Binge-r #197: This Country + Top End Wedding
Field Work: Charlie Cooper (Kurtan) and Daisy May Cooper (Kerry) in This Country
THIS COUNTRY S1
Streaming Service: Stan
Availability: Six episodes now streaming, plus S2 + S3
With little fanfare the BBC’s comedies wend their way through platforms here until they reach a second life on Stan. The most recent edition of Steve Coogan’s revered English buffoon, This Time with Alan Partridge [full review here], recently arrived from ABC iView, but this week’s find is all three short seasons of This Country. A sometimes hilarious mockumentary about the lack of options for two young people in a rural village, it’s founded on granular detail and wilful eccentricities. The model at work is The Office, but it’s more wayward and carried by mood – the workplace, and its TV tropes, aren’t initially familiar to cousins Kerry (Daisy May Cooper) and Lee ‘Kurtan’ Mucklowe (Charlie Cooper).
The Cooper siblings, who created the show, bring autobiographical observations and absurd riffs to their protagonists. The Mucklowe’s are everyday characters whose circumstances invariably escalate as the camera crew follow them; they fill the shots with explanations and arguments, and are more surprised than anyone that they’re the subject of a television show (a telling touch: no-one they know watches it). The hypothesis of the fictional documentary is that rural youth are “marginalised”, and the ballast-free lives of Kerry and Kurtan nod to the sociological truth while dialling up wanton misadventures, fickle obsessions, and deadpan encounters. There’s a touch of melancholy to this mockumentary.
A few episodes in and you’ll be attuned to both the show’s rhythms and giving shout outs to bit players such as Len (Trevor Cooper, the creator’s father) and Big Mandy (Ashley McGuire). Both Daisy May and Charlie Cooper excel in their performances, whether telling apocryphal stories with the urgency of truth or letting their delusions bubble up to the surface. The obvious risk is of caricature, but This Country operates at a level of self-honesty that manages to be both emotionally truthful and funny as storytelling. The show has concluded and all three seasons, which originally aired between 2017 and March of this year, are available on Stan. Finely wrought and fiercely offbeat, it’s a masterclass.
>> Great Show/New Season: In its just added third and final season on Netflix, the German time travel mystery Dark reaches its brain-bending zenith: it’s a grimly philosophical puzzle-box drama about fate and emotional longing, and I adore it [S1 review here].
Married to Her Mob: Miranda Tapsell (Lauren) and Gwilym Lee (Ned) in Top End Wedding
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
TOP END WEDDING (Netflix, 2019, 113 minutes): Romantic comedies are movies – like action flicks – where observing the genre’s rules is part of their attraction. You can subvert expectations to a degree, but a traditional romantic comedy ends how you know it will. That’s the case with Top End Wedding, where the surprise nuptials of Adelaide legal eagles Lauren (co-writer Miranda Tapsell) and British expat Ned (Gwilym Lee), has them flying to Darwin to be with her fractured family, and then going on a comic journey that stretches and reaffirms their bond while searching for Lauren’s missing mother. Capably directed by Wayne Blair (The Sapphires), so that it shows off both the far north landscape and Tapsell’s skills as a comedienne, the film is episodic and pleasing, contrived and yet surprising. With snooty outsiders to be warmed up, it highlights the Indigenous culture Lauren received through her mother, with the inclusiveness extending to sexuality and gender identity once the antics reach the Tiwi Islands. It does what it sets out to do well, and that’s a compliment.
New on SBS on Demand: A leaner, self-destructive Scottish cousin to The Postman Always Rings Twice, David Mackenzie’s Young Adam (2002, 94 minutes) stars Ewan McGregor as the drifter who ends up working on a 1950s barge run by Tilda Swinton and Peter Mullan’s unhappily married couple; The Italian Job (1969, 95 minutes) is an entertaining heist film that makes the distinction between a young Michael Caine and Mark Wahlberg very clear.
New on Stan: The Illusionist (2006, 109 minutes), with Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, and Paul Giamatti, is a Hapsburg empire romantic mystery, full of deceptions and accomplished performances as a famous magician courts a princess; Saoirse Ronan gives the coming of age drama and the immigrant experience struggling specificity in the terrific Brooklyn (2015, 112 minutes), playing an Irish teen who moves to 1950s New York by herself.
>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to read about Netflix’s dystopian series remake of Snowpiercer and the suitably ludicrous Will Ferrell comedy Eurovision Song Contest.
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