Spy: Robyn Malcolm takes on gritty new role in After The Party
After The Party is an award-winning New Zealand drama about abuse allegations starring Robyn Malcolm
After the party - This astonishing and tense new show is a must-watch
After The Party
★★★★★
ABC, Sunday, April 28, 8.30pm (All episodes available on iview)
★★★★★
ABC, Sunday, April 28, 8.30pm (All episodes available on iview)
In what might be the best New Zealand drama ever produced (sorry, Top of the Lake), Robyn Malcolm (Upper Middle Bogan) plays a character not often seen on screen: a ballsy middle-aged woman who is brilliant and infuriating.
Malcolm – who co-created the series with NZ screenwriter Dianne Taylor – plays high-school biology teacher Penny Wilding. The series opens with her dealing with a student caught watching pornography on his phone. Rather than merely castigating him, she tells a classroom full of boys that watching too much porn could lead to disappointment and feelings of inadequacy. “You should be thanking me for saving your sex lives,” she tells them.
Immediately a compelling character, she becomes ever more complex as the six-part series progresses, beginning with the moment she learns that her ex-husband Phil (Peter Mullan), who has been living in Scotland for the past five years, has returned to their tight-knit Wellington suburb, and is moving in with their 20-year-old daughter Grace (Tara Canton) and their toddler grandson.
His departure followed a contentious incident at a party at Phil and Penny’s house that tore the family, and much of their friendship circle apart, when Penny publicly accused Phil of sexually abusing one of Grace’s drunk teenage school friends.
Phil was never charged, though, and now that he’s back, many of their mutual friends, and particularly Grace, want Penny to move on. But she can’t; she’s haunted by what she saw that night – we see her return to that night frequently in flashback – and when Phil, also a teacher, starts working at a local school and, like Penny, coaching a teenage basketball team, she feels compelled to prove his guilt.
As her anger at Phil’s return, and the way in which he has easily slipped back into their community rises, her obsession begins to overshadow all else, and After The Party becomes increasingly tense.
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Penny might be forthright and fallible – she has boundary issues, she’s impulsive, her dinner is often chunks of cheese and red wine – but she’s also thoughtful, warm and community-minded. We see her riding her bike around a beautifully shot Wellington to an environmental action group, basketball games, and a life-drawing class where she models. Each is affected by her anger and her inability to be still; even in the life-drawing classes, she’s on edge.
There are no heroes in this complex tale, and each episode throws up more doubt and questions, echoing the state of Penny’s mind. Has she had too much to drink the night of the party? Are other incidents that caused doubt throughout her marriage also wrong?
Malcolm is astonishing as a woman determined to seek justice, even as her behaviour affects her job and starts to alienate her closest friends and her own family. It’s disappointing that her portrayal of a complicated middle-aged woman often seen without make-up or styled hair, remains noteworthy; not since Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown has someone in a TV series looked so … real.
Peter Mullan is also superb as the charismatic Phil, the “cool dad” that everyone loves, and the supporting cast equally terrific, especially newcomer Tara Canton. The great overarching question that hangs over the series is answered in the finale, but the conclusion of this startlingly powerful drama is not neatly tied up. Like life, it is complicated and messy.
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