I’m halfway through a new Australian drama called The Family Next Door, which is quite good so far. It’s a slow burn mystery about a stranger who moves into a small cul-de-sac and begins investigating her neighbours, who all appear to be friends on the surface yet seemingly hide quite a few secrets from one another. Her background and reasons for being there are slowly being revealed over the course of the series, but at this stage it’s unclear what her true motive is or what else her neighbours are hiding from one another. I went into it completely blind, so I have no idea where it’s going at this stage.
It’s well-acted and the cinematography is very pleasant to the eye. I don’t watch much Australian TV because producers often don’t do a great job of hiding their relatively low budgets, but in this case it doesn’t feel cheap at all (though I noticed all the food props are from ALDI lol). It has been really nice to watch something set in a place I kind of recognise with accents and cultural traits that are very familiar. I guess I forget how much of the media I consume is American or British, and if this was an American production it would almost certainly be melodramatic and silly but this has a very laid-back, low-key Australian style which I’m realising I appreciate a lot. You learn a lot about the characters from what they don’t say, rather than what they do. It reminds me a bit of Fake, another Australian drama released last year (which was also good).
I’m halfway through a new Australian drama called The Family Next Door, which is quite good so far. It’s a slow burn mystery about a stranger who moves into a small cul-de-sac and begins investigating her neighbours, who all appear to be friends on the surface yet seemingly hide quite a few secrets from one another. Her background and reasons for being there are slowly being revealed over the course of the series, but at this stage it’s unclear what her true motive is or what else her neighbours are hiding from one another. I went into it completely blind, so I have no idea where it’s going at this stage.
It’s well-acted and the cinematography is very pleasant to the eye. I don’t watch much Australian TV because producers often don’t do a great job of hiding their relatively low budgets, but in this case it doesn’t feel cheap at all (though I noticed all the food props are from ALDI lol). It has been really nice to watch something set in a place I kind of recognise with accents and cultural traits that are very familiar. I guess I forget how much of the media I consume is American or British, and if this was an American production it would almost certainly be melodramatic and silly but this has a very laid-back, low-key Australian style which I’m realising I appreciate a lot. You learn a lot about the characters from what they don’t say, rather than what they do. It reminds me a bit of Fake, another Australian drama released last year (which was also good).