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Timing is everything

Matt Passmore tells TV Tonight the time is ripe for Australian drama. With The Cut and Underbelly airing on the same night, he should know.

thecut-mp1ABC’s newest drama The Cut takes to the airwaves tonight at a time when Australian drama continues a resurgence.

For actor Matt Passmore it’s has been an optimistic climate of late. He knows too well how difficult it can be to time things with audiences. In 2005 Last Man Standing struggled to build an audience on Seven, despite a good critical reception.

“It’s quite cyclical and moves in waves,” he said. “Last Man Standing was just at the wrong time for drama. Every job you do you never quite know how it will be taken by an audience. This isn’t theatre the audience isn’t immediate, you only get stats.”

Passmore is also appearing in Underbelly on Nine, which gives him two back to back, first-run dramas on the same night.

“I think at the moment it’s quite exciting because there is this greater confidence back in Australian drama and storytelling. We did go through the reality television phase and I’m sure it will come back.”

In The Cut he plays Andrew Telford, son of rogue sports manager ‘Wild Bill Telford’ (John Wood), who returns home from overseas to run the family business. What he finds are vain sports stars, dodgy deals and a father whose ethical choices are at odd with his own.

“He ran away from his father and into this European world, a broader world and into the UN. He ran away to a safe and sterile, meaningful existence and when he comes back he still sees the world of his father in sport as this sort of petty, ridiculous backwater Australia I guess. It’s a really interesting thing to play, getting dragged back kicking and screaming, but little does he know he’s actually finding part of his humanity again. Part of himself he has denied.

“And he comes back to an old flame, too,” he said. “His naive view of the world gets smashed up.”

In the drama-comedy by writer John Misto (The Day of the Roses, The Damnation of Harvey McHugh, Heroes’ Mountain) there are several slightly larger-than-life-characters, pepepred with absurdist humour. Unlike his worthy authoritarians in other series, Wood finally gets to play a flawed character on our television screens.

“I hope he doesn’t mind me saying it, but I think this character is closer to him than any of the other characters that he’s played,” laughs Passmore. “He has a wicked sense of humour and he’s very light-hearted and he has a very wry look on life, with a very experienced perspective. It’s great that he’s not playing the idealistic cop anymore.”

Others in the cast across the series will include Ben Oxenbould, Diarmid Heidenreich, Ian Roberts, Craig McLachlan, Simmone Jade Mackinnon, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Ria Vandervis, Eloise Oxer, and as his long-suffering mother, Julieanne Newbould who plays ‘Roz Telford.’

“The family is affiliated around the Falcons, which is an NRL team, but each episode there’s another situation or a little bit of mystery which Andrew finds himself dragged into and becomes a little bit of a super-sleuth,” says Passmore.

“It’s getting to the truth of the issue. The character of Andrew who left the whole world of Australia and sport and ran away to the world of black and white, and now we watch him wading his way through the quagmire of grey, really. Obviously the pull of the prodigal son with his father is always there.”

The Cut represents ABC’s first new drama series for 2009, notably in a new Monday night timeslot. There will be many looking to see how it performs with ABC audiences.

Passmore remains optimistic.

“There will always be a love of Australians telling Australian stories,” he said.

The Cut screens Mondays 9:35pm on ABC1.

10 Responses

  1. I agree with Majorette that Matt Passmore was the best of the actors – but it wasn’t really much competition.

    I love Aussie dramas – I enjoyed East of Everything and Bed of Roses and MDA and Sea Change and a whole load of other ABC local drama shows – and while there’s not much left on the commercials I watch City Homicide and…um…ok that’s the only one I can think of…but I like Aussie product and I won’t be watching this again…It was just plain boring, badly written and almost universally woefully acted (Passmore was OK and John Wood was John Wood).

  2. This program is rubbish.
    It really guts me to have to be so merciless on a local drama that I held out some hope for but The Cut was awful.
    The script was diabolical (an assortment of badly timed “one liners”) the acting woeful the narrative purile.

  3. Firstly I think it was madness by the ABC to put The Cut up against Underbelly and other strong Monday shows. Friday may have been a better night as I believe most of the Friday night shows are repeats or have been previously shown by a Pay TV Channel.

    I watched The Cut and found it OK and have been informed that later episodes are better then Ep 1.
    I actually thought that Matt Passmore put in a better performance than most of the other actors, making his role quite believable. We should see more of John Wood next week.
    No doubt the ratings will show us if the viewers liked it.

  4. Benny – I think it’s fair enough that they used a fictional team, it’s not a documentary and no actual club would agree to be portrayed in the way the Falcons were in the first episode. Which was what I found annoying about the show: it just dragged out the tired, nasty cliches about rugby league and rugby league players to let people who ‘aren’t interested in sport’ feel superior. The other problem I had with it was that the main character for this episode (the son) wasn’t someone you can sympathise with, he just seemed dull. Not the sort of character that can carry a show. Hopefully John Wood will get more involved next week when his character isn’t languishing in hospital, which should make it a bit more fun to watch.

    David – the continuity announcer at the end said it’d be on iView.

  5. To be perfectly honest, the show doesn’t look that funny or interesting. I would be very surprised if it gets even close to one million viewers. I don’t want to be a cultural cringer who puts all Aussie products down, but this show looks terrible.
    For a start, there is no NRL team called the Falcons.

    I also don’t think Australians are as passionate about sport as some believe. Watch a soccer game in South America or Europe and you will see passion. Australians are more ho-hum.

  6. Sounds a lot like a series on HBO in the states called “Arli$$” starring Robert Wuhl and Sandra Oh. Arli$$ was hilarious, reviews over the weeekend for the Cut have not been very good.

    Like Craig I’m hoping it is repeated on ABC2 or ABCiview

  7. I’m pretty sure it is only 6 episodes for The Cut.

    I wonder how it wel go tonight, after Underbelly, will people turn over to ABC? Or will the people who watched Enough Rope last year (same timeslot as the Cut) tune in to watch something Aussie? Wait and see :)

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