It’s nice when a program delivers what it promises in advertising, but when the extent of that promise is to show you naked breasts and deliberately excessive violence, it’s not an especially long journey to meet it halfway. Enter Underbelly, an Australian television show that clearly owes its existence to The Sopranos, but holds almost no interest in any of its appeal beyond the prurient. Sleazy perhaps, but at least it’s hard to say that it’s dishonest.
Try not to laugh out loud when Underbelly insists that it’s based on a true story; it is, to be sure, but it’s very obviously beside the point. Each series (season, in Americanese) is devoted to a different stretch of time in Australian crime history, with the first taking place from 1995 to 2004, and concerning the Melbourne gangland war. The second, A Tale of Two Cities, is set from 1976 to 1987, and concerns the building of the Mr. Asia beroin trade, led by Aussie Bob Trimbole and Kiwi Terry Clark. The third (and final of the set, but not of the series), The Golden Mile, focuses on corruption in the police force from 1988 to 1999 in the suburb of Kings Cross. All of them reference true events, and many of the characters featured, including principle protagonists, are real.
The “style” of Underbelly will be instantly familiar to Americans who have ever watched anything on the CW; bright colors, sharp distorted angles, breasts that don’t even pretend to be real. Just in case the splashy violence didn’t get the point across, Underbelly graciously provides a narrator who spells out motives, exposition, and any potential taglines should they be necessary, just in case any individual scenes are released and marketed (to its credit, it merges pretty seamlessly with the dialogue). Even if Underbelly is the residual skin to the Sopranos’ hot chocolate, it has a taste of its own, that doesn’t even pretend to be acquired.
Bonus Features
Three featurettes are included with the set, specifically one for A Tale of Two Cities, one called War on the Streets, and another called “On the Newsreel: Carl Williams ‘A Day of Reckoning”.
