Nakkiah Lui’s new series weaponises broad humour to tell a provocative story about survival.
There’s plenty going on in the world that could bring about an apocalypse.
It’s unlikely to be zombies or aliens but it’s not outside of the realm of possibilities that climate change, super volcanoes, global wars and authoritarian governments could spell the end of days.
All the doom and gloom is enough to make you anxious, perhaps anxious enough to prep? Or better yet, create a raucous TV comedy about doomsday preppers.
Preppers starts this week on ABC and iview, created by and starring Nakkiah Lui.
Lui stars as Charlie, the co-host of a breakfast TV program, who falls in with a group of preppers on the worst day of her life.
Charlie doesn’t believe in prophecies or that the world is ending. She was just running away from the maelstrom of her destroyed life to a piece of property that belonged to her gran.
With a car full of clothes more suited to lunch with the Governor-General than bush survival, Charlie happens upon Eden 2, a ragtag community of preppers who have a 10,000 year lease to the land.
There’s Guy (Meyne Wyatt), a former vacuum salesperson who’s far from the Bear Grylls survivalist he pretends to be, Jayden (Aaron McGrath), a well-intentioned Gen Z prone to speechifying about injustice, Kirby (Eryn Jean Norvill), a conspiracy theorist-spouting podcaster, Kelly (Ursula Yovich) and Lionel (Chum Ehelepola), a born-again Christian couple awaiting the Four Horsemen, and Monty (Jack Charles), the founder who’s as wily as he is wizened.
Eden 2 isn’t what Charlie was looking for but it may just be what she needs.
Given the space preppers occupy in the popular consciousness – that of paranoid, delusional kooks – there was the risk that Preppers could’ve been a mean-spirited punch-down of its characters. But instead, it’s compassionate towards them and shades them in grey, even though it doesn’t hold back from satirising their beliefs.
It takes a couple of episodes for Preppers to settle in, especially as the circumstances behind Charlie’s bolt is slowly revealed – let’s just say it involves Grant Denyer as her producer-fiance, Brooke Satchwell as her sausage-fearing co-host and Kate Miller-Heidke as a seductive mythical creature.
Preppers is laugh-out-loud funny but at the core of it is a story about the trauma of survival.
Lui is an Indigenous writer whose previous works include Black Comedy and Kiki and Kitty, which have centred the experiences and stories of First Nations people.
Preppers has that same creative force and perspective. It’s an oddball comedy that often traffics in a broad sense of humour but it also weaponises the same to delve into complex ideas about identity, colonialism and power.
It links the seemingly irrational fear of the next apocalypse with the tangible and very real destructive impact of the First Fleet’s arrival on the communities who were already on this land.
With that in mind, the end of the world doesn’t seem so wild, because for some, it already happened.
Preppers is on ABC and iview on Wednesday nights at 9.10pm
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2021-11-10 07:03:54Z
CBMimQFodHRwczovL3d3dy5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L3R2L3R2LXNob3dzL3ByZXBwZXJzLWFuLW9kZGJhbGwtY29tZWR5LWFib3V0LXRoZS1lbmQtb2YtdGhlLXdvcmxkLW1heWJlL25ld3Mtc3RvcnkvN2IwNjBkYWIwYjczNmZiM2VmNDMzNWFhZTQ3MzFjNDLSAZ0BaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubmV3cy5jb20uYXUvZW50ZXJ0YWlubWVudC90di90di1zaG93cy9wcmVwcGVycy1hbi1vZGRiYWxsLWNvbWVkeS1hYm91dC10aGUtZW5kLW9mLXRoZS13b3JsZC1tYXliZS9uZXdzLXN0b3J5LzdiMDYwZGFiMGI3MzZmYjNlZjQzMzVhYWU0NzMxYzQyP2FtcA
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