Retro Review #2 Underbelly The Golden Mile

It certainly is a jungle out there in the 2 hour Premiere of Underbelly: The Golden Mile.

I have been eagerly awaiting this since I purchased the first 2 seasons after I finally decided to see what all the hubub was about. Underbelly set the bar pretty high for an Australian drama in its first year but A Tale Of Two Cities jumped over that, titty fucked it and exploded in its face. It was way better, except for Matthew Newton's horrible Kiwi accent. Also, there was far more nudity than the first, that alone is not what makes it a better installment but it certainly didn't hurt (Something which, so far, seems to have been forgotten in The Golden Mile). What did however, was the story, which was written brilliantly, liberties taken of course. The characters just seemed more interesting and with the 80's to work with, was always going to be fun to watch. Now on to The Golden Mile...

It has started slow. Emma Booth was good as the obliviously frigid and clueless Kim Hollingsworth (Note: Blow job). Not much happened other than Mark Furze' pretty good performance as a, for lack of better word, cunt. He was great as Kim's dick boyfriend and a far cry from his poofy Home and Away character. He keeps nicking her money and as a result she gets a job as an escort. Dieter Brummer was back for his second series, this time taking a more central role as the corrupt copper - Trevor Haken. In fact, a few more of the shady cops from last year are back, with the addition of Dougie the Pizza Boy as another arsehole cop who seems to love a punch-on. Peter O'Brien also returns as racing identity George Freeman who gives our main bad guy his first taste of the criminal world. We meet John Ibrahim, who is played by Farass Dirani, at school being called a Leb whislt chatting to a couple of white chicks and proceeds to fuck up the name-callers which reslults in expulsion. His attendance at the school social after this is a nice, light hearted part of the show and other than a bit near the end, pretty much the only one we will see. Being Underbelly and all.

Sigrid Thornton and Natalie Rogue - Rogue Trader appear also but who gives a fuck about them. This series appear's to be the focus of Kim, John and Trevor. It starts in 1988 and will finish in 1999. We are sure to see plenty of convenient brick sized mobile phones by the end and a fuck-load of violence in King's Cross. Hopefully we even see some poor bastard/actor forced to wear parachute pants while taking part in some Hammertime. Oh yeah, what's with all the tranny's for fuck sake?

In conclusion, I enjoyed it for the first episodes of the year but so far, falls a little behind A Tale Of Two Cities in the awesomeness department. Here's hoping The Golden Mile has bent A Tale Of Two Cities over the bench and gone to town on it by the end of the year. Never the less it's sure to rate through the arsehole for Channel 9.

So far I give it 6 bags of coke out of 10.

Note: I wrote this last year on that other blog and it seems a shame to waste it there so here it is again. I reckon I'll review the next Underbelly series after the telemovies entitled Underbelly: Razor, but, don't count to much on it, I don't know when it starts.