Underbelly 2

Last year I refused to watch "Underbelly" while it was on TV. This was mainly based on my experience with Aussie TV dramas, which tend to be really crappy. The few bits I did catch didn't do anything to change my mind. But once it was finished, I was given a DVD with downloaded copies of the episodes, and gave it a shot. I watched the whole thing in a few weeks and actually quite enjoyed it. Perhaps it was the fact that it was based on real events, some of which I vaguely remembered occuring in the nineties, made the difference.

Anyway, I went into this year's "Underbelly 2" expecting more of the same, but was disappointed for the first two weeks. Mainly it was just Matthew Newton (son of Bert/real life domestic abuse convictee) smuggling drugs into the country, having sex with a variety of girls, and occasionally executing a subordinate. Not terribly exciting.

This week's episode was fantastic though. I loved the whole war between Ray-Chuck, and the two brothers who looked like band members from "Almost Famous". Although I didn't really find Sally from Home & Away believable as a grown up, she still looks like she's 20 years old. And it did seem a little strange that Ray-Chuck's guys emptied two machine gun's worth of ammo into a guy in a small bathroom and there weren't any busted tiles.

It was easily the best hour of the series, and it looks like it will continue into next week, with the introduction of Chopper Read. I was seriously considering phasing this out of my rotation but will stay with it a bit longer now.