Life in my 20s was a whirlwind of McJobs, casual sex, insane crushes, share houses, and intense friendships. I was trying to start a career, trying to write the great Australian novel, always poor, making bad choices while drunk, and somehow had hours and hours in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, to just … hang out.
It was unremarkable, but it felt somehow hidden. We were living these lives in inner-Melbourne that felt complicated and interesting and full of drama, yet strangely, we never really saw these types of (let’s face it, pretty privileged) lives in the TV shows we watched.
Instead, people in their 20s in Australia at the turn of the millennium watched Melrose Place or Friends to see their generation reflected back at them. But the reflection never seemed quite right. Those shows were too glossy, the apartments too nice, the characters too well put together, their problems not really relatable. There was the BBC drama This Life, about a bunch of London barristers, that came close – it was full of fully realised characters whose messy, complicated lives seemed human in a way that the characters on American dramas were not. Later, Fleabag and Girls covered similar ground well. But for a long time in Australia, the lives of urban 20-somethings were passed over in favour of cop shows, dramas focused on communities in the bush or by the sea, or the lives of suburban families in soaps such as Neighbours.
That is, until The Secret Life of Us.
Premiering in 2001 on Channel 10, even the opening credits (backed by a Motor Ace song) provoked a thrill of recognition. There was St Kilda beach! And a neon-lit bar! And a tram!
Secret Life of Us followed the relationships of a group of twentysomething Melbourne friends, played by Deborah Mailman, Claudia Karvan and Samuel Johnson. Kelly, Alex and Evan were the housemates that seemed eerily familiar – starting careers, trying to write books, losing jobs, sleeping with the wrong people.
The show was the first in a triptych of excellent Australian dramas produced by John Edwards that tapped into the sensibility of a generation. It was followed by the thirtysomething drama, Love My Way, and Tangle, which focused on fortysomethings. They were distinct, unrelated storylines, but the cast and creative team overlapped, and all three were distinguished by their superior scripts, a keen eye for location, excellent cinematography and talented casts.
In lesser-hands, The Secret Life of Us could have easily been embarrassing or tone deaf – always a problem when people try to make edgy, youth-focused drama. But it aired for four seasons on free-to-air television and reflected a very contemporary Australia.
Love My Way, airing a few years later on pay TV, was its more complex, richer and ultimately more satisfying older sibling, focusing on complex family structures, both traditional and patched together, of a group of thirtysomethings in Sydney. Karvan also co-produced and wrote much of the series, describing it as “rawer and darker” than its predecessor. Love My Way also contained some of the best Australian acting talent ever assembled – Karvan, Sam Worthington, Dan Wyllie, Asher Keddie, Brendan Cowell, Lynette Curran and Max Cullen – and it looked beautiful and sounded real. (Although the first episode, in which Karvan’s character gets drunk at the Walkley awards and goes home with an ill-chosen colleague, was perhaps more real for some of us than others.)
The third in the triptych, Tangle, brought the action back to Melbourne and focused on fortysomething adults and their teen children. It lasted for three seasons, starring Justine Clarke, Catherine McClements, Ben Mendelsohn, Kat Stewart and Matt Day. Frequently described by critics as “dark” and “noirish”, once again the emphasis was on relationships, with strong writing, a top-shelf cast and memorable cinematography elevating it above others.
Tangle found its fan base, but it never quite captured the zeitgeist like The Secret Life of Us. That show has now shifted to 7Plus, and holds up well even two decades later. Many of the young leads – fresh faces at the time – are now Australian acting royalty. And the stories of finding your place in the world and working out what you want to do and who you want to be with, are universal – albeit with local flavour.
There is nostalgia too, for the pre-iPhone age. None of the characters sat scrolling through apps to find “the one”. Instead, sex, love and friendship was found in share houses or at work or in the bar. The mobile phones were massive, flatmates found through advertisements in the paper, and you got directions by carting around the Melways.
The show immediately became a classic, becoming wildly popular and netting critical acclaim. I remember DVD box sets being passed around groups of friends, many of whom still describe it as one of the best Australian shows ever made. That’s what I think, too. The Secret Life of Us showed us a side of ourselves we hadn’t seen much on the small screen before, and helped remind us that maybe our messy, complicated, unconventional lives and loves were OK after all.
• Brigid Delaney is a Guardian Australia columnist
