Now streaming on Netflix worldwide, quirky crime-comedy Irreverent hits plenty of familiar notes. Travis Johnson enjoyed the cast enough, but feels the American-Aussie approach isn’t quite fair dinkum.
After a peace talk he’s mediated goes bloodily wrong, Mafia fixer Paulo (Colin Donnell) finds himself on the run with a large chunk of illicit cash, a bullet wound in his shoulder, and the potentially terminal ill will of his former employers back home in Chicago.
That sounds bad enough, but after getting on the booze with a depressed, recently jilted minister Mack (PJ Byrne), our crook has all the same problems, but none of the money, the crisis-wracked reverend having nicked it after a moment of drunken epiphany. What’s worse, he’s in Queensland.
What’s a charming rogue to do but head to the remote far north hamlet of Clump, the absconding cleric’s next posting, assume his identity, and begin ministering to a flock of assorted Aussie larrikin characters, cracking the occasional skull as necessary?
Irreverent comes across as a cross between the very good Banshee and the very bad Welcome to Woop Woop, and rather appropriately lands somewhere in the middle in terms of quality. The whole “city-bred fish out of water in a quirky country town” thing is a common enough trope because it’s a reliable generator of comic and dramatic scenarios, but it needs a certain je ne se quois to elevate it above the quotidian. Northern Exposure, one of the best of the bunch, had je ne se quois in spades. Irreverent doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun if you adjust your expectations.
Colin Donnell does a good job of anchoring the proceedings, alternating between hyper-competent rogue and panicky poser as he navigates his duties as Clump’s ersatz spiritual leader and his own more earthly pursuits.
The supporting cast is packed with reliable Aussie performers making a decent fist of the material they’re given: Kylie Bracknell is suspicious local copper Piper; Wayne Blair milks some laughs out of his role as self-appointed town spokesman and devout dogsbody Peter; Susie Porter gets to have fun as local criminal matriarch Agnes; and Cameron (Ed Oxenbould) and Daisy (Tegan Stimson) shine as a pair of young petty criminals who come into Paulo’s orbit and eventually help him run a tobacco-smuggling operation (perhaps the most benign contraband creator Paddy McRae could conceive of).
It all goes down relatively smoothly, and it’s certainly fun to watch the effortlessly charming Donnell do his schtick, especially when he reaches out to born-again hedonist Mack for advice on how to handle the various births, deaths, and marriages he’s called upon to officiate, the latter keen to preserve his good name even as he lives it up with the former’s ill-gotten gains.
It’s all a bit inconsequential though and, on the whole, the “quirky Australian country town” tune is getting a bit boring to dance to, especially when it’s been tailored for American ears (Irreverent is an Australian/American co-production).
For all its quirkiness and its eagerness to play up its wacky ensemble cast, Irreverent feels overly familiar, which is surely not on the design goal list. What it lacks is a singular point of view—something to actually say about faith, or the city/country divide, or how we are what we do and not what we say, or… something? Anything, really. Yes, this is at base a fun knockabout comedy, but a little thematic meat on the narrative skeleton wouldn’t go astray.
And if we’re going to cleave to comedy, perhaps sitcom episode lengths might be in order; there’s never so much going in in any given episode that it couldn’t be pared down from a meandering 45 minutes to a leaner, punchier 22. Irreverent is easy, enjoyable, but largely forgettable viewing, the sort of thing that you won’t regret marathoning on a lazy weekend, but you’ll be hard pressed to recall the details of down the track.
