Love will tear us apart

It doesn’t hurt a TV series to have a cool theme song that evokes spine-tingling nostalgia in viewers of a certain age. Maybe some young’uns mightn’t be familiar with The Psychedelic Furs’ early ‘80s urgent masterpiece, Love My Way, but it holds a special place in my heart, and so when it played (performed by Magic Dirt) in the opening credits of Foxtel’s first made-for-pay-TV drama of the same name, things immediately seemed positive. (But then again, Charmed has The Smiths’ How Soon Is Now for its opener, so it’s not a guarantee of street cred.)

Luckily, the content of the series is also mercifully good because God knows we need some good local dramas that connect with audiences. With programs such as Network Ten’s The Cooks (which also had investment from Foxtel) being wrenched from the original Monday 8.30pm timeslot and dumped into a late Thursday timeslot after just one week, it puts unfair pressure on local product to instantly perform. But as Love My Way screens exclusively on Foxtel’s FOX8 channel, it automatically has less onus on it because of the relatively small audience with access to it.

Naturally Foxtel is hoping its bold steps into drama production will lure more viewers to pay for the privilege of seeing shows which will never be available on free-to-air. If Love My Way gets a lot of buzz and even becomes a water-cooler program, then subscription rates might just take an upwards turn. Look at what happened with HBO in the U.S. With a stable of innovative and compelling series - The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Sex and the City among them - it’s become a real challenger to the major networks.

Love My Way was developed and produced by The Secret Life Of Us producer, John Edwards, along with that show’s former star, Claudia Karvan, and script producer, Jacqueline Peske. The team thought about what sort of shows they themselves liked to watch and the types of issues they faced in day-to-day life and started to piece together the elements for a drama series. With support from Foxtel, which allowed them much more artistic freedom than a commercial network would have, the result is an appealing and hip relationship drama which showcases the types of complicated, messy lives many of us lead. There are no nuclear family units here - instead it’s populated by ex-partners, half-siblings, single parents... you name it.

The characters, led by Frankie (Karvan), are largely in their early 30s and are facing the numerous ups and downs that the stage of life is defined by. When you’re younger you always think you’re going to have it all worked out by 30 but the reality is that many people are still trying to find their way.

Frankie is a painter who makes her bread and butter by illustrating for a daily newspaper. She lives with her eight year-old daughter Lou (Alex Cook) and occasionally depressed friend, Tom (Brendan Cowell) and has regular, amicable contact with her ex, Charlie (Dan Wyllie). Charlie is an architect who’s now married to Julia (Asher Keddie), and in the impressive first episode, Julia gave birth to their son Toby. Frankie and Lou were close at hand and it was apparent that everyone had found a way to make their extended family work in relative harmony.

By the third episode, chinks start to appear as the insecure Frankie tells Charlie that instead of the current set-up - where Lou spends every second week living with him and Julia - she wants her to have just one home with her. The appearance of young Toby has changed the dynamics and Frankie feels more affected than she realised she would. This is especially so because she was the one to leave Charlie in search of a life, and while he’s gone on to have one, she seems to be treading water.

To mix things up even more, Julia’s ex, Howard, returns from overseas to stir up all sorts of old feelings in her and alienate Charlie in the process. Howard is played by AFI winner from Somersault, Sam Worthington, adding to the prestige of the cast which also features Lynette Curran and Max Cullen as Charlie’s parents.

Things bode well for this 10-part series which is a milestone for Australian television. It’s one which could hopefully point the way towards more independent-minded programs aimed at intelligent audiences who want something more than the safe and boring cops/lawyers/women-on-horses formulas usually served up.

Vicki Englund

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Love My Way
(Season 1)

On: Fox 8 (Foxtel)

Time: Monday 8.30 pm
(repeated Thursdays at 9.30 pm)
during 2005

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