Alex Casey reviews Good Bones, a new comedy-murder-mystery from the creative team behind After the Party.
Aspirational property shows have dominated our terrestrial television schedules for the last few years, following all manner of dapper hosts around jaw-dropping cliffside mansions, historic country cottages and state-of-the-art eco homes. “It seems like the DIY-era of The Block NZ or Mitre 10 Dream Home is over,” Tara Ward wrote of the phenomenon last year. “Now, we get to escape into someone else’s life by watching their multimillion-dollar home search.”
But bobbing up ominously amid all these local luxury property shows, not unlike a scary bloated carseat cover floating in an abandoned swimming pool, comes Good Bones. A new local black comedy written by Dan Musgrove, Shoshanna McCullum and Peter Salmon, the series follows millennial couple Sal and Meghan (Josh Thomson and Aidee Walker), who, with the arrival of their first baby looming, panic-buy a deceased estate unaware of the property’s troubled past.
“It’s weird they just gave us the keys on the spot,” Meghan says as they stand beneath their dilapidated love nest. “Yeah, I didn’t know they did that,” responds Sal.
The haste becomes clearer as they walk through the doors – there’s blood spatter on the walls, dishes piled sky-high, and something scary under the house that really resembles human remains. “Needs a bit of a wipe,” says Sal, in the understatement of the century. Alas, it’s going to take a bit more than Jif to clean up the house’s history, soon revealed to be the last place Olympic hopeful Linda Peach was seen before her mysterious disappearance decades ago.
Combining an unfolding murder-mystery with the comedy of a hapless home renovation, Good Bones gets to the dark heart of our obsession with property ownership in a subversive and surprising way. It’s hard to tell what is a scarier prospect for Thomson’s buttoned-up risk analyst Sal – the nightmarish visions of bloodshed and screaming haunting him every night, or the potential delays and budget blowouts of the house becoming a bona fide crime scene.
Walker’s wide-eyed crime junkie Meghan is a different story, as she pores over old news articles and reads Peach’s old diaries. The pair are perfect foils for each other, propped up by a sublime supporting cast including Sal’s sharp-tongued office mate Sima played by Janaye Henry and Meghan’s well-meaning boomer parents played by Stephanie Liebert and Paul Norrell (“It’s not like he murdered you and buried you in the garden like the last owner,” her mum shrugs).
A special shout out goes to Wesley Dowdell aka Wavy Davey, the “semi-certified” handyman who weasels his way into the renovation by offering his free (questionable) labour skills in exchange for board. “Nabbed myself a rat king,” he says at one point. “I think I can sell it.” Over fish and chips, he also dispenses sage renovation wisdom to Sal: “there will be times when your self-worth is so tied up in this place you’ll feel like you are doing up yourself… and you will be.”
The script is frequently laugh-out-loud funny, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some quite spooky sequences and a genuinely intriguing mystery at the centre of the show. Made by the same creative team behind award-winning television exports like After the Party and Inside, there’s a sense of ambition and freshness that feels in keeping with other bold local series to emerge on Three this year like Crackhead and Ms X.
Melding true crime and comedy, Good Bones not only works but reaches a place that actually feels much closer to the horror of the first home buyer experience in New Zealand than anything you are likely to see hosted by Phil Spencer, Matt Gibb, or Tom Webster. Reminiscent of genre benders with similar concerns like Housebound and The Ungrateful Tenant, it deftly reveals how chasing the Kiwi home ownership dream can also be the stuff of nightmares.
Good Bones airs Thursdays on Three and ThreeNow.
