In recent years, social- and mobile-first content has become a production holy grail, endlessly referenced as the future of TV and film. But more often than not new technology feels more like a novelty than a genuine storytelling tool.
The ABC broke new ground last year for its series Content, which was not only designed to be watched on your phone but appeared to exist within it. On the flipside there’s Quibi: the $1.75bn shortform mobile streaming app now limping to find a dedicated audience. So far, the most common utilisation of the much-discussed “second screen” has come from teen dramas including Pretty Little Liars and Glee, and reality shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians, which call on cast members to live tweet and engage with fans during episodes.
In 2017 the Norwegian teen drama Skam was broadcast alongside an impressive tapestry of real-time social media posts delivered from the show’s characters, who engaged with each other and fans and developed sub-narratives that existed alongside the main story. Skam attracted a huge following and a US remake, and even won the praise of teens, who accepted it as a realistic portrait of their lives on and offline.
Into this world steps All Our Eggs, a new Australian micro-series being delivered across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Co-written by Vanessa Bates, whose play Every Second and memoir Legs Up and Laughing were both about her struggles with fertility, the series manages to take depictions of IVF to legitimately new spaces.
On the surface the show, directed and co-written by Martha Goddard, is about a loving couple trying to have a baby. Told from the point of view of the wife, Charlie (played by Rake’s Adrienne Pickering), it presents a smattering of TikTok-length moments with heart, earnestness and Australian humour (a vagina is at one point called a “clacker”). Bates and the producer, Dan Prichard, originally bonded over their shared experiences of fertility treatments and alternative routes to parenthood, lending a bracing freshness to the show. As Charlie navigates doctors, clinics and hormone injections, her body is presented with a frankness rarely seen.
After all, “trying” tends to looks the same on TV: an attractive couple embark on a schedule of kookily regulated sex in which everyone treats it like a boring chore but still wears nice undies. Ovulation cycles are tracked, temperatures are taken, men are woken up in the middle of the night and instructed to “get on top”. Afterwards, women lie with their legs in the air and their fingers crossed.
All Our Eggs hits a lot of these beats too; viewed on its own, the show is a sweet, earnest, sometimes uneven account of one couple’s experiences. But its cross-platform release format lends an added dimension – especially when you start reading the comments.
The first TikTok snippet attracted more than 2m views. On Instagram it has a modest following but engagement is enthusiastic and effusive. Over and over viewers find themselves in the episodes. “I felt every single bit of that,” writes one. “I feel like you are telling my story word for word,” comments another.
Most commenters have been through similar treatments and are quick to share their frustrations. One thread saw viewers swapping advice they’d received. “A well meaning friend (as they always are ) recommended I try essential oils after three years of IVF … hmmm probs a little past essential oils at this point but thanks,” remembers one woman. Several admit to sobbing through viewings, and the creators are thanked for portraying a part of life often kept hidden. “Infertility can steal so many things from you,” as one woman puts it. In this context of community, the show takes on a different energy, with higher, more urgent stakes.
All Our Eggs didn’t start out as a cross-platform experiment. It was first envisioned as a short film or a feature, at one point a web show, but across almost a decade it became ensnared in a familiar tangle of grants, development deals and financial cuts – landing on a final form that enriches the story with a realism and intimacy it may not have achieved otherwise.
“It was always intended to be participative,” Prichard says– but they had envisaged inviting the public to contribute personal fertility experiences to a website, which the creators would then draw on. Forced to change formats, the social media platforms came with a built-in opportunity for fans to immediately engage with the episodes – and an opportunity for creators to respond. Each clip invites reactions and feedback, “so each episode becomes a point of discussion amongst the community”, Prichard says. “It’s not a finished product any more.”
That feeling of being unfinished, of still taking shape, is ultimately one of All Our Eggs’ strongest features. Prichard predicts that the show’s fans will become even more embedded in the production, as the writers begin to fold feedback and personal accounts into the show. There are plans to spin some comments into character dialogue too, promoting the viewer from consumer to direct collaborator. Not bad for a TikTok show.
