When you think of TV shows about twenty or thirty somethings muddling through life, you’re probs gonna be thinking Girls, or Entourage, or Sex and the City. But Aussies have their own offerings in this genre, and now you can watch them on 10 play.
The Secret Life of Us
A three-time silver Logie Award-winning drama-with-lashings-of-comedy, The Secret Life Of Us first aired back in 2001. Set in a block of units, it centres around the twenty-to-thirty-somethings inhabiting the flats. They’re friends, they’re neighbours, sometimes they’re lovers, at other times fighters. Think Friends, but in a more realistic, gritty, Melbourne-based way.
Playing characters who’re looking for love, making and betraying friends, trying to build successful careers, drinking far too much and passing out at their front doors, is a stellar cast that includes Deborah Mailman, Claudia Karvan, Samuel Johnson, Joel Edgerton and Abi Tucker.
Sure, they might be calling each other on big phones with tiny screens, but when it comes to the experiences that happen during certain periods of our lives, this show is #relatable.
Love My Way
Another #relatable Logie and ACCTA-award winning show - Love My Way came out in 2004 and a lot of people mistakenly thought it was a continuation of The Secret Life Of Us – probably because Claudia Karvan starred in both.
All three seasons are critically acclaimed and, given it aired on Foxtel, let’s be real, unless you’ve borrowed a mate’s DVD set sometime between 2004 and whenever DVD players started being offered up to council pick-ups, you probably haven’t seen it yet.
The show centres around single mum Frankie (Karvan), her daughter Lou, her ex-husband and his new wife, and her ex-husband’s brother, who she shares a house with. This is a functioning-dysfunctional family. A modern family, if you will.
The cast is insanely good – joining Karvan are Offspring's Asher Keddie, Brendan Cowell and Dan Wyllie. Plus, Ben Mendelsohn, Sam Worthington, Sacha Horler and Justine Clarke all have recurring roles.
Skewing slightly older – these guys are well and truly in their thirties and have kids and established careers – the fact it was on Foxtel means it contains much more sex, drugs and swear words.
It also contains the biggest gut punch in Australian television history. You’ve been warned.
Watch The Secret Life Of Us and Love My Way On 10 play
