MR INBETWEEN
Mr Inbetween tells the story of Ray Shoesmith (Scott Ryan), a standover man and enforcer for nightclub owner and loan shark Freddy (played by Damon Herriman). Ray lives a simple life, looking after his daughter Brittany (Chika Yasumura) and his older brother Bruce (played by Nicholas Cassim), who is suffering from a degenerative motor-neurone disease. Ray also has a burgeoning romance with a nurse named Ally (played by Brooke Satchwell).
The key to the show’s success is Ryan’s affable, friendly charm which can flip at any given second and turn into dead-eyed, dutiful hitman. He rationalises his actions by compartmentalising them and telling himself that as a hired killer ‘he’s just doing a job’ – so he’s also able to be a compassionate father and brother. Things get difficult when he starts a romantic relationship because it’s a lot harder to hide the dark parts of himself.
It’s a cleverly written show – Ryan is terrific – helped in no small part by his unfamiliarity as a performer, so you completely buy him as the character - and Edgerton’s stunt background means that the action sequences, when they occur, go for maximum impact.
Aussie crime is a fairly large TV & film genre though the pitfalls that most Aussie crime fare falls into is that it tries to replicate the US style of criminal. Underbelly springs to mind, where the tone is exploitative and heightened but the characters don’t ring true because - at their core - Australian’s don’t see themselves that way. It’s inauthentic. It’s bullshit. The Australian criminal archetype is the smart arse - something seeded at Australia’s criminal inception as a colony and exemplified by Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie letter to the Victorian government, where he called the police who pursued him: "fat-necked, wombat headed, big bellied, magpie-legged, narrow-hipped, splaw-footed sons of Irish Bailiffs or English landlords”. This anti-authoritarian attitude cuts through to who we are as a nation of upstarts, underdogs and loners - and Ryan’s Ray Shoesmith personifies this to a tee.
Mr Inbetween is hands-down the best Australian TV show currently on air at the moment and it’s a goddamn crime against humanity if you haven’t started watching it. Get your priorities in order and get on it.
