After five seasons, Claudia Karvan maps out her dream ending in Bump
The odds that a television show will conclude in a way that satisfies its creators are getting ever longer. Good shows get cancelled after a single season all too often now. Two seasons is considered a plus, while three seasons is mostly the limit that the algorithm will vouch for. As for the idea that those behind a show can have the time in advance to map out and enact their desired ending, that just sounds like a dream.
“Dreams do come true,” declares Claudia Karvan, and she has the episodes to prove it.
Ava Cannon, Claudia Karvan, Nathalie Morris and Carlos Sanson jnr in Bump, season 5.Credit: Stan
In 2019, when Karvan and fellow creator Kelsey Munro were first mapping out Bump, their heartfelt comic-drama set in Sydney about to debut its fifth and final season on Stan, the pair had a moment of inspiration. While trying to figure out how to successfully start the series, the ideal ending came to them.
“We didn’t know it would be five seasons, but one day when we were in the story room, developing the series before it had even been commissioned, we said ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if we could end this series at this particular moment? Imagine if we could do that? It would complete the circle and feel so right and yet surprising’,” Karvan says. “Lo and behold, we’ve been privileged enough to do that. We’ve brought that scene to life as we imagined it five years ago.”
Fresh from a promotional appearance on ABC News Breakfast and fortified by a toastie from the ABC canteen, Karvan sounds genuinely delighted. She can’t help restating her success, as if it gives her a jolt of satisfaction to say it out loud.
“What we envisaged at the very beginning, before we even got the show up, was this dream ending, and we got to do it,” Karvan says. Given the tight constraints that now govern the streaming business, Munro and Karvan deserve medals.
Then again, it’s a very Bump-like moment. Ever since the show debuted on January 1, 2021, moments of serendipity and wonder have punctuated the everyday routines and unexpected setbacks that tie together the lives of its characters. Beginning with an unexpected birth in a high school bathroom, where overachieving student Oly Chalmer-Davis (Nathalie Morris) realises that her tightly planned future has been upended, the show has dug deep into how we learn to accept the choices we’ve already made.
Over its first four seasons, Bump has always moved forward. It’s never found a comfort zone to linger in. The relationship between Oly and her daughter’s father, Santi Hernandez (Carlos Sanson jnr) has waywardly moved from platonic back to romantic. Karvan, as Oly’s mother Angela, became an unexpected grandmother just as she was preparing to leave her husband, Dom (Angus Sampson) – eventually she would start a relationship with his sister, Edith (Anita Hegh), while going through treatment for breast cancer.
With its multiple families and multi-generational focus, Bump has turned its storytelling into a tapestry. It’s found a worthy balance between contemplation and humour. It’s worth asking: why stop now?
Claudia Karvan, Angus Sampson and Anita Hegh in Bump.Credit: John Platt
“That ending we wanted fit well with this season’s timing. We also didn’t want to overstay our welcome,” Karvan says. “We’d told the stories and had a perfect ending. We didn’t want to run this into the ground – we cherish this project. We wanted to go out on a high.”
From on Boxing Day, an annual Bump tradition, the creative ensemble tie together potent symbols of life and death in the final season. Oly and Santi, whose daughter Jacinda (Ava Cannon) is now a primary school student, are expecting their second child, while Angie is facing a recurrence of her cancer. Ending a show is both a freedom and a responsibility, and Munro and Karvan have stayed true to both approaches.
“I feel very free, very proud,” Karvan says. “But in saying that we did take on some very confronting subject matter, and with that came sobering responsibility. It weighed on us to tell it in the right way.”
The new season’s second episode, in which a teenage character from the show’s next generation is pregnant, has a telling and multifaceted dialogue about abortion from various perspectives. The third episode, written by Munro and peppered with observations from the real-life experiences she had during her mother’s treatment for lymphoma, is a patient, detailed portrait of Angie’s days getting treatment in a cancer ward.
These assured episodes are the final vindication for the decision years ago by Bump’s eventual producer, John Edwards, to introduce Karvan, with whom he had previously created Love My Way, to Munro, a former Sydney Morning Herald journalist and aspiring showrunner. The two women proved to be a formidable partnership.
“My instinct about Kelsey was that she was obviously really smart, hard-working – I felt like I connected with her and related to her very quickly,” Karvan says.
“Ironically, it’s taken a few seasons to realise that while we share so much and have so much in common, actually we are very different. And that works. We’re not yessing each other’s ideas, we’re kicking the tires on them. She’s a sane and professional and intelligent human. It’s great to wrestle out ideas with a person like that, and that’s one of the reasons for the longevity of the show.”
For Karvan, 2025 will be that rare year this century when she doesn’t have a television show she created, produced and/or starred in lined up to screen. But with The Secret Life of Us, Love My Way, Spirited, Puberty Blues, Doctor Doctor and Bump on her CV, she has an impeccable television credit score.
“There are a few things I’ve been developing to pitch around, then there’s an exciting thing that I think will happen, which I’m doing a lot of research for but my lips have to stay sealed,” Karvan says. “2025 is looking great. I’m a pretty optimistic person, happy to dream.”
Bump (season 5) streams on Stan from Thursday, December 26.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.