Serial Killers

Published Friday 4 November 2005 at 17:10 by Pat Ashworth

Soap world is brimful of comedy potential and James Griffin squeezes every last drop of humour from this drama, set behind the scenes of a fictional Australian soap, Heart of Hearts. Scenes in the storyliners’ chaotic office alternate with video sections of the cliffhanger moments they have produced. These are finely nuanced, played out with studied seriousness and falling neatly on the right side of parody.

The storyliners’ own cheerfully messy lives revolve around who is sleeping with who and they revel in playing God with the fortunes of their screen characters. Malicious glee at killing off the heartthrob Dr Gilligan, simply because they hate the actor in real life, makes for some sharply witty, laugh-out-loud dialogue and reaches its climax in a surreal and triumphal sequence of waltzing with swivel chairs.

Yet there is real cliffhanging tension in the hostage situation that ensues. Comedy becomes black comedy. Earlier antics with the office sellotape are mimicked in the spine-chilling actions of the hostage-taker. Tension frequently gets broken with a one-liner but guns to heads becomes alarmingly real as Griffin plays with questions of what is life and what is art.

No-one better encapsulates this than Mark Little, who plays Alan. There is not a weak link in this excellent cast but Little - famous himself as a long-running Neighbours character - excels. He goes from shambling office joker via mock-terrified hostage to incisive dealer of the truth. After the tension of the final scene, his eyes are still wet when he takes the curtain call. Life or fiction?