The creators of Safe Harbour certainly deserve credit for attempting to construct a dramatic metaphor around the hot-button topic of asylum seekers. Beyond that they deserve very little credit at all, since what they came up with is tortuously contrived, unconvincing from start to finish, and so shot through with plot holes and implausible behaviour that nobody with their brain engaged could possibly identify with any of the characters, much less mistake the unfolding drama for some kind of parable about Australian attitudes to refugees. The drama starts some years after the central Aussie characters have encountered a refugee boat in peril on the open seas, and voted as to whether to tow it to safety, only to have one of them cut the tow rope in the dead of night. When they encounter some of the surviving refugees some years later it sparks arguments about what happened and who cut the rope - as if this wasn't ever discussed in the immediate aftermath or in the intervening years. Moreover, despite bitter divisions about what took place and guilt on the part of at least a few of their number, they all agree to a invite the refugees to an Aussie barbie. Yeah, "as if". But "as if" increasingly becomes the response to almost every plot development. Like Ryan discovering that his daughter has been secretly texting the son of the refugee family, with whom they are now locked in a bitter dispute. Yet he doesn't make her delete the number and halt communication. As if. Later, after breaking in to the refugees flat (as if), he discovers a family planning consultation receipt and immediately leaps to the conclusion that it must be his own daughter who is knocked up by the refugee son (giant, smelly pulsating AS IF). The animosity between the Aussies and the refugees builds and builds, yet at every turn one or other of the characters forces further communication, thereby making things worse. "As if" to every single instance. One is left wondering if the writers have ever even stumbled across the concept of character motivation, given that these characters continually do whatever goes directly against their own best interests - all for the sake of the increasingly implausible drama. I continued to watch out of some misguided sense of duty - given the importance of the underlying issues - but only through gritted teeth and clenched jaw. I really wish I hadn't.
Review of Safe Harbour
