Entertainment For Lively Minds
Underbelly DVD First series
Posted by Cookieboy on 2 September 2010 - 7:08am.
What's it called?:
It took two nights to watch
What It Sounds Like:
Home and Away with gunshots and swearing.
It's fairly average, a great, essentially true story but ruined by too many "only on TV moments." Way too many gratituous sex scenes, I'm as big a perve as anyone but if they don't move the story along they don't belong. A man having sex with his rival's girlfriend should stay, but a cop having sex with his live-in girlfriend should not. It doesn't affect anything. They should have jettisoned all of the soap opera elements.
The basic true story is brilliant, as far as I know unprecedented in either fact or fiction. The "arc" is this, "Village idiot becomes kingpin" and they should have followed that more closely. Carl Williams was like a superhero whose special power was a cloke of sheer stupidity. No-one took him seriously and it cost many people their lives. As one of his ex-classmates said when he finally got arrested, "He always had the stupid grin on his face"
"
What Does It All "Mean"?:
It's banned in my home state of Victoria as some of the activities are yet to go before the courts and I wanted to watch it to remove myself from the jury pool, "He's guilty Your Honour, I saw him do it on TV!" So I hunted it down and watched it.
Goes well with...:
A six pack of Vic Bitter and a shitload of cigarettes.
Might Suit People Who Like...:
watching crims going to the beach and running around with guns tucked in their shorts. That just looks weird! The real Carl Williams is dead by the way. He got bashed to death in prison not long ago. No tears were shed by anyone.









I tried watching it
after I finished The Wire. I lasted about 20mins before the dire acting turned me off.
It's probably cruel to judge the acting
in something so badly written, I defy any actor to take a line like, "As long as we still have each other" and make it seem real.
I liked the Ist series..
..but if you think the acting was bad on series one, you should try 2 and 3