In Our Blood

I have to give this a high rating cas it is Aussie drama at its best. The way it was set in a period of so much uncertainty. I won't spoil this as it needs to be watched! The story line used, the way it was created into a musical and the way one tv ad that gave shock value to everyone who watched it back in the 80's!

This tv show needs to be watched by the new generation of kids not just for education purposes but also to respect the people who started organisations and worked extremely hard for love and acceptance!

Well done to the cast, crew, creators and anyone who is involved in this production on this awesome Aussie drama!!

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. There's little doubt that everyone connected to In Our Blood had only the best intentions, but that doesn't excuse this being a cheap, misguided and very poorly executed account of the AIDS crisis in Australia. The weirdness starts with the drama's approach to history. Events and characters are "fictionalised" - except they're not really. Matt Day's Minister of Health is clearly Neal Blewett, and couldn't really be anyone else. The saintly Caroline, who heads the public health campaign, is clearly Ita Buttrose, and couldn't be anyone else. Stranger still, Matt Day appears to be doing a rough impersonation of Blewett, while Caroline is dressed and coiffured like a mean parody of Buttrose. Fictionalising doesn't fool anyone; it only does a disservice to those extremely well-known real life figures. But it's with the fiction that In Our Blood comes really unstuck. There are no characters, just cliched archetypes. And for the most part they mouth dialogue that sounds like it's lifted directly from news articles, government reports and AIDS pamphlets of the day. We're treated to whole scenes of ludicrously stilted dialogue that has all the finesse of an industrial health and safety video. Production values are rock bottom, with Brisbane doing a pretty poor job of trying to pass for Sydney. And there are historical clunkers throughout. Uniformed police officers have long hair (very long hair) in one scene. And the writers clearly have no clue about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who did not don habits as a lifestyle choice, but to make some serious political points. The musical numbers are High School Musical level (your local high school, not the TV show). And the lipsticked chorus anachronistically imposes 2020s notions of gender diversity on the 1980s in a way that completely misrepresents the gay community of that time. In the few moments where In Our Blood comes close to being dramatically effective, it is painfully obvious that it is also borrowing shamelessly from Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart. Entire scenes were clearly "inspired" by Kramer's infinitely superior work. Aside from Tim Draxl, who struggles manfully to inject some real human emotion into his scenes, the performances are consistently well below the standard you'd expect of a program produced by our national broadcaster. And that's putting it as kindly as possible. Yes, it's important that the lessons of the AIDs years are not forgotten. But there are more than a few landmark dramas on the subject, from Kramer's aforementioned work to Tony Kushner's magnificent Angels In America. In Our Blood really has nothing especially worthwhile to add, and I can't help wishing those responsible hadn't bothered.

"In Our Blood" covers, in a semi-fictional way, how Australia addressed AIDS in the 1980s. From the first day of the Hawke government, Health Minister Dr. Neal Blewett gathered a team about him that tackled the issues in a pragmatic way.

In the night that the first part was shown, ABC repeated a documentary from 2007 which featured interviews with some of the characters portrayed in the new series. Bill Bowtell was prominent in the fight to contain Covid-19, having been an adviser to Dr. Blewett when AIDS was emerging.

The series shows the lack of understanding of the disease in the early days. It demonstrates how Australia's response was so much more practical than the measures taken in other countries where right-wing evangelists ensured that the action taken by government was restricted (did someone mention USA?). I remember people saying that AIDS was God's myxomatosis punishing gay people for their lifestyle. Then the Grim Reaper campaign stressed that it would become a threat to everyone if not defeated.

Some of the personal stories are fictional but some are true. It all seems like yesterday but it was 40 years ago. How time flies!

As someone who was eager to tune into ABC's "In Our Blood," I have to say that I was left disappointed and underwhelmed by the show. What initially seemed like a promising concept ultimately fell short

First and foremost, the musical interludes. Oh god the musical interludes. They were so bad that I had to look away. The frequency of them was so unpredictable that it seemed like the show forgot what it was. Was it a drama? Was it a musical? Or was it just bad?

One of the biggest letdowns was the show's execution. The pacing was all over the place, with episodes feeling disjointed and poorly structured. The acting was poor and cliched, making it hard to connect with the characters on an emotional level. Some characters didn't seem to serve a purpose at all. The character Tim (the male nun) was a character that didn't add to the story at all and often took on a heavily stereotypical portrayal of a queer man. The character Michelle I also found to be of no value to the storyline either.

Honestly a really strange move by the ABC to release a show that appears to be so low value in its production.

This is in response to the review by lineart-12973, just stop.

DEBUNKING VIRAL CLAIMS Flawed Analysis Leads to False Claim of 'No Excess Deaths' in 2020 By Angelo Fichera

Posted on December 3, 2020

Quick Take An economics professor's flawed interpretation of U. S. mortality data has prompted a viral, false claim that COVID-19 hasn't led to more deaths than normal this year. In fact, multiple analyses have found there to be a higher-than-normal number of deaths during the pandemic - as much as 20%, according to some studies.

The world doesn't need more people spewing falsehoods for some kind of personal gain. This is a great documentary on a serious subject and it doesn't need people like you.