Perfect storytelling: Redfern Now‘s second season soars
The critically acclaimed Redfern Now begins its second season this week on ABC1. Byron Bache takes a look at why it's a watershed moment for Australian television writing.
Oct 31, 2013
The critically acclaimed Redfern Now begins its second season this week on ABC1. Byron Bache takes a look at why it's a watershed moment for Australian television writing.
"Not a single moment is forced or out of place. There are clear character arcs, and there's perfectly strung, tightly woven narrative tension."UK screenwriter Jimmy McGovern, the mastermind behind Cracker, The Lake, The Street and Accused, was brought in by Riley as the story producer. He worked collaboratively with the show's writers, breaking stories and shaping them. Leah Purcell, who appeared as Grace in season one, and wrote and directed an episode in season two, spoke to The Australian about McGovern's guiding hand in the writers room:
"He brought expertise and reality. He didn't care who we were, he smashed us. He fine tuned our stories ... One guy threw up seventeen stories and he slammed them and said they were just circumstance. So story became a sacred word."Not a single moment is forced or out of place. There are clear character arcs, and there's perfectly strung, tightly woven narrative tension. Everything that happens, happens for a reason. The catalyst for a story can be as simple as a phone call, or as big as a car accident, but the story is always elsewhere; it's in the actions and reactions of the characters in its orbit. Where most US writers rooms will spend weeks —and even months — plotting a season of television before a single word of it is written, Australian writers rooms plow through the process in a fraction of that time. On Redfern Now, McGovern spent months with the writers before the first season, a process that was repeated for the second. Anyone who's ever taken a basic course in creative writing has heard the dictum: show, don't tell. If you've written for an Australian television series, chances are you've heard it, rolled it around on your tongue a little and chosen to spit it out. Redfern Now is less about what people say and more about what they don't say: silence is a device Australian screenwriters often forget. The kind of emotional shorthand that's ubiquitous on The Good Wife or Enlightened is perfectly executed here. There's a scene in the first episode where Peter (Kirk Page) is leaning a little too hard on the bottle. Where a lesser show would have his daughter say "Daddy, don't you think you've had too much wine", here all we see is Peter going to pour himself another glass, realising he's already drunk the whole bottle before they've even finished their takeaway pizza, and opening another. Redfern Now is built out of these moments, each one just as powerful as the last. Novelist Stephen King says:
“Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do — to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.”It's a principle McGovern and the team of writers (Adrian Russell Wills wrote and directed the first episode) are acutely cognisant of. Cliches are dispensed with, and stereotypes are subverted. In the first season, the biggest racist we encountered was an elderly indigenous woman, not a white man. A $60,000 Centrelink fraud turned out to be an accidental oversight by a middle-class mother, not a deliberate manipulation by someone out to rort the system. We tell stories not just to understand the world, but to accept that there are parts of it we'll never understand. But in Redfern Now, we don't just get a look at a world most of us will never see up close, we see ourselves reflected in it. Redfern Now is written and directed by Indigenous Australians. Most of its cast are Indigenous Australians. These are immensely talented writers, directors and actors that belong on our screens every night, not just for six short, commissioned hours a year. Redfern Now airs Thursday nights at 8:30pm on ABC1. [youtube width="555" height="312"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LXxFjvV1lw[/youtube]
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Last night’s episode was a superb as the first series, Deborah Mailman is one of the greatest treasures of this country yet is scarcely recognised.
I watched the McGovern series on criminal law cases out of the Ryde library system recently – it was great and confronting. It was educational and moving. I know Redfern Now is like that too – and reminds me of The Wire in some fashion – which apparently didn’t get the main stream recognition which surprised me given it was like Shakespeare at breathtaking times. As for last night I will need some mettle to watch Redfern Now. I got as far as the immediate aftermath of the car accident and I realised I wasn’t up to going through the emotional wringer at that stage of the day. I like to escape somewhat. When I crave some real meat to my viewing I expect to come back to it. One thing about The Wire – there was alot of humour in it – from Bubbles to the gay copper shaking her head at the white boy appropriation of black gangster slang. Seems to me humour in the grimest subjects helps to digest a heavy context.
Thomas,
You should go back to it on iView when you’re feeling up to it. The rest of the episode goes to unexpected places, and none of it veers anywhere near cliche.
I agree – this is really good -it’s so much more than TV!
I loved season one and if the first episode is anything to go by this one will top it. First class writing, stellar cast and very real stories.brilliant.
Absolutely agree with the comments above. Not easy to watch at times, but brilliant TV.
Should be required viewing for some people!
My comment held up again! Don’t understand the Crikey restrictions, as I was just full of praise for a brilliant episode of Redfern Now!
CML,
The first time you comment on an individual Crikey blog, your comment is automatically held for moderation. Subsequent comments are not.
I loved the first series, and the first episode of the second. Yes, I thought the last episode was going to be hard, but it drew me in, and was most rewarding.
Real Australian TV, and yes, all the creative people working on this show deserve to get a lot more mainstream work.