The title of Miranda Nation’s new thriller collection, Taking part in Gracie Darling, jogged my memory of Donald Crombie’s 1986 adaptation of Playing Beatie Bow – one other Australian manufacturing that hyperlinks a younger lady’s title with a kids’s sport that defies the seemingly immutable legal guidelines of the universe. The place Beatie Bow was transported from the previous to fashionable Sydney through a chant, “taking part in Gracie Darling” includes children speaking with the spirit world, the place Darling might have been taken after a seance carried out in a creaky outdated shack went terribly improper.
Due to course it does! It’s a seance. In a shack. Simply as soon as I’d like to see a “speak to the lifeless” scene involving Ouija boards and the like go swimmingly effectively, a bunch of spirit-communicators leaving the occasion with ear-to-ear smiles and newfound joie de vivre. However in fact, the seance on this moderately well-staged however very codified and spinoff collection includes the Ouija board catching on hearth and the titular woman (Kristina Bogic) spitting out demonic-sounding dialogue, earlier than disappearing from the face of the Earth in 1997.
Leaping a few years forward, we observe Gracie’s former bestie Joni (Morgana O’Reilly), who attended the seance and is now a toddler psychologist. Within the first episode (this evaluate encompasses the primary three of six – all that was made out there to the media) Joni receives a cellphone name, informing her that one other woman has gone lacking from that exact same shack, the place a bunch of youngsters have been taking part in Gracie Darling. Ah sure, the previous comes again to hang-out! This second establishes the present’s very genre-ified dialogue, through strains corresponding to “It’s taking place once more”. Equally tired-sounding language is sprinkled by the writers (Nation and Anya Beyersdorf) all through the collection and delivered by the poker-faced forged.
Occult actions turning into a type of adolescent recreation thematically aligns this present with Danny and Michael Philippou’s excellent horror film Talk To Me, by which youngsters go round an embalmed severed hand and channel a cranky spirit. However the Philippou brothers did one thing fascinating by associating occult practices with different types of leisure risk-taking, implying that consulting spirits and taking hits from a bong are totally different types of the identical historic need: to transcend the realm of the strange (which is strictly what I advised my mom when she caught me smoking pot as a teen).
In Taking part in Gracie Darling, the occult aspect simply feels cribbed from a cobweb-covered playbook. Likewise for the correlation between a core thriller and the troubled previous of the protagonist, who, to be able to repair a recent drawback, should tackle one thing unresolved inside themselves – an oldie however a goodie. One other key participant is native cop Jay (Rudi Dharmalingam, from the ABC’s chic drama Wakefield), who was additionally a part of that seance – as a result of small city, as a result of narratively handy. The supporting forged additionally consists of Dame Harriet Walter as Joni’s mum, Pattie, and Celia Pacquola as Ruth Darling, whose daughter Frankie is the newest particular person to vanish.
One other very acquainted aspect on this present issues a state of affairs brewing within the background that impacts the local people, which serves as a scaffold for the principle plot. Not too long ago, in Last Days of the Space Age, there was an ongoing staff dispute at an influence plant, and in The Family Next Door, a controversial actual property property growth. Right here, it’s some not too long ago constructed wind generators that are disrupting the flight paths of birds and – some residents imagine – triggering well being points in the local people.
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Atmospherically, Taking part in Gracie Darling is directed assuredly by Jonathan Brough (whose latest work consists of Bay of Fires, Rosehaven and The End). And it’s fairly effectively acted, with a very robust, grounding lead efficiency from Morgana O’Reilly, who had a small however memorable position as a resort worker in The White Lotus season three. However the writing on this collection comes throughout as very self-conscious and general the present feels fusty and antiquated.
