Hooked on Underbelly ... Perish reveals his Badness
Giles Hardie, The Sydney Morning Herald,
reports
With a new format that's not-so-much cops and robbers as cops and psychopathic crime lords, Underbelly gets a rewarding murderous make over.
What’s it all about?
From the opening titles, we know this: Based around events from 2001 to 2012, the fifth series of Underbelly tells the “true story” of the murder of Terrence Wallace Falconer and the nine-year police hunt for Anthony Perish, a rich underworld mystery wrapped in a psychopath.
From the overzealous promotional teaser that was run before the show began, we know ... frankly way too much. Given it’s the scheduled start time and I’m on the channel, I don’t need a five-minute spoiler trying to convince me to watch. I’m watching, just start already.
Our view:
Look it’s got the key elements - the “it’s a jungle out there” theme song, the random acts of nudity, and the wonderful trip down retro music lane - but this is a different Underbelly. We’re following the cops this time and it makes for a pleasant change after the slasher soap opera of Razor.
After its initial crime against grammar (“Badness??!”) the crime at the centre of this series is played out in short order. We meet Terry Falconer, who gets the sort of heavy-handed Cinderella treatment that can only mean he’s not long for this world – not only is he turning over a new leaf and rejecting his life of crime, he has two sons who he’s talking Commodore with. Sure enough he’s soon getting the Terry-in-a-box treatment, before Perish gets the Underworld Hit service from his courier, who gets his package from Turramurra to Port Macquarie almost as quickly as the show transforms into Dexter, complete with mood green lighting (so the blood can run free and not classification-threatening red) and plastic covered storage facilities.
Then they crack open a couple of stubbies for some calm carved-up corpse contemplation and you know it’s still Dexter down under.
There’s some black humour - “remember to bend your knees, it prevents lower back injuries” quoth one fake-cop to another as they load a body-bearing-box into a van – and the sort of shoe-horned romance plot that only happens when a casting director politely points out there isn’t an actress in the first draft of the script with more lines than items of clothing. There’s also a lot of glaring. A LOT. Heck for a while it seemed the opening glare-off between LaPaglia’s Perish and Matt Nable’s Detective Jubelin was going to go on for eight episodes.
Once that ended though the pace was high and the tone quickly established. This is a smarter Underbelly, less tongue-in-scarred-cheek than Razor, and less bawdy. It was almost an hour before there was any nudity (even if it came in a fairly bizarre bikie porn shoot when it did arrive) and only after the best visual metaphor of the Underbelly series was served up in the form of stuffed toy puppy overlay to a discussion of police informants, or “dogs”.
Great dog philosophy from Rory Williamson too: “Never trust anyone with that many cocker spaniels mate. Jack Russells yes. Cockers no.”
Between the green lighting, the big question mark over his white board image and his team of henchmen, there was capacity for Anthony Perish to be painted as an Aussie take on The Riddler here, he even has a dimwit brother as a whipping boy, but Jonathan LaPaglia’s performance elevates the character to menacing. Though that’s all he is so far as the phrase “Perish glares menacingly” was clearly written into the script every time the writers were stuck for dialogue.
Aaron Jeffrey as Frank is also impressive. We know this not only from his performance last night but also from the relentless promotion of this fact in the promo at the beginning, then the five minute “we’ve found every scene Frank appears in and made a montage” promo at the end. Also known as a splatter spoiler.
In a sentence: Underbelly: Dexter delivers. The franchise is back and despite the worst title to date, this looks like a substantial and welcome revamp of the franchise, based around a legitimately captivating criminal.
Best bit: Hi, I’m a crime world king pin. You can tell because I get women-of-ill-repute to meet me in the middle of the bush so we can all hop in a helicopter together and fly off to somewhere criminal king like. And because I’m a criminal king pin, no one will touch my car that I left there. Boo ya!
Worst bit: Paulina’s pokie playing informant scene. Jody Kennedy asked to play a girl who is apparently so dim she doesn’t know names or places but she can just drop the word “epaulet” into conversation. Even if it’s followed by “thingies” it highlighted a scene that went clunk more than the machine Paulina was playing.
Worth watching again? Very much so. Good for the Underbelly fans plus an access point for those who prefer shows about the good guys not just the psychopaths.
Grade: A for awesome glaring goodness
With a new format that's not-so-much cops and robbers as cops and psychopathic crime lords, Underbelly gets a rewarding murderous make over.
What’s it all about?
From the opening titles, we know this: Based around events from 2001 to 2012, the fifth series of Underbelly tells the “true story” of the murder of Terrence Wallace Falconer and the nine-year police hunt for Anthony Perish, a rich underworld mystery wrapped in a psychopath.
From the overzealous promotional teaser that was run before the show began, we know ... frankly way too much. Given it’s the scheduled start time and I’m on the channel, I don’t need a five-minute spoiler trying to convince me to watch. I’m watching, just start already.
Our view:
Look it’s got the key elements - the “it’s a jungle out there” theme song, the random acts of nudity, and the wonderful trip down retro music lane - but this is a different Underbelly. We’re following the cops this time and it makes for a pleasant change after the slasher soap opera of Razor.
After its initial crime against grammar (“Badness??!”) the crime at the centre of this series is played out in short order. We meet Terry Falconer, who gets the sort of heavy-handed Cinderella treatment that can only mean he’s not long for this world – not only is he turning over a new leaf and rejecting his life of crime, he has two sons who he’s talking Commodore with. Sure enough he’s soon getting the Terry-in-a-box treatment, before Perish gets the Underworld Hit service from his courier, who gets his package from Turramurra to Port Macquarie almost as quickly as the show transforms into Dexter, complete with mood green lighting (so the blood can run free and not classification-threatening red) and plastic covered storage facilities.
Then they crack open a couple of stubbies for some calm carved-up corpse contemplation and you know it’s still Dexter down under.
There’s some black humour - “remember to bend your knees, it prevents lower back injuries” quoth one fake-cop to another as they load a body-bearing-box into a van – and the sort of shoe-horned romance plot that only happens when a casting director politely points out there isn’t an actress in the first draft of the script with more lines than items of clothing. There’s also a lot of glaring. A LOT. Heck for a while it seemed the opening glare-off between LaPaglia’s Perish and Matt Nable’s Detective Jubelin was going to go on for eight episodes.
Once that ended though the pace was high and the tone quickly established. This is a smarter Underbelly, less tongue-in-scarred-cheek than Razor, and less bawdy. It was almost an hour before there was any nudity (even if it came in a fairly bizarre bikie porn shoot when it did arrive) and only after the best visual metaphor of the Underbelly series was served up in the form of stuffed toy puppy overlay to a discussion of police informants, or “dogs”.
Great dog philosophy from Rory Williamson too: “Never trust anyone with that many cocker spaniels mate. Jack Russells yes. Cockers no.”
Between the green lighting, the big question mark over his white board image and his team of henchmen, there was capacity for Anthony Perish to be painted as an Aussie take on The Riddler here, he even has a dimwit brother as a whipping boy, but Jonathan LaPaglia’s performance elevates the character to menacing. Though that’s all he is so far as the phrase “Perish glares menacingly” was clearly written into the script every time the writers were stuck for dialogue.
Aaron Jeffrey as Frank is also impressive. We know this not only from his performance last night but also from the relentless promotion of this fact in the promo at the beginning, then the five minute “we’ve found every scene Frank appears in and made a montage” promo at the end. Also known as a splatter spoiler.
In a sentence: Underbelly: Dexter delivers. The franchise is back and despite the worst title to date, this looks like a substantial and welcome revamp of the franchise, based around a legitimately captivating criminal.
Best bit: Hi, I’m a crime world king pin. You can tell because I get women-of-ill-repute to meet me in the middle of the bush so we can all hop in a helicopter together and fly off to somewhere criminal king like. And because I’m a criminal king pin, no one will touch my car that I left there. Boo ya!
Worst bit: Paulina’s pokie playing informant scene. Jody Kennedy asked to play a girl who is apparently so dim she doesn’t know names or places but she can just drop the word “epaulet” into conversation. Even if it’s followed by “thingies” it highlighted a scene that went clunk more than the machine Paulina was playing.
Worth watching again? Very much so. Good for the Underbelly fans plus an access point for those who prefer shows about the good guys not just the psychopaths.
Grade: A for awesome glaring goodness
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