As a teenager, Oly Chalmers-Davis weathered her fair share of motherhood-related horrors. For a start, the high-achieving 16-year-old went into labour in the school toilets, having not even realised she was pregnant. Not long afterwards, she was forced to tell her boyfriend he wasn’t the father – the baby was the product of a fling with another classmate. Then, unable to entertain the prospect of her perfect grades slipping, she decided to juggle studying with looking after a newborn, all the while navigating mastitis, mockery from her classmates (including some inventively mean-spirited memes) and a rocky on-off romance with her child’s dad, Santi.
After five series following Oly (Nathalie Morris) and Santi (Carlos Sanson Jr) as they struggled to adjust to parenthood, hit Australian comedy-drama Bump wrapped things up last December – yet we were left on a cliffhanger. Recently married and with little Jacinda (Ava Cannon) well into primary school, the pair were preparing to welcome another child. Now the show is back for a feature-length festive special, picking up the story eight weeks after the birth of their son.
When it came to baby number two, things should have been so much simpler. Unfortunately, Oly and Santi seem to be masochists. Instead of enjoying Christmas at home in Sydney, they opt to fly halfway around the world to Colombia (40 hours in transit, all in all), before embarking on a 10-day cruise. Did I mention they have a newborn baby?
If you’re wondering why, well, here’s where things get a little complicated. Over the course of Bump’s existence, it’s not just Oly and Santi who have experienced dramatic upheaval. The former’s parents, Dom (Angus Sampson) and Angie (Claudia Karvan, who co-created the series with journalist Kelsey Munro), took on their fair share of childcare after Jacinda was born, but Angie still found time to have an affair with Santi’s dad, Matías (Ricardo Scheihing Vasquez), a fellow teacher at her daughter’s school. And then, having contributed to the break-up of Matías’s marriage to Santi’s sharp-tongued stepmum, Rosa (Paula Garcia), Angie decided to shack up with Dom’s sister, Edith (Anita Hegh).
No, you’re absolutely right – that doesn’t explain why a two-month-old is on a South American cruise ship. Although I should add that most of the aforementioned characters are on it with him, plus Oly’s freewheeling elder brother Bowie (Christian Byers) and Rosa’s two moody teenage sons. It is, in fact, the melodramatic and hilariously brutal Rosa who has organised the trip back to her much-missed homeland (although why she is taking her stepson’s wife’s father and not her own boyfriend is unclear). For Rosa, this is a chance to show her children the country she loves – and to sell the place to Bump’s viewers in the form of a series of camp, fourth-wall-breaking monologues, in which she outlines the country’s strengths (“the best people, the best food, the best coffee, the best wildlife” and “the best Christmas!”) and angrily brushes off its perceived flaws (cocaine trafficking simply “doesn’t happen any more”).
Christmas on a cruise turns out to be hellish. Amazingly tolerant in many ways (especially regarding the relationship between his sister and his ex-wife), Dom is driven to distraction by a ridiculously loud PA system in his tiny room and the captain’s decision to confiscate his alcohol. Cancer survivor Angie has decided to write a memoir, which Oly offers to edit as an escape from parental duties – only to realise it’s full of complaints about her behaviour as a teenage mother. Santi, meanwhile, gets competitive when a dreamboat crew member begins flirting with Oly; Edith gets jealous when Rosa and Angie call a truce; and Rosa is devastated when she loses her miniature baby Jesus, a gift from her grandmother. Elsewhere, multiple people vomit and Oly is utterly exhausted (ever the know-it-all, she furiously informs her husband that breastfeeding is the equivalent of running 11km per day).
Ultimately, however, the trip ends up feeling like a success. That will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Bump’s MO: this is a show about how families can rupture beyond all recognition, and how love can still bloom in the gaps. For all the improbable events that form the foundation of this special (not to mention Rosa’s jarring interludes, which I had to double-check weren’t actually sponsored by the Colombian tourist board; they’re not), Bump remains impressively emotionally resonant. First, because the laid-back Aussie charm offsets the ludicrously labyrinthine interpersonal drama; second, because at the show’s core is a frank and refreshingly realistic depiction of a mother-daughter relationship. This film ends with an understated, jocular and yet quietly devastating conversation between Oly and Angie, in which the latter reflects on the difficult and beautiful lessons motherhood has taught her. In Bump, things are far from perfect – but they’re still good.
• Bump: A Christmas Film aired on BBC One and is available on BBC iPlayer. In Australia it is streaming on Stan.
