Love My way, Summerland & One Tree HIll

This article first appeared in The Age on November 27, 2004

If Foxtel 8 think they can trick us into signing up with just one Australian drama . . . well, they may be right. Inspired by HBO's Original Drama led subscription base, Foxtel has exclusive rights to Love My Way, co produced by John Edwards and Claudia Karvan, and starring Karvan. It started last Monday night (Fox 8, 8.30 pm) and not only is it an oasis in a sea of summer television, it's an oasis in a year of Australian drama.

Karvan has been wary of the inevitable comparisons with The Secret Life of Us, as she should be. Love My Way is much grittier stuff, with more in common with Six Feet Under, a show that this series plays homage to in its credit sequence. Like that show, this is television for grownups. Frankie Paige (Claudia Karvan) shares the parenting of her daughter Lou (Alex Cook) with Charlie (Dan Wylie). They are long separated and he's remarried Julia (Asher Keddie) who's a hard to like, but a totally convincing control freak. Frankie shares a house with Charlie's brother, the depressive Tom (Brendan Cowell).

The cast is fantastic. Cowell, who is also one of the show's writers, is unrecognisable from previous performances (such as Fat Cow Motel), which is always the sign of a good actor. Karvan just gets better and better, and it's a relief to see Wylie be allowed to play a 'normal', if flawed guy after a series of evil ones (you may remember him as the killer in The Shark Net on the ABC), Alex Cook is amazing as the eight-year old daughter at the centre of this extended family.

Sex scenes are a litmus test, I reckon. In The Cooks there was too much sex too soon. You weren't invested in the characters and the sight of them half nude made you squirm. In contrast Love My Way is genuinely erotic. This is because you care, very quickly, about the characters' emotional and, by extension sexual lives. I have always been a fan of the failed sex scene (think Seth and Summer in The O.C. or Ellen Barkin and Denis Quaid in The Big Easy.) In this tradition, the scene between Frankie and her friend from work, George, in the first episode, is great fun.

Like Love My Way the new series, Summerland (channel 10, 7.30 pm, Monday), takes on the complexities of extended families, but it does so with cloying blandness. It's a bit like Friends meets Party of Five though it is not half as good as either of those shows. Ava (Lori Loughlin) is a young fashion designer living a carefree Californian beach life with her ex-boyfriend and best friends. After her sister and brother-in-law are killed she takes in her niece and two nephews, and attempts to blend them into her group household (one of whom is ex- Home & Away star Ryan Kwanten). Summerland is moving at times, but I knew we were in trouble when Nikki is admonished to wipe her feet: 'Why did God create doormats?' Well, gee whiz. I didn't know that God had created doormats. Perhaps it is just because the pilot episode is dealing with death, but I have never heard so much talk of God and heaven in a primetime show before. It makes the overtly Christian family friendly 7th Heaven look subtle. If you want to check out a new series, save it till Thursday night's One Tree Hill (Channel 10, 7.30 pm) which is an engaging mix of basketball and Dawson's Creek. Because with much more summer fare like Summerland Foxtel will be looking better than ever.