Upright (2019-2022) is streaming on TVNZ+
I’ve spent a lot of the last seven days deep in the world of Outback horror movies so when the opportunity came up to detox a little with a lighter side of the Australian back country I jumped at it.
Co-created, co-written and co-starring Tim Minchin, Upright is a comedy drama in two seasons of eight episodes each.
Minchin is Lucky (!), a musician whose best days appear to be already behind him, taking his piano across country to Perth. In a moment of typical inattention, he crashes his rental car into a ute driven by sixteen-year-old Meg (Milly Allcock).
She is also heading away from something and – as the piano fits on the tray of the ute – they cut a deal. They’ll travel together across Australia and try and stay out of trouble.
Trouble is exactly what they fail to stay out of, however, and each episode is a day in the long and eventful journey across country.
It’s an Aussie production so there’s a lot of highly inventive swearing but there’s also a great deal of heart, as you would expect from anything involving Minchin, one of the nicest people in show business.
There’s also a bit of music. Wellingtonians of a certain vintage will be pleased to see a cameo in episode two from the great comedy-instrumentalist Adam Page who lived among us for a few years in the mid-2000s.
Upright is streaming on TVNZ+ in Aotearoa, Binge in Australia and AMC+ in the U.S.
I wouldn’t normally make a recommendation after only watching three episodes but I’m pretty confidant that season one (at least) is going to be worth following to the end. I’ve heard that season two doesn’t quite hit the same heights but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
