I DECIDED last week not to write about the first episode of Glitch, the new Aussie drama on the ABC on Thursday night, and I'm glad I did as now some odd reactions can be explained.
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Set in the fictional town, Yoorana, near Echuca, a disturbance in the middle of the night causes Police Sergeant James Hayes (Patrick Brammall) to investigate.
He finds naked and dirty people wandering around in a daze and thinks they've been on a bender, but he calls in local doctor Eliesha (Genevieve O'Reilly) and they wrap them in blankets and take them to her clinic.
Then he discovers one of the women is his late wife Kate, who'd died two years ago from breast cancer.
He is overjoyed but reticent and we discover why in the second episode as he has since married Kate's best friend and his new wife is heavily pregnant, due to drop in six weeks.
Going back to the cemetery he sees from the disturbed graves that all the others have also risen from the dead, but from different decades.
He tries to reunite one of the dead with his brother who just lives out of town, but as they cross a bridge five kilometres from town the man's eyes bleed and in front of James' eyes he crumbles to dust.
From another trip with two others he realises in time that they can't cross the bridge.
A new undead is found, very aggressive, and they call him John Doe.
He is able to identify the others, but what he doesn't know is there's one on the loose he and Eliesha know nothing about.
It's Paddy Fitzgerald (Ned Dennehy) and he provides the comic relief in what is basically a grim series.
Paddy came to Yoorana when it was a gold-mining town and made a fortune selling goods, women, grog and opium to the miners.
He was made Mayor and owned a large estate.
He is discovered by a teenage Aboriginal lad (Aaron McGrath) who goes along with wide-eyed wonder at Paddy's escapades that include breaking into a hotel.
The writers had a bit of a semantic problem with these two characters as Paddy’s racism couldn't allow him to understand how a black boy could own a bike, and he also asks at one point why do “they let natives go to school?”
Andrew McFarlane is the baddie, a cop from Echuca, and, at the end of the second episode he has a car crash and escapes alive – or is he?
Really worth watching.
