Underbelly

Just wanted to respond to some people's comments on how bad Underbelly is, well it completely hooked me in! I was quite hesitant at first because I often don't go for Aussie dramas, but saw half of the first episode by chance and am officially addicted.

Others have been saying it's like watching an episode of Neighbours, well maybe that's because so many of the actors in it had their starts in Neighbours or Home and Away. That's not to say the acting is as bad as in these soap operas. I was pleasantly surprised with the actor's abilities and portrayals of the characters. I was impressed with how many of the actors looked very similar to the people they were portraying.

I really can't say enough good things about this show. Each season we are introduced to a whole new cast of characters and series of events spanning over roughly a decade for each series. The show does a beautiful job of spanning over several years without feeling like anything is rushed or left out. Each episode feels like a mini saga of it's own, with new challenges and conflicts facing the characters that it focuses on. We watch characters grow from amateurs to professionals in a matter of episodes and it all feels very real. Also, as we see at the beginning of each episode, it is all based on real events. A quick search on the Internet will reveal that almost all characters and events are very close to their real counterparts. I could go on about the attention to detail in the story lines and the the top notch acting all around but you should just watch and see for yourself.

Note: I'm writing this review having just finished watching season 3 of Underbelly, which is unfortunately the last season available to me on Netflix here in the U.S.

Watching the first four seasons of Underbelly was like a fast ride full throttle. Everything about the fast cutting, the pacing, the music, the freeze frame identification of new characters with whimsical captions, was an exhilarating ride, reminding me of a 13 hour MTV video. This series had a STYLE like nothing I had ever seen before! The slightly skewed reality resembled European films I have seen. As each season appeared, I felt they could not get any better, but they did. I particularly enjoyed the different locations and the new faces from Australia's remarkably handsome pool of talent. Chelsie Peyton Crawford's portrayal of the chain smoking brassy platinum blonde tart with no heart in Razor was tour de force. She wrote the book on common trollop. The sets were good, lots of location shooting, which made you feel as if you were right there, and watching the Sydney Harbor Bridge construction progressing in Razor gave the series added authenticity.

My only complaint was too much nudity and graphic sex, which would rule it out for US network viewing and lose out on a lucrative market. They should have saved the more graphic sex and skin for extended edition DVD's.

Unfortunately, Season 5 ran out of steam. Where was the music? Where was the fast editing? Where was the location shooting? Where was the full tilt boogie band feel? The slightly off-kilter reality? I watched two episodes and turned off to do the housework which had been neglected while bingeing on the first four seasons. Did the director change? Was the budget cut? Suddenly the best thing and most refreshingly different series in years has turned into a routine cop show. Whatever the reason, they should have stopped while they were ahead.

It is called the Australian Sopranos. There are two problems with this tag: Underbelly is not as good as Sopranos and, unlike Sopranos, it is all too real.

I am a Melburnian. I have worked in Carlton for seven years. Most of the members of the Carlton Crew were familiar to me, although I have never met any of them. Alphonse Gangitano was often referred to as the Robert de Niro of the Lygon Street – not after the actor, whatever his real personality is, but after the characters he played in films like Goodfellas and Godfather Part 2. It was obvious to all that have known him that Gangitano was imitating art and this was true for the rest of the so called "crew". On the other side of the non-existent proverbial fence were the suburban kids that had not known a life without violence – Dino, Benji, Carl… Melbourne has been mentioned more than once in the past decade as the 'most livable city in the world. It cannot be too far from the truth. It has the most of the charms of the best cities of the globe – from New York to Paris to Barcelona – without their accompanying woes. It also has a dark side, as dark as anything that you would find in Detroit, Marseilles, or Bangkok. Between 1994 and 2005, this alter ego of the city crept into surface of the cultured, intellectual and tolerant Melbourne. True to the title of Bugsy Siegel's biography 'they only killed their own' (mostly) but they did in broad daylight, in front of children, suburban mothers and 'more than innocent'bystanders. One of the safest cities in the world was suddenly in the spotlight as one of the most violent until the forces of the light (played by the detectives of Purana task force) put a stop to it.

What we know is that most of these hard men who lived as if there was no law, no rules, no morals and no tomorrow, also lived life as if they were actors in a movie. The news footage of the funerals (and there were more than two dozen of them) could as well have been taken from the episodes of Sopranos. They idolized the likes of the fictional characters in films such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas, Godfather trilogy, and Sopranos, because this is what drug dealers, bank robbers and career killers do between 'jobs', workouts and fornication: They watch films. It was life imitating art imitating life. Those, like me, who watched the whole scene unfolding in front of them (I used to live in the apartment building that was 200 metres from the club where Lewis Moran met his end) with a fascination bordering on the perverse, wondered about the price of real freedom. Were these men really evil or were they simply more courageous than the rest of us? Perhaps, they were both… My middle-class friends looked at me with expressions ranging from surprise to disgust when I posed the question to them, only half joking.

Underbelly is a flawed series in a number of ways. Producers' insistence on choosing actors both with local popularity and a striking resemblance to their real-life counterparts takes its toll on the quality of the acting. It is, to say the least, uneven. So are the scripts… Way too much emphasis on fornication, after the point is well made, and too much pondering on the popular taste formed by our, now world-famous, serials: Neighbours and Home and Away.

Let me assure the viewers foreign to the current affairs of fair Melbourne: All the public incidents in these series have really happened and their recreation is eerily similar to reality.

What can I say about 9's Underbelly? Best Australian TV show of the decade, so far, for a start. Unlikely to be out done. Channel 9's Underbelly is the most significant piece of Televisual cinematic art to grace our tube's since Blue Murder. Comparable to a hyper active season of The Soprano's, it is a major classic series that depicts the 25 or so murders of the Melbourne gangland wars.

At the center of the series is Carl Williams character/ real life OG, played portly and excellently by Gyton Grantley. William's is given an interesting character arc, starting as a lowly Moran driver and slowly moving into producing his own Ecstasy tablets and cornering the market by under selling the competition. Into Williams life comes Roberta, played with a bravora performance by Kat Stewart. She is a gutter mouth shrew who eggs Williams on to bigger crimes and higher times. Together they are the crazed heart of the show. A suburban Bonnie and Clyde. They are completely mythologized in the show. The real Carl and Roberta Williams say they were nothing like the pair, but it doesn't matter too much. The on screen pair are classic gangster characters, reborn, Melbourne style late 90's... in tracky daks and pushing prams, while planning hits.

I should say apart from a few small minor bad apples, the show is exceptionally well cast. Vince Colosimo was born to play Alphonse Gangitano and gives a great opening to the show. If only we could have seen more Vince, but as we all know the Gangitano murder sparked off the war, so he bows out early in his designer suits and tassled loafers. Les Hill and Callam Mulvey nail the Moran brothers... all old school gangster machismo and violence. They are the old power in Melbourne that Williams is out to overcome and then silence after they shoot him in the gut fatefully one afternoon. Kevin Harrington is truly superb as Lewis Moran, he looks and acts just like the real deal from news footage. As an aging gangster in over his head and torn apart by family tragedy, Harrington is excellent. Damian Walshe Howling is central also as Benji Veniaman, a hit-man with divided loyalties. Kind of like a better looking Scott Ryan from The Magician, Benji is a major catalyst in the war with the Carlton crew. The Carlton crew are led (in the show!!) by what appears to be its Godfather Mick Gatto (another great thesp turn by Simon Westaway, capturing the Gatto mannerisms and front). Gatto is the mysterious man at the top of the Carlton tree. An old school gangster, with style and a peace maker, essentially. The violent war shocks him and he does his best to cool the heads of the younger hooligans. Westaway's Gatto is a man of cool respect and one on one Violence only... in the Benji confrontation scene. He is the foil to Williams wild colonial E dealer. Side kick to Gatto is Mario Condello, spot on portrayed by Martin Sacks in probably his best role yet. Condello is a loan shark and money man forced into the big chair of the Carlton crew when Gatto is arrested for Benji's shooting and on the run from William's endless supply of hit men. Throw in an amazing ensemble, see cast list and you have gangster gold.

Add to all this mayhem from the characters above the Keystone cops of The Purana task force. The best character is Steve Owen, who wants to bend the rules to catch these guys and stop the war and murders. Rodger Corser plays Owen as an edgy cop ready to go toe to toe (if anybody would let him) with William's and crew. You wonder why he wasn't allowed to? Indeed, the accusation of the Police sitting around and letting these crims bump themselves off seems somewhat validated in the show. Many scenes where the Police know a hit is happening but fail to swoop on suspects until after the alleged murder (due to some unbelievable technical difficulty) are shown here. Sort of making them accessories of sorts (by incompetence, generally) in the crimes they are trying to stop. Frankie Holden's Detective Butterworth is a short breed eating 'by the book', discombobulated by events head of Purana and Caroline Craig's Jacquie James, is the perfunctory female cop, ala Blue Heelers, narrator and moral compass.

Its a damn shame it can't be aired on 9 locally.

The shows direction has been criticised by friends and while I agree it could have been more cutting edge... that could have made it Internationally brilliant, as good as The Soprano's. The direction is competent and pretty good Oz TV work, moving the story ahead, superb casting as mentioned and lively use of cool Aussie music, etc.

I must say the show is actually meaningful. Has real content. It is profound in its portrayal of Williams as a young upstart good guy, who is slowly corrupted by ambition, his wife, drugs, legitimate threats on his own life and other issues. Even when he becomes a killer he still is a nice guy to friends and family, generous and caring with money, etc., this all makes the Williams character sympathetic. After he is shot in the park by Jason Moran, Williams appears to go a bit 'postal'. He soon escalates the cycle of violence for which the real Williams is now serving his 35 years. But you can't help feel bad for the Underbelly Williams. If he wanted to succeed and stay alive in his chosen profession, could he have acted otherwise? The journey of Williams in Underbelly is one of the more profound Australian tales in many a moon. It resonates, it mostly true from the base facts of the case. Highly recommended Oz TV. Hunt it down overseas readers.

Review by MUFF director Richard Wolstencroft