Love Me: Bingeworthy exploration of love and loss and life

With its tender exploration of love and grief, TV’s newest homegrown original production, Love Me, seems to have emerged as a cure for isolation and stress.

Hugo Weaving and Bojana Novakovic star in the six-episode homegrown series Love Me. Picture: Toby Zerna

With its tender exploration of love and grief, TV’s newest homegrown original production, Love Me, seems to have emerged out of the pandemic as a cure for two years of isolation and stress.

Series star Bojana Novakovic is quick to dismiss any suggestion that the show – the first original ­series created by Foxtel’s streamer, Binge – is merely escapist “pandemic TV”.

“Stories about love have been needed since stories began,” ­Novakovic said ahead of the show’s red-carpet premiere in Sydney on Thursday night.

“Love Me strikes a unique balance between three different generations and completely different experiences of falling in love, being challenged by that love, and ultimately changing for the better ­because of it.”

The six-episode series, an ­ensemble drama of the kind Australia arguably does best, whether it’s shows like Love My Way or Offspring, is “incredibly intimate, good humoured and ultimately ­arresting”, Novakovic said.

A day after the AACTA awards set the scene for a mass homecoming for some of Australia’s best-loved actors, the Love Me premiere was attended by a cast of industry heavyweights – Hugo Weaving and Heather Mitchell among them – and new-­generation talent.

Novakovic has carved out a ­career in Hollywood playing roles in titles such as Birds of Prey (2020), I, Tonya (2017) and hit US television series Shameless.

Now the Serbian-born and Sydney-raised star is relishing the opportunity to work with fellow Australians. “There is an understanding between Australian ­actors raised in a theatre tradition, where there is a work ethic that’s deeply ingrained in character ­exploration – something that Love Me heavily relies on,” she said.

“And director Emma Freeman, in conjunction with the cast who were willing to go as far as what was needed, navigated us through.”

The series focuses on Novakovic’s character Clara and father Glen, played by Weaving, known to audiences worldwide for his turns in The Lord of the Rings and Matrix, as they navigate love, loss and life. “My favourite thing about Love Me is it simultaneously explores grief and falling in love; two states of human experience that don’t necessarily have to be mutually exclusive,” Novakovic said.

“In fact it celebrates that life is messy, and often against our own will these experiences bombard us with lessons that we normally wouldn’t have learnt.”

Bob Morley (The 100) also joins the cast, alongside Sarah Peirse (Stateless, Sweet Tooth), Celia Pacquola (Rosehaven) and William Lodder (Wakefield).

Love Me will debut all episodes on Boxing Day.