Though the world of 14-year-old Benjamin Law, with all of its nuances, eccentricities and eyebrow-arching moments, seems delightfully unique, there is also something terribly universal about his struggle: with his migrant family, with the world around him and with all the strange and embarrassing things that happen when those two universes intersect.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Family Law (SBS1, Thursdays, 8.30pm) is based on the book of the same name by Benjamin Law, and is written for television by Law and Melbourne writer Marieke Hardy. It comes from Matchbox Pictures, the same production company that gave us The Real Housewives of Melbourne. Depending on your perspective, that may be a good or a bad thing.
The series' connection to its source material isn't too rigid, and that's a good thing. Books and television programs are necessarily different beasts. And while the narrative of the series stems from the notion that no one's world is as strange and surreal as little Benjamin's, the beautiful universality of the outsider's journey grounds the series nicely.
This isn't the first television comedy that seeks to milk humour from the lost-in-translation mesh of an immigrant family, and their cultural peccadilloes, and the strange and subversive world of Australian suburbia. Margaret Cho's All American Girl, about a Korean-American family, did it brilliantly, though the series never had the time to breathe and grow. Looking for Alibrandi tells a variation of it, but from the Italian-Australian perspective.
The Family Law is about Benjamin's upbringing in a Chinese-Australian family, but the riffs are uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has grown up with parents who constantly embarrass you, or foist their peculiar traditions on offspring whose primary focus is fitting in as a survival strategy. It is the story of a Chinese-Australian family, but it could be the story of any family.
Trystan Go is brilliant as Benjamin Law, that is, the fictional, younger reboot of the actual Benjamin Law. Only Law's family know how accurate this reboot is, but it matters little. Go's Benjamin is awkward, optimistic and gorgeous. Fiona Choi and Anthony Brandon Wong play his parents Jenny and Danny; they're equally brilliant, particularly Jenny, who gives the Australian vernacular a handful of new treasures, including the phrase "your mother's vee vee".
It is an often-touted line that Australia struggles to produce sitcoms, typically to support the argument that commercial channels should somehow be filled with three-camera comedies full of banana-slip gags and and whoops-there-go-my-knickers punchlines.
It is a credit to our culture that we can't sustain commercial comedies. We shouldn't. We should ask and expect more from comedy. We should be equally happy that shows such as The Bob Morrison Show – Australia's darkest chapter in the talking-dog genre – and All Together Now have been consigned to the annals of comedy (ancient) history. Hey Dad? Hampton Court? Ugh. It's enough to make you break out in hives.
In truth Australia has produced a rich and ridiculous pantheon of brilliant comedies, from big-ticket titles such as Kath & Kim and A Moody Christmas, to the brutal but brilliant Housos. In between there's a thick filling, including the quirky Laid, Lowdown, Outland, At Home with Julia, The Strange Calls and Danger 5, This Is Littleton and Black Comedy. The power of those programs is not just that they were either creatively or commercially successful, but that many of them have also sold well internationally.
To that fantastically obtuse line-up we can add the eccentric, clever and beautifully resonant The Family Law. It's sharply written, brilliantly observed and infused with an authenticity which makes it compelling.
