Rake

“It’s all good panto in here,” Rake‘s Cleaver Greene (Richard Roxburgh) tells Scarlett Engels (Danielle Cormack).

‘Here’ happens to be prison after being sentenced to 14 years behind bars in Season Two. Scarlett is only visiting, but for Cleaver there’s a minimum 8 year stretch ahead of him. In TV terms that would be akin to ‘jumping the shark:’ no longer defending his clients but joining them at the pleasure of Her Majesty.

But Rake loses none of its zing in this Third Season, with Cleaver manoeuvring his way through the prison jungle with all his cunning and wile. It’s just that now it’s a fight for survival.

Fortunately, or perhaps not, Cleaver shares a prison cell with Malcolm (Dan Wyllie) who protects him from his various enemies Cal (Damien Garvey), Col (Steve Le Marquand), and the Corella brothers. But protection comes at a price. Malcolm also has a man-crush on Cleaver and is forever making advances. Yes there are plenty of cheeky gags about dropping the soap -until a literal one upstages them all.

Also inside are a collection of former Macquarie Street elite: politicians, judges and silks. When Cleaver sees them on the TV news they are cheered by the inmates as instant celebrities.

Even more surprisingly, Cleaver will still get to defend cases inside prison -the inmates run their own ‘kangaroo’  court cases for in-house misdemeanours, where ‘judge,’ ‘accused’ and ‘jury’ all wear prison greens.

But Cleaver is also determined to be cleared by an appeal on the outside. If only the bench weren’t so obviously stacked against him.

Much of the episode takes place behind prison walls, lending the episode to a dramatic setting and a colourful array of characters. Bruce Spence as top dog George Corella is the stuff of acting award nominations. Dan Wyllie is hilarious as a lovestruck cell-mate. Steve Le Marquand, who played gangster in Small Time Business, is still on the wrong side of the law.

But Rake is all about Richard Roxburgh as the snivelling, theatrical Cleaver Greene. It’s hard to think of a finer role for Roxburgh, as Cleaver careers from car-crash to car-crash with inimitable dexterity. Writer Peter Duncan balances the character’s misfortunes and anti-hero attributes with episodic procedural plots. The dialogue crackles and the subtext is worthy of its own laugh track.

While the show has given rise to a US adaptation, the original is revelling in the sum of its parts, and Roxburgh leads a cast of characters that is an embarrassment of riches.

I almost want Cleaver to stay on the inside for the ample dramatic opportunities he encounters. But we root for Cleaver in spite of his irrepressible, hapless self. And that is probably its greatest achievement of all.

Rake returns 8:30pm Sunday February 9 on ABC1.