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NY Times: Underbelly 2: “sex-violence-death”

The NY Times gives Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities the thumbs up, and notes Matthew Newton's 'acrobatic sex.'

After it’s brief listing last week the New York Times now gives a full review for Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities, airing in the US on satellite network DirecTV.

The newspaper gives it a thumbs up, even if it can’t discern if the NZ references are meant to be comical or sincere. It even noted Matthew Newton’s ‘acrobatic sex.’

Here are some excerpts where it compares the show to The Sopranos:

It’s not at all the same sort of show, though — it’s pulpier and more lurid, and its narrative meanders as it follows the wandering course of more or less actual events. It’s closer, in both form and quality, to a high-end cable docudrama that can afford reasonably good actors for the re-creations.

And that’s not a bad thing, especially when the place being documented is as entertaining as Australia in the late 1970s and early ’80s, which, on the evidence of “The Underbelly,” was the Wild West with big hair and white suits. Or maybe it was just Miami.

“The Underbelly” doesn’t skimp on clichés of crooked cops, psycho crooks and the well-established sex-violence-death connection. But it’s slick and witty enough to make them easily digestible. Staggering greed and corruption, as usual, provide a fine backdrop for an evening’s entertainment.

You can read it in full here.

2 Responses

  1. LOL @ **a high-end cable docudrama that can afford reasonably good actors for the re-creations**

    There may be a few deflated Aussie actors ego’s with the description ‘reasonably good actors’ 🙂 (-:

  2. “The Underbelly”??!

    I wonder why they didn’t get the first series to begin with and instead jumped to the 2nd series?

    Anyway that’s probably as good a description of Underbelly that I’ve read.

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