‘Mr Inbetween’.
Jungle Entertainment/Blue-Tongue Films’ Mr Inbetween has been warmly received after its world premiere in the first Indie Episodic section of the Sundance Film Festival.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Daniel Fienberg praised the direction by Nash Edgerton, the script by Scott Ryan based on his 2005 feature The Magician, and Ryan’s performance.
In the first Australian series commissioned by FX, Ryan plays Ray Shoesmith, a hitman who conducts his chilling business while maintaining friendships, parental responsibilities and romance.
The plot follows Ray as he raises his precocious daughter Brittany (Chika Yasumura) and embarks on a budding romance with EMT Ally (Brooke Satchwell).
The cast includes Damon Herriman, Justin Rosniak, Edmund Lembke-Hogan, Nicholas Cassim and YouTube star Natalie Tran.
“Ryan, who has done barely any acting, has written himself a part that plays perfectly to his strengths. He’s got a great deadpan sense of humor, a badass, cold-eyed stare, and any limitations he has are mostly covered by his character’s laconic approach to emotion,” Fienberg said.
“The father-daughter dynamic is particularly winning and part of me wished Mr InBetween didn’t treat that part of Ray’s life as a one-scene-per-episode treat. I found the Ray-Ally scenes a lot less engaging. However, I strongly recommend American casting directors give Satchwell the chance to see if she can do a generic American accent in a pilot or two.
“In his shorts, Edgerton has already proven himself extremely gifted at blending fairly extreme violence with humor, and that carries over here. Especially in the third of three half-hour episodes screened at Sundance, Edgerton wrings laughs out of very dark situations without jeopardizing the gravity of Ray’s job or his apparent anger management issues.”
A collaboration between Jungle and the Blue-Tongue Films collective, the six-part series is produced by Michelle Bennett and marks the TV directing debut of Edgerton.
FX has not yet set the telecast date in Oz. FX has first look rights in the US.