Kids, if you’re appalled by the idea of your parents’ generation having sex, look away now. I’m about to describe a scene from an acclaimed Australian drama series, Dalliance, about the antics of a group of wrinklies reunited by an unexpected death in their midst.
OK, now the children are all distracted with their TikToks and what have you, I’ll describe the scene: a pair of singles in their sixties are about to have some impromptu rumpy-pumpy in the woman’s camper van after doing a few lines of coke at their mate’s funeral. Man makes awkward pass; woman seems to shy away; man apologises – but all is good: they’re just out of practice at reading the signals. Wait: does he have protection? Yes. Ever optimistic, he does. What, though, about the vexed question of lubricant? The woman finds an old tube in a cupboard. It has been so long it is way past its sell-by date. Ah, but what the hell. Will probably still work, just about.
I sort of enjoyed this scene and I sort of didn’t. It was well observed and charming and low-key funny, as much of this drama is. But at the same time I felt lightly patronised. I could all too easily imagine the production meeting where the series got commissioned: ‘And this is going to play really well with the neglected demographic that still has the attention span, just about, to enjoy a gentle, slow-burn drama about ordinary middle-class folk entering their golden years. Like a spiritual sequel to [classic early 2000s Aussie ensemble drama] The Secret Life of Us…’
The best thing in it is Hugo Weaving, who plays a grizzle-bearded, life-and-soul-of-the-party, ex-TV cameraman called Billy, so captivating and adorable it blots out all memories of the earnest elf character he played in The Lord of the Rings or the evil Agent Smith from The Matrix. Whenever Billy appears a good time is had by all and you almost find yourself wishing you were Australian.
But not when the other characters amble on stage you don’t. They’re engaging enough but a bit parochial. The blokes – fattish Rex (Russell Dykstra), with his implausible thirty-something boyfriend Dylan (Ryan Panizza); ageing shagger Mani (Kirk Torrance) and bored, long-term husband Luke (Wayne Blair) – all knew each other from when they played on the same rugger team. Of course they did. It was either going to be that or cricket because what else is there?
Their dead mate has requested his ashes (geddit) be sprinkled on the hallowed turf of Sydney cricket ground. So the gang steal mob-handed – as you wouldn’t – into the stadium by night and get caught by the groundsman. It could all be a bit dicey but no worries, mate; turns out the groundsman recognises one of the blokes from when he was a rugger star back in the day. ‘My shift finishes in 15 minutes. Make sure you’re gone before then.’
None of them seems to have noticed – it’s not that kind of show – that since their youth, Oz has been utterly ruined by successive eco-Nazi, new-world-order stooge governments. The opening scene is a yacht race round Sydney harbour. But at no stage does anyone observe, ‘Those capsized crews will be lucky to escape with their legs intact. Such a bummer we can no longer go into the water because they’ve removed all the shark nets and banned shark fishing.’ Nobody smokes. And the only child of this curiously un-fecund group that we’ve met so far is a lesbian. Spares us too many turgid scenes where the oldsters bore one another rigid with talk of their grandkids. But it detracts from the verisimilitude.
Max Pemberton’s controversial documentary The Great ADHD Myth? is probably only controversial if you’re one of the beneficiaries of Britain’s £130 million ADHD industry. To the rest of us, it was likely pushing at an open door. Pemberton’s argument: that in the UK alone 2.5 million kids have been diagnosed with a condition which may not even be real; that chemically coshing thousands of them with slow-release amphetamine pills is a recipe for disaster.
Whenever Billy appears a good time is had by all and you almost find yourself wishing you were Australian
Pemberton followed the progress of one ADHD ‘victim’. A cheeky, active, but obviously bright ten-year old called Mason agreed to participate in an experiment where he came off his meds for six weeks and completely detoxed from screens and processed food, doing yoga and playing outdoors instead. But this wasn’t as conclusive as you might have hoped: after initially feeling great benefits, Mason subsequently relapsed to the point where his mum decided to resume the chemical cosh.
This raised more questions than it answered. Such as: if ADHD is really just a misdiagnosis of bad modern lifestyle choices (screens, junk food, etc), how come Mason exhibited all these symptoms while his younger brother did not? And: what if the behavioural problems we currently call ADHD really are physiological in origin, only the result of some other factor that has not yet been properly considered? My bet would be on the massively expanded childhood vaccination schedule.
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