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Love My Way, review

An assured and immediately captivating start to the third series, with life no simpler for the newly pregnant Frankie (Claudia Karvan). It's an increasingly claustrophobic little world that she and Lewis (Ben Mendelsohn) inhabit.

They move into a new house with Lewis' newly out son, Dylan (Sam Parsonson), only to have Dylan's mother and her partner (Rhondda Findleton and Leah Purcell) perpetually hovering and harping about his schooling and living arrangements. Then they find that Charlie and Julia (Dan Wyllie and Asher Keddie) plan on moving in next door.

Add to this the return of a sad and envious Tom (Brendan Cowell), whose escape to New York ended at the immigration counter, and the fact that the Pacific islanders that Lewis had hired to protect Dylan from the gay bashers have decided to branch out into extortion, and there's hardly a second's respite from gloom. Could it get any worse? Apparently yes. There's an even bigger downer in store for the pair.

"Outstanding Australian drama" is what we're supposed to call this, isn't it? And there's every reason to: the writing acting, direction, photography and casting are of a standard that we've come to expect from dialogue-driven series such as The Sopranos and Six Feet Under and, to the very last player, the cast inhabit their characters completely and believably, without the faintest trace of self-consciousness or overacting.

Even the use of music is a cut above that on most other shows. The song that accompanies the first scene tonight, The Healing Power of Helpless Laughter, written by Don Walker of Cold Chisel and Midnight Oil's James Moginie and recorded by Tex, Don and Charlie (Perkins, Walker and Owen), is a beautiful, sombre mood-setter: mature, melancholy and of an emotional depth to match the show.

There is the occasional head-scratching moment (if Tom's old drug charge got him bounced back from the airport in New York, how did he get his work visa in the first place?), but all in all it's absolutely sensational. Showtime is treating it with the respect it deserves, too - screening double episodes every Monday, with no ads.

By Brad Newsome
February 26, 2007
Sydney Morning Herald