Small Claims

Rebecca Gibney, Freya Stafford and Claudia Karvan are excellent actors (apparently one is no longer allowed to call them "actresses"), and they do their best with a fairly ordinary run-of-the-mill story here. Each is a working_mother / wife / cop/lawyer/drug_runner (match them up however you like); they have to cope with a variety of situations, including the mandatory threats to their children.

Not too many surprises in the storyline, but that wouldn't be why you might watch this movie. No, this is all about how the women respond to the various situations around them. The girls are good, if flawed (loved the "spaced out slag" comment!); most of the guys are bad. Is this a chick flick or what?

Being a guy, I thought Freya looked fantastic in that strappy red dress that she had poured herself into; except for the very obvious G-string underneath, and if anything, she is a little too thin. And Rebecca, oh dear, she isn't aging very well at all. That may be a little unkind, I understand she has faced considerable personal challenges recently.

Overall, on some kind of arbitrary scale, I might rate this an 8 out of 10; and probably wouldn't take the time to watch it again more than say once more.

The idea of the characters' backgrounds - cop, solicitor and junkie - getting mixed up at their Sydney suburban Mortlake mothers' playgroup is quite lively and this pilot for a series doesn't have all the yucky elements that Australian TV crime fiction makers usually seem to feel are necessary. The three leads are equal to their tasks, coming over as real, contrasted types who haven't been scrubbed up for the show.

Well that's the good news. Despite an ambition to be location specific in the LANTANA manner, this could have been shot in any city even when the camera occasionally gets far enough away from the cast to include a bit of background action. The quite lively build up is resolved in a conventional shoot-up and the cheery color seems fuzzy.