Underbelly: Razor, Pilot, “The Worst Woman in Sydney”
Sunday, 8:30pm, Nine Network
Recap By Sophie Braham
At end of the latest episode of Underbelly: Razor, Frank Greene killed Norman Bruhn. And then I killed the civilised tradition that you shouldn’t really plonk spoilers right at the start of a recap. But Underbelly insists on manufacturing a sort of flashiness – they want to impress us with their ruthlessness, for having the balls to dispense with a character who had been framed as ‘significant’ by the preceding episodes. It’s generally quite a good tactic, the same one used by Animal Kingdom via Joel Edgerton.
Joel Edgerton funeral scene in Animal Kingdom. (Can’t find death scene. Sorry.)
But Norman Bruhn’s characterisation as the Scariest Gangster In Razorhurst was far more detailed and loving than anyone else in the series. Definitely on his bucket list was being in the most scenes of this episode of Underbelly. Over much jaunty music we see him wreaking lots of razor-related terror throughout Sydney, we see him negotiating relationships with babein’ young prostitute Nelly and also his homely-but-definitely-still-babein’ wife, Irene.
We see the cops trying to pin Norman down for razor-related terror. In fact, any time the other characters appear on screen it is to try and figure out what to do about Norman. His absence definitely leaves a drama-vacuum that needs to be filled. Sorry to be a cast half empty kind of viewer, but someone else will definitely need to come along to make the show passably interesting.
Frank Green’s identity as the killer was, as far as I can tell, an editorial choice. No-one knew the actual identity of Bruhn’s real-life killer. Given that much of this episode was about secrecy, and the underworld reluctance to reveal anything to the police, it seems a shame to not preserve a bit of mystery in a story which is already so knowable via Writer’s book or even Wikipedia. It also regrettably gives rise to my least favourite trope: dramatic irony. Please tell me we won’t spend the next few episodes painstakingly watching the handsome Scottish cop try to figure out who killed Norman Bruhn. ‘Behind you! It was the guy at the start of this recap!’
The issues that come with adapting something from IRL is always a talking point when it comes to the Underbelly franchise. And one of the many things said during Sunday night’s #UnderbellyRazor was that it is questionable to have cast such attractive female leads in the roles of Kate Leigh, Tilly Devine and Nellie Cameron.
Various Twitterers linked to some amazing pictures of the real versions of these women, looking indeed a lot like they were on the front cover of the Stars Without Make-up edition of NW. And this blog post won me over with its DIY casting suggestions (Jackie Weaver is a good one), even if I don’t feel particularly moved by the argument that people on TV shouldn’t be beautiful.
What I do feel a bit more strongly about is that something about the representations of these women feels generally lacking. Tilly and Kate are supposedly industrious business dynamos running society-changing brothels and alcohol dens. They show us glimpses of Kate’s butcher shop bar and Tilly’s brothel, but only really as the site for Norman’s various thuggeries.
Instead, they colour in the episode with scenes of Tilly hanging out the washing and Kate whisking something in a bowl. Whatever, I get that Feminism wasn’t a huge deal in the mid-20s, but this also strikes me as a cop-out when the business end of their operation was exactly why these women were notorious; why there’s a show being made about them! Plus, watching women working is really interesting (cc: The September issue), and when someone’s job is rendered faithfully it can also beautifully inform the work of art itself (cc: Beginners).
Tilly does the washing:
Kate makes a cake:
Tilly and Kate spent a lot of this episode hurtling insults towards each other, because they have different ideas about how to deal with Norman Bruhn (Kate wanted to injure, Tilly wanted to kill) and also because they h8 each other heaps.
I feel like there’s a bit of electricity lacking in their CAPITAL LETTERED @mentions to one another. For one thing there’s a bit of a believability gap – I can already see these supposed arched-rivals linking arms and clinking glasses in their glittery (and calculatedly 20s-themed ) gowns at the Logies next May. I guess I also just find the stuff they’re saying a bit witless. One of Kate’s big zingers was: ‘Have you ever heard of pots and kettles?’
It’s telling that in this article where the actresses discuss their roles of a lifetime, they reveal the one dimension I feel is missing from the writing and performances: ‘”Their [Tilly and Kate’s] relationship was like a great affair”. External texts FTW! – be they Larry Writer’s book or Wikipedia pages or glowing Daily Telegraph profiles on the NZ actresses! They give easily distracted brains a more complete picture of history than just what is happening onscreen.
Ok. Having finally exhausted my own capacity for mean-ness, I would also like to mention some of the artful moments from this episode. We see a lot of similar things twice, the slight differences in each scene telling us something important about the character or the story. The cop interviews both Tilly and Kate about the recent spate of Razor attacks. Kate comes off as slightly more benevolent to Tilly’s insistently banshee-like demeanour. Norman is in hospital twice, suffering different amounts of clammy wheeziness. Once he has been kicked to the ground with crunchy foley effects, and the other time is after having been fatally shot. His wife, mistress and pathos-y children appear by his bedside both times. By the second time, everything has changed.
Overall, I found this a more satisfying and digestible viewing experience than the bloated premiere. I really strongly feel that bludgeoning us with a double-episode openers is a terrible idea, it totally distorts the whole structure of the episode and makes me feel sick of the show before it’s even really begun. If I wasn’t still watching last week’s episode then maybe I would’ve submitted this recap on time? Sure, i’ll try that.
Sophie Braham is a writer from Sydney. She tweets here.
