It is the strangest thing, sometimes, the TV shows you end up liking. It’s a bit like people. Sometimes you judge wrong on first meeting. Someone who looks unsympathetic becomes your best buddy. Others you admire from afar aren’t sympathetic when you meet them.
The only characteristic I can find in common among all the friends I’ve ever had is their willingness to put up with my company. With TV shows, however, there are types of programs I know I won’t like.
So when I saw the odd advertisement for an Australian drama/comedy about a violent hit man, I thought Mr Inbetween was something I could give a miss.
What a mistake that was. This is one of the most remarkable, brilliant, engrossing pieces of television I’ve ever seen. Let me warn you straight away there’s a fair bit of violence and some pretty crook language, though it’s not really pornographic in either of those features. It pivots around the quite scintillating performance of its star, Scott Ryan. When I first saw the series I couldn’t place him.
But surely such an accomplished, winning, tone perfect actor as this must be a veteran? In fact this is his first performance of note, in a series and a character he created entirely himself. The basic tension in the show is very familiar in gangster series – the professional criminal who is a loving family man. How does he reconcile his life of crime and violence with the love and vulnerability that commitment to a family involves?
In this, Mr Inbetween bears a strong resemblance to the American series, Ray Donovan. But I think it is actually much better. In fact it would be very hard to think of a more artistically successful Australian TV production, an unusual blend of drama and comedy.
Three features of it strike me as almost unique. One is that while there is ugliness in the series, and certainly no one could regard murder and violence as morally acceptable, it treats its characters with a certain compassion.
In this I don’t think the show remotely glamorises criminals, or excuses their crimes, even the hero, Ray Shoesmith. Rather, it asserts their continuing humanity, their complexity and moral range.
But a couple of other features are also distinctive. One is the treatment of working-class Australian speech. So many Australian shows are rendered ridiculous by the posh accents the university acting graduates unconsciously give to their roughneck, working class crims, especially with the long “a” in words like chance and dance.
I was at the “darnse” so I thought I’d take a “charnse” is utterly ludicrous coming from the lips of an alleged low life tough.
Even more accomplished and praiseworthy is the show’s brilliant use of understatement, which was once a characteristic Australian quality and certainly survives in certain working class and rural communities. The love of Ray’s life breaks up with him, devastatingly, after he has, with some reason, assaulted her brother. Ray’s whole dialogue, as I recall, consists of: “I’m sorry … I’d never hit ya … So that’s it then? Look after yourself.”
The dialogue throughout is the best I’ve come across in an Australian show. But there’s more. Working class people generally use a short “a” in words like chance and dance, but are still capable of discussing serious issues. In series three, Ray argues a flawless case for the existence of God.
This is a series of innumerable surprises, of sometimes poignant feeling, sometimes great hilarity, and sometimes a true, sheer bafflement at life’s conundrums. I hope we see a lot more of its creator.
Read my hilarious T-shirt and weep
Despite what their owners might think, there’s nothing funny about slogans on clothing.
Noel Counihan’s political art was dramatic, but changed nothing
The artist’s pieces certainly stand out, but there’s little evidence their messages changed the opinions of Australians in the Depression, World War II and Cold War eras.