Dear Life ★★★½
One of the hardest things to do with a series is to take time-old emotions and a familiar concept and renew them. Finding the unique in the universal is not easy, so all credit to Dear Life creators Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope. The married creatives dig deep into this heartfelt Australian drama about grief and understanding, and even if they occasionally overshoot the mark with some gambits, the way that the show navigates hardship and recovery has a hard edge and plausible concessions.
Khisraw Jones-Shukoor as Ash and Brooke Satchwell as Lillian in Dear Life.
At the centre of it is Lillian (Brooke Satchwell), whose New Year’s Eve marriage proposal from doctor boyfriend Ash (Khisraw Jones-Shukoor) becomes a cruel memory when he dies following a horrific emergency room attack. Hungover and barely holding on, Lillian’s leaky life raft is Ash’s organ donor status. “Your gift changed my life,” reads the letter from the recipient of Ash’s heart. Lillian is compelled to seek them out, and the storytelling acknowledges this can stem from the worst of impulses.
Ryan Johnson as Hamish and Brooke Satchwell as Lillian in Dear Life.
Butler and Hope are best known for comedies such as The Librarians and Upper Middle Bogan. And there are laughs here, albeit more wounded than wry. The duo has a knack for crafting unexpected responses to the everyday. They did it with the absurd pleasures of their schoolyard comedy Little Lunch, and here it’s a matter of making sense of the inexplicable. Lillian pinballs from one reaction to the next, and the storytelling explores the painful psychology of organ donation, both for her and the strangers Ash has saved.
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The scope is expansive and sometimes brutal. There is a plotline, somewhat strained, about Ash’s killer and his prison circumstances while awaiting trial. But the ambitions are a plus when it comes to the married couple of Mary (Eleanor Matsuura) and Hamish (Ryan Johnson), Lillian’s best friend and cousin respectively. Instead of just being Lillian’s sounding board, their struggles become acute – Dear Life understands those closest to you can say the harshest things – as they also fail to cope.
At one point there’s an official remediation session, but much here is about bridging divides when our instinct is self-preservation, whatever the cost. Lillian’s need to meet recipients, such as entitled vineyard owner Andrew (Ben Lawson), can be construed as stalking, donor program co-ordinator Susan (Deborah Mailman) points out. Perhaps a bitter mother-in-law and a controlling mother (Kerry Armstrong gone scorched earth) are too much, but healing is a test of endurance in Dear Life. The smallest steps forward are rightly hard earned.
Dear Life streams on Stan from January 1. Stan is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.
