Has there ever been a depiction of necrophilia sweeter, more wistful, more emotionally nuanced than Patrick Brammall and Emma Booth’s steamy affair in the first season of Glitch?
That might not have been the intention of ABC TV’S genre-ish, soap opera-ish, The Returned-esque paranormal drama – but it’s hard to deny the result: a lovely, melancholic show about (or at the very least involving) romancing the dead.
Or should that be “undead”? Things are a little ... complicated, even if moments from the first season felt like a small-town version of Love My Way directed by George Romero. When I say “affair”, I am actually referring to a couple – Kate (Booth) and fair dinkum cop James (Brammall) – who were married. And when I say “were” I am referring to when I said “dead”, in that Kate’s death (from breast cancer) presumably nullified the marriage.
And when I say “necrophilia” – well, Kate rose from the grave with six other similarly mud-covered and glassy-eyed locals in Glitch’s very first episode. She spectacularly defied the natural order of things only to discover James married again, to her former best friend Sarah (Emily Barclay). At the start of season two, Sarah has just given birth to her and James’ first child; as they say, these are tangled webs we weave.
The audience is not all that much wiser as to why any of the characters returned from the great hereafter in the first place, meaning the first season spent approximately six hours introducing considerable mystery and resolving very little. We do know for sure that if this motley bunch (including a bible-bashing wife and mother, a former town mayor, and a first world war hero) venture too far from the cemetery, they bleed from their eyes then die (again).
From the start the series producers and creators (including Tony Ayres and Louise Fox) discouraged use of the Z word, preferring spiffier, more ABC-worthy parlance such as “the risen” and “resurrection drama”. So the “zombie” situation, not that they would admit there was one, felt a little like “just don’t mention the war” – the big, grisly, undead elephant in the room.
Fair enough, I guess, given both seasons are nothing if not tonally rich affairs: sumptuous Australian gothic elegantly directed by Emma Freeman, light years from the grubby thrills of midnight movies. The mood is almost unceasingly melancholic, with a finely modulated air, as if even exterior scenes were controlled with a high-tech air-con. The stylistic focus prefers closeups of roses and flowers (rising to life in the opening credits scene) to gore, violence or resurrected citizens groaning for brains.
The big problem was – and is – twofold: 1) the plot took a very long time to go nowhere definitive, and 2) as this Guardian review correctly observed, the characters tend to be drop-dead boring. Most of us gave a lot of goodwill to the first season, partly because it was technically and tonally so well executed. But these characters are the kind of people you’d want to shake to life, if they hadn’t already re-emerged from their graves.
Season one ended (spoiler alert) with a last-minute twist: the doctor helping out the group of undead, Elishia McKeller (Genevieve O’Reilly), was/is dead herself. The writers (Louise Fox, Kris Mrksa and Giula Sandler) had ample room to flesh Elishia out, giving her more presence and a compelling history – which would have likely imbued the twist with greater impact.
Instead her character comes across as half-developed. The writers were more interested in the love triangle between James, Kate and Sarah, with lines such as “I never stopped loving you”, and the aforementioned sweet, wistful, emotionally nuanced necrophilia. In the second season Kate has a new beau, Owen (Luke Arnold) – and a new, mad scientist-esque doctor (Pernilla August) emerges to further reduce Elishia’s screen time.
The new episodes have trouble deciding what to focus on. The pursuit of teenager Kirstie (Hannah Monson) to find the man who murdered her shows promise but is developed half-heartedly. And, bizarrely, of all the things they could explore, the writers follow the potty-mouthed Paddy (Ned Dennehy) as he ... instigates a real-estate dispute.
Glitch has a knack for answering questions nobody asked and delaying big ones everybody wants closure on.
The key cast addition in season two (this review encompasses all six episodes) is Rob Collins as Phil. After he dies in an oil rig explosion, Phil comes back stomping around like an angel of death, giving unfortunate recipients the long kiss goodnight – a little like Javier Bardem from No Country for Old Men but with a supernatural element.
Phil also comes across as a bit of deus ex machina, triggering confrontations to force dramas to come to a head, much as the police officer Vic (Andrew McFarlane) did in the first season. It feels as though Phil stumbled out of the Cleverman universe Collins also stars in; he even speaks in Cleverman-isms. Asked what his purpose is, Phil responds: “What I’m here to do. Cut the head off the snake.”
Collins’ performance is fine, but again: an uninteresting character. This is despite the strong suggestion that every mention of him – and this applies to many other characters too – ought to be preluded by the word “mysterious”.
It is much easier to introduce a mystery than to satisfyingly resolve one. Despite admirable acting and production values, season two flounders – with not enough dramatic credibility to provide interesting soap opera, and not enough twists and turns to make compelling genre.
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