My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

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Sunday, November 12, 2017

A good Australian TV crime drama about 2 women on the run

A note on the surprisingly good series Netflix has picked up from Australian TV, Wanted, which in some ways is just a good old crime story with lots of plot twists and betrayals and close escapes and schemes gone wrong and entrapments and evasions and couple of shootouts and chases rough terrain, of crooked cops and innocent victims. What propels this series (Season 1 was 6 episodes) is the partnership between the protagonists: Two women waiting at an urban bus stop witness a drug deal gone wrong, they get drawn into the fray and one of the women, Lola, shoots to death one of the drug dealers - who, it turns out, was a cop involved in the deal. Lola and the other witness, Chelsea, run off and the police pretty quickly ID them and thus begins a hunt across Australia for these two women, who as we quickly learn are polar opposites and great comic foils for each other: Lola is tough, a rule-breaker (with a past), working class, outspoken, smart, fearless. Chelsea is from a wealthy family, she's timid, conservative, even prim, has supposedly never been in trouble - but she has a past two and a criminal predilection, as we gradually learn. There's lots of great comic dialog between these to and, over time, of course they bond into friendship and both evolve as characters. The scenes of rural Australia are great, especially for American viewers, as we for the most part of completely unfamiliar w/ life in the "bush" and in the other remote regions of Australia - this is not a movie about the hip city of Sydney or the beautiful tourist destinations; rather, about rundown roadside motels and desolate gas stations miles from any other outposts. Like most crime dramas, it's really hard to keep all the plot elements clear in mind and some probably make no sense under close examination, but the movie's a fund ride and pretty exciting all the way through. Whether Season 2 can build on this momentum, well, probably not, but worth a look.

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