GRINNING REVIEW FOR ONE NIGHT IN THE SMH

ONE NIGHT
★★★★
Paramount+

A small coastal community, long-held secrets, sweeping aerial shots of moody-hued coastlines – you know the drill. One Night certainly adheres to the trend, but the performances from the three leads – Jodie Whittaker (Doctor Who), Nicole da Silva (Doctor, Doctor, Wentworth) and Yael Stone (Orange is the New Black) – outweigh the cliches.

Created and written by Emily Ballou (The Slap) and directed by Catherine Millar (The Secrets She Keeps, The Twelve) and Lisa Matthews (The PM’s Daughter), the six-part drama focuses on three women, Tess (Whittaker), Simone (da Silva) and Hat (Stone) who grew up in the small town and were inseparable, until one night at the local pub changed each of their trajectories.

Almost two decades later, life has taken them in different directions; sensible Hat, a lawyer, still lives in the house she grew up in, with her husband Mark (Damien Strouthos) and three kids; Tess moved abroad years earlier to pursue a successful corporate career; and Simone, who has never settled down, has recently returned to care for her dad (William Zappa) as he struggles with dementia.

The joke among the trio was that flighty Mon, as she’s affectionately known, can never finish anything, but after five years, she has completed something: a novel, which she has based on the events and aftermath of that night.

Exactly what happened is teased out slowly (perhaps a little too slowly), in flashback scenes with each character played by younger actors; sometimes we see their younger and present-day selves in the same scene. The trio were tight, but there was also a budding romance between Tess and Mon that was derailed. The details of what happened 20 years earlier may take a while to emerge but the outline of a crime that had traumatic consequences is evident from the beginning.

Mon has fictionalised the story, but she hasn’t told anybody, including, initially, her publisher, that the story is drawn from her life. She tells Hat that she’s written a novel, but when Hat reveals that Tess is moving back to Australia (yes, very convenient timing), the reality of what her novel could do begins to dawn.

Panicking, Mon reveals the truth to her agent (Chum Ehelopola), but it’s too late; the best that can be arranged is that the book is published anonymously (which, naturally, turns out to be sensational for book sales).

Hat soon discovers the truth and once she reads the book, things begin to unravel. Aside from Tess not being consulted, Hat isn’t pleased with the character obviously based on her (and how this character behaves in the event’s aftermath), and also worries about Mon’s thinly disguised portrayal of a local crime family (the Scottish matriarch of which is played by Noni Hazelhurst in terrifying form). And when Tess learns of the book, things escalate.

At the heart of the story are themes of trauma,the reliability of memory, and, especially, who “owns” a story; if something didn’t directly happen to you, can it be your story to tell?

Whittaker (with a decent Australian accent, while Kat Stewart, as her partner, assumes a British one) is understated as the haunted Tess and da Silva in particular is a standout, utterly believable as she veers from manic to melancholic and back again.

It might also be one of the few dramas in which older Australian women – Hazlehurst, Tina Bursill and Fiona Press - look, well older and genuinely weathered.

The show might have benefitted from unspooling its central narrative over fewer episodes, because after the halfway mark the drama becomes less character driven, skating into crime mystery territory. But the acting throughout One Night is incredible.

Read Original Article Here Author: Kylie Northover