Taliban. After a devastating and arduous journey at the mercy of unscrupulous people smugglers, Ameer is also incarcerated at Barton.

Courtney plays Cam, a new guard, underqualified and undertrained, whose own sense of right and wrong clashes with the brutal and dehumanising tactics employed by his colleagues. Meanwhile, Keddie’s character is the ambitious new general manager of the centre who’s moved by the plight of Ameer’s daughter Mina (Soraya Heidari).

Asher Keddie stars as a detention centre general manager

There’s a ripped from the headlines feel about Stateless, but with many Australians turning away from media coverage of Australia’s grim detention centres rather than confronting them, a show like Stateless helps to reveal the despair at the heart of them.

Maybe it’s easy to turn away from the suffering of those trapped within the system when politicians so blithely label them as “other”, exploiting our fear for power. Stateless is a necessary reminder that no matter our circumstance, we’re all human.

Stateless starts tonight on ABC and iview at 8.30pm