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Betty Gilpin in Mrs. Davis (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)
Betty Gilpin in Mrs. Davis (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)

Pop CultureAugust 4, 2023

Review: The bonkers Mrs. Davis needs to be seen to be believed

Betty Gilpin in Mrs. Davis (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)
Betty Gilpin in Mrs. Davis (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)

Lost creator Damon Lindelof’s new series took its time getting here – but it’s worth the wait, writes Chris Schulz. 

This is an excerpt from The Spinoff’s weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here.

It opens like a new season of Game of Thrones. Bodies are burnt on a bonfire. Heads roll in an epic sword fight. A battle is being fought over the Holy Grail, and the Knights Templar is revealed to be a group of nuns who’ll decapitate anyone who threatens to steal their prized possession. In a quiet nunnery filled with tables and wine barrels, that’s exactly what they do, engaging a group of grail-questing knights in a vicious fight to the death. After several grisly decapitations, the nuns win.

Five minutes later, we’re on a remote island. A marooned scientist sets off a homemade firework made out of phosphate and cat poo. After 10 years stranded like Castaway’s Tom Hanks, he’s rescued – only to be told an artificial intelligence known as “Mrs. Davis” has taken over the world. She’s solved the world’s problems. There is no famine, no war, just a know-it-all algorithm connecting everyone through an earpiece. “She has given purpose to the purpose-less,” his devoted rescuer says.

Then things really get crazy. A Reno man is a passenger in a car being driven by a woman he’s just met. A cow in the middle of the road forces her to drive into a billboard. He thinks he’s having a sneaky hook-up; she loses her head in yet another decapitation (yes, losing your head is a recurring theme here). The police show up, then a nun arrives on horseback. She reveals it’s all a ruse: the woman is safely in the boot and that corpse, the cops and all that blood is fake. It’s a scam. “You, sir, have been hoodwinked,” she tells the man, nodding and winking before trotting away.

Hold up. Hang on a second. What in the actual hell is happening? There may not be a better question to ask about a TV show this year. All of that madness – there is no better word for it – unfolds in the opening 15 minutes of Mrs. Davis, a dizzying blitz that might be the most madcap introduction to a TV show since Jackass first hit the airwaves. You’ll have so many questions you’ll need a notebook. None of it will make a lick of sense. You won’t understand a thing. But holy wow will you be entertained.

We shouldn’t expect anything less from Damon Lindelof. The co-creator of Lost, and the mastermind behind The Leftovers and The Watchmen, has returned with a bewildering rollercoaster of a show, a globe-trotting, eight-part odyssey about a nun trying to take on AI. It’s taken its sweet time getting here: Mrs. Davis first debuted in America to rave reviews back in April. It’s sitting at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, where one critic calls the show “a testament to human originality”. This week, it finally landed on Neon.

Should you watch it? That depends on your ability to cope with chaos. Co-created with newcomer Tara Hernandez, Mrs. Davis is even more of a bonkers blitzkrieg than that opening 15 minutes suggests. Soon, Betty Gilpin’s Sister Simone has teamed up with underground renegades masquerading as pest exterminators to take down that AI everyone’s become addicted to. By the end of the first episode, Gilpin’s butt-kicking nun is on a mission. All she needs to do is destroy the holy grail and she’ll get her wish: Mrs. Davis will implode. AI will be gone forever.

At this point, no one would blame you if you’re thinking all of this sounds like a TV show made by someone on very heavy medication. The vibe is Monty Python and Sister Act plonking themselves down on a couch with a bowl of popcorn to watch Blade Runner 2049. It’s as if the new Mission: Impossible movie dropped acid. It’s weird. It’s ridiculous. It’s all over the place. There are Western vibes in the mix. God appears to be operating out of a felafel shop. When a team of German gangsters shows up and threatens to use dynamite on Sister Simone’s horse, I felt like I might be watching a reboot of The Big Lebowski. Like, duuude.

Mrs. Davis: nuns vs AI (Photo: Supplied)

It is completely and utterly cooked, and I couldn’t be more into it. There’s never been a more fitting show for the times we live in. Life is strange. ChatGPT was introduced to the world a little more than six months ago and has quickly become a part of our everyday lives. Twitter, one of the world’s most recognisable brands, is owned by a megalomaniac billionaire determined to take it apart like a kid holding their first screwdriver. Don’t get me started on cryptocurrency, NFTs, and Donald Trump making another run for presidency while facing criminal indictments. Shit is weird out there. It deserves to be made fun of.

Look behind the kook and there are bigger themes at play in Mrs. Davis: the role of religion in a tech-obsessed world, our devotion to the algorithm, and the meaning of life. As far-fetched as it may sound, many of the leaps of faith the show takes work. We’re all chatting to AI through an earpiece? OK. We’re taking advice on how to solve the world’s problems from a bot? That seems feasible. Sure, the chaos cloak covering Mrs. Davis may put you off it. I hope it doesn’t. But before you decide if you’re going to tune in or not, I implore you to read this Google review. It sums up the show better than I possibly could…

“First 3 episodes, meh. It was like a train wreck I couldn’t look away from. 4th episode: Ok, I’m intrigued. Now on the 7th episode and holy balls this is flipping incredible.”

Keep going!
Frankie Adams and Sigourney Weaver star in Prime Video’s new drama (Images: Prime Video / Design: Archi Banal)
Frankie Adams and Sigourney Weaver star in Prime Video’s new drama (Images: Prime Video / Design: Archi Banal)

Pop CultureAugust 4, 2023

Review: The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is your next emotional slow burn

Frankie Adams and Sigourney Weaver star in Prime Video’s new drama (Images: Prime Video / Design: Archi Banal)
Frankie Adams and Sigourney Weaver star in Prime Video’s new drama (Images: Prime Video / Design: Archi Banal)

Tara Ward checks out the moody new Australian drama starring Sigourney Weaver and Frankie Adams. 

What’s all this then?

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a new Australian drama hitting Prime Video today. It’s based on the bestselling novel by Holly Ringland, and features an impressive cast that includes Sigourney Weaver (Avatar), Asher Keddie (Offspring), Alycia Debnam-Carey (The 100) and New Zealand actor Frankie Adams (Shortland Street). It’s made by the producers of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, but instead of Nicole Kidman doing a Russian accent, Lost Flowers has an American actor (Weaver) putting on her best Australian twang. 

What’s good? 

If you love an emotional slow burn that’s heavy on melancholy and atmosphere, Lost Flowers is the show for you. It’s beautifully shot, with lush green landscapes and dark brooding skies, and it’s rich in colour and light. The international cast is solid, particularly Keddie as small-town librarian Sally, and Weaver as Alice’s gruff grandmother June. Together, these two very different women anchor the show as they fight to care for Alice, a young girl who wakes up after a house fire to discover all her family is dead. 

Agnes and Alice (Photo: Prime Video)

That’s right, everyone in Alice’s family dies in the first episode – it’s not exactly the cheeriest of starts. Alice comes from a violent home, where she has a close and loving relationship with her pregnant mother Agnes. Agnes tells her daughter the Scottish folk stories of the silkies who escape their skin to find happiness, which is an escape Agnes knows she’ll never make – she can’t even disobey her husband to take Alice into town for a chocolate lamington. Alice wonders why she has no other family, but her father seems determined to keep them isolated. 

One afternoon Alice is left home alone, and after wandering into her father’s barn – which is filled with sculptures of flowers and a mysterious wooden woman who could definitely be Sigourney Weaver in her Galaxy Quest era – accidentally starts a fire. Her parents arrive home, but a scared Alice hides as the house begins to burn. Then, a plot twist: after dropping the bombshell that Alice has lost her parents and baby brother in the fire, doctors reveal that Alice’s injuries aren’t fire related. Something unexplained has happened to Alice, but when she wakes up, she’s too traumatised to speak. 

Sigourney Weaver plays June (Photo: Prime Video)

Everyone in this series is hiding a secret, and sometimes those secrets are hiding yet more secrets. Librarian Sally is grieving her own personal tragedy and swoops in to rescue Alice, bringing her chocolate lamingtons and Harry Potter novels. But why does Sally have one of Alice’s father’s wooden sculptures stashed in her attic? A stoic, prickly June arrives to claim the granddaughter she never knew she had, but why were June and her son estranged for so long? And why are June’s partner Twig (Wentworth’s Leah Purcell) and daughter Candy (Adams) so nervous about June and Alice’s return to Thornfield flower farm?

June’s farm is a place where flowers say things that words can’t express, but it also feels like a place filled with even more secrets. How many secrets can one show have, and which ones will Alice find out about first? 

Frankie Adams as Candy (Photo: Prime Video)

What’s bad?

By modern TV standards Lost Flowers moves at a glacial speed, so expect to slowly sink into this and be patient as the story unfolds. This is a show that wants to take its time, but there’s the risk that some viewers won’t want to wait. Also, episode one is a heavy start to the series. Let’s hope Alice finds more moments of light among the darkness, including eating as many chocolate lamingtons as she wants. 

Verdict: Watch it

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a quiet, emotional story about grief and secrets. It’s about how we build our lives on the stories we’ve been told, and how these stories bend and shift depending on who’s telling them. The cast is strong, there are plenty of complex female characters and the show celebrates Australia’s natural beauty – fingers crossed the tone will become more uplifting as adult Alice makes sense of her past. Just as June’s flowers will grow and bloom again, so should Alice. 

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart screens on Prime Video from Friday 4 August

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