Total Control is easily the most hyped Australian drama of this year, so one is entitled to have high expectations. It stars Rachel Griffiths and the always watchable Deborah Mailman. And it's been promoted as a provocative story about racism and race in politics. But maybe the fact that the ABC wimped out on the original title - Black B*tch - should have served as some kind of warning. On the evidence of the first episode, Total Control is too tame and tepid to be worthy of that more gutsy title. And as political drama it never, not even for a few passing moments, rings true. It starts with the country's PM (Rachel Griffith) travelling to outback Winton to personally implore local hero Alex Irving (Mailman) to fill a position in the Senate. Yeah, as if. Alex has come to national prominence by standing up to a violent gunman who then shoots himself in the head right in front of her. Yet it never occurs to anyone that Alex might be dealing with some serious PTSD issues. Yeah, right. Instead, her political handler, Jonathan, is far more concerned about ensuring that Alex delivers the bland, inoffensive maiden speech he has written for her, not the passionate, rousing, straight-from-the-heart everywoman speech she has written for herself. Because in this parallel universe apparently bland makes more political sense than passionate and rousing and saying something that will actually connect with real people everywhere. It's hard to fathom how all manner of presumably educated drama producers and executives could have read any of this and thought "yeah, that makes sense". And yet they did. Mailman is wonderful as always, and the only real reason to watch. She really deserves much, much better.
Review of Total Control
