Finally, after all these years, Australian television launches its first-ever mystery series set in a coastal town. I’m joking, I’m joking: it feels like a new addition to this genre arrives every other week. The latest, The Family Next Door, lands a month after Netflix’s The Survivors, a mystery-drama based in a Tasmanian coastal town riddled with secrets. This one stars Teresa Palmer – as did another mystery-drama earlier this year, The Last Anniversary, which was based in a tiny island community near Sydney riddled with secrets.
Palmer plays Isabelle, an “enigmatic stranger” who, to quote the official synopsis, is central to “a mystery that disrupts the seemingly harmonious beachside community of Pleasant Court” – which is, of course, riddled with secrets.
Storytellers embrace these narratives for good reasons – the picturesque locations and potential exportability, namely – but they have their work cut out for them. It’s not easy to inject creaky old templates with freshness, or to establish mysteries in which audiences are keen to invest.
The primary mystery in The Family Next Door (adapted from Sally Hepworth’s novel of the same name) concerns the true reason Isabelle has arrived in the small Victorian town of Osprey Point. She moves into the aforementioned cul-de-sac and ingratiates herself with the locals, telling them she’s a writer penning a piece on how the town is “the new Byron Bay”. But the local real estate agent who rents a property to her, Ange (Bella Heathcote), senses Isabelle is not telling the truth.
The audience is also aware from the get-go that something about Isabelle is being withheld; the first episode sees her fanging it down picturesque coastal roads with a Marion Crane look in her eyes, until she parks the car to let out an intense, primal scream: to the world, to herself, to everybody and nobody. There are shots of sea foam and waves crashing – not exactly subtle symbolism.
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We get to know other members of the community – including Fran (Ming-Zhu Hii), Essie (Philippa Northeast), Lulu (Jane Harber) and Holly (Maria Angelico), who periodically gather on foldout chairs in the cul-de-sac to sip wine – and learn of a controversial property development project Ange is leading, which has created backlash over concerns about its environmental impact. Early on, Ange meets with a spooked investor who wants out – but she talks him around, buying herself some time.
That investor is played by Vince Colosimo, who appears in one small scene and doesn’t come back for the next three episodes (this review is based on the first four of six). I’m told that he returns, but his part clearly isn’t big. Why do Australian storytellers these days give Colosimo such short shrift? He’s great talent and can sizzle in meatier roles.
Meanwhile Palmer, as usual, provides a strong grounding presence; she has a gift for projecting quiet, complex intensity. And Heathcote is a highlight, as the morally ambiguous Ange: you’re not sure how much you can trust her, or how flexible her ethics are.
The show is directed Emma Freeman, whose impressive CV includes Stateless, Love Me, Fake and The Newsreader, and I appreciated the heat cinematographer Craig Barden brings to the frame, providing a burnt-looking texture as if the show itself has been sitting in the sun for too long. But even though none of it is poorly staged, everything feels quite same-old.
The show’s central mystery just isn’t very compelling, and the drip-feed of revelations do little to pique our interest. Nor are the characters interesting enough to carry the mystery through its many slow spots.
The Family Next Door really needed a shot in the arm, or two, or three. I don’t even have much desire to find out how it finishes.
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The Family Next Door starts on the ABC on Sunday at 8pm, with all episodes available to stream on ABC iview.
