Twins Christine Glenn (Kyanna) and Cassandra Glenn (Yuma) on location near Alice Springs.
By KIERAN FINNANE
The first episode of the first children’s television series to be produced in the Territory went to air on Saturday, tucked away in a 9.30am time slot on Imparja and on Channel Nine around Australia.
Double Trouble, brainchild of former executive producer at CAAMA, Priscilla Collins, tells the story of twin girls separated at birth, who meet again as teenagers and swap places, with all the complications, funny and touching, that that entails.
Sound familiar? The basic storyline is freely inspired by the Disney film, The Parent Trap (1961), which was followed by three television sequels and a remake in 1998.
The interest of CAAMA’s production is that the twin girls were born in Alice Springs to an Aboriginal mother and a non-Aboriginal father.
One, Kyanna, has grown up on a community north of town; the other, Yuma, has grown up in a well-to-do suburb of Sydney.
The contrast in lifestyles is acute and there’ll be plenty of scope in the unfolding episodes for stories to reflect interestingly on relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia.
Much of the first episode was spent setting up the story.
Yuma arrives from Sydney with her dad who is an art-dealer. (He’s supposedly French, though certainly doesn’t look or sound French, played by thoroughly Australian actor Myles Pollard, best known for his role as Nick Ryan in McLeod’s Daughters. Perhaps some sense to his being French will be revealed later.)
It’s Yuma’s first visit to her birthplace. She’s surprised as she walks around town that people appear to recognise her.
The penny drops when she meets Kyanna and they agree to secretly swap places.
This becomes quickly more than a prank as they fear that their mother will be thrown out of her community if it is learnt that she gave birth to twins – twins are supposedly a bad omen.
There’s a touching seen when Yuma, who had been told her mother had died when she was born, sees her for the first time.
Meanwhile poor Kyanna is facing having to sit a history exam that she’s done no study for.
The twin sisters holding the main roles, Christine and Cassandra Glen, are fresh and charming. They have no difficulty holding the viewer’s attention.
Generally the liveliest scenes for me involved Aboriginal acting talent and the Aboriginal side of the storyline.
Why is it that white Australian characters often come across as cardboard cutouts (I’m thinking of Yuma’s step-mother in her tight skirt and high heels, her bratty half brother and her bossy best friend), while Aboriginal characters, even in walk-on parts, are more distinctly individual, and above all humorous?
You’d expect instant presence from actors like
Aaron Pederson and Lisa Flanagan (who plays the girls’ mother), but there were others too in the first episode – the grandmother, the cousin, the women sitting in the mall.
Local viewers will also enjoy seeing Alice Springs and surrounding areas on screen.
After the disappointing failure of The Alice television series to render anything like an authentic sense of place, Double Trouble already looks set to do better with this – as you would expect with a CAAMA production.
Through the NT Film Office the Territory Government invested $243,000 in the 13 episode series.
It features nine Territory cast members and a further 31 Territorians were employed on the crew in 2006.
Total budget was $2.3 million, with $700,000 spent in the Territory.
A media release announcing the screening of the first episode and a launch involving the new Minister for Central Australia, was made only the day before.
And it came from the Film Office, not from CAAMA. Odd for this light to be hidden under a bushel.