One drama series and two one-off movies offer complex gripping stories
Danielle Cormack and Socratis Otto star as Bea Smith and Maxine Conway in Wentworth, where Smith awaits trial for the alleged attempted murder of her husband. was the top drama in Australia for several years and a hit in Britain where one review summed it up as “an explosive mix of sex, drugs and violence.” It is that and more, a striking example of how to make strongly dramatic, addictive TV using a confined setting. From the get-go, it’s all tense direction, sleek editing and punchy writing.
Lost Girls, starring Oona Laurence, Amy Ryan, Thomasin McKenzie and Miriam Shor, is a Netflix one-off, very superior TV-movie that upends expectations and is based on a true story.Low-key and frank about Mari’s failings, the movie has no interest in sensationalizing the daughter’s life and fate. It is a mystery, but also a rich portrait of life in gloomy, working-class Long Island. Mari works two jobs, as a waitress in a diner and on a construction site. There is no glamour or titillation here.
Tallulah tells the story of young vagabond, Lu , who lives in a van and is fiercely independent in her hand-to-mouth existence.Canadian Ellen Page carries the film, playing the title character, known to everyone as Lu. She and her boyfriend, Nico , wander the United States rather like contemporary hippie-hobos. They live out of a dilapidated van, survive on dumpster-diving and stealing and on a gas-station credit card that Nico got from his well-off mom.
Lu then does what she does – improvises. At a hotel looking for free food, she’s mistaken for hotel staff by a boozy, unstable woman who needs a babysitter. So Lu takes the job. Lu is vaguely disgusted by the woman, Carolyn , who lets her little kid wander diaper-less and is in the hotel only to have an extramarital encounter. More abandonment, right there. Lu takes Carolyn’s child, feeling that somebody has to do the right thing.
What ensues is wonderfully nuanced as the three main characters come to grips with the lives they’ve led. Page is extraordinary in some scenes – the perpetual child who became a hippie and is then drawn into a complex web of emotions about family and the care of children. There isn’t a wasted scene in this magical drama.Plan your screen time with the weekly What to Watch newsletter, with film, TV and streaming reviews and more.
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