Remember that movie or TV show with the jaded, world-weary, what-have-I-got-to-live-for coach who reluctantly agrees to mentor a team of ill-disciplined rascals? Remember how sport becomes a metaphor for life, and the determination, hard slog and gradual improvement of the kids inspires in this broken person a new raison d’être?
Of course you do, and of course you don’t. You do because this archetype is almost as familiar as the absentminded professor or the whisky priest. You don’t because you’ve witnessed so many incarnations of this character – from the stubby-clutching Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau and later Billy Bob Thornton) in Bad News Bears to the smug Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez) in The Mighty Ducks – that they blur together as one big, whistle-blowing splotch in the memory.
SBS’s excellent, beautifully balanced four-part drama Sunshine, based in the outer-west working-class Melbourne suburb of the same name, presents another sullen, school-of-hard-knocks coach to add to the almanac: Eddy (Anthony LaPaglia). He doesn’t have the vein-popping fury of Nick Nolte from Blue Chips, or the obvious affliction of gambling addicted Keanu Reeves from Hardball.
But, as the crabby owner of a sports shop, and a recently divorced husband struggling to maintain a relationship with his teenage son, it is clear that this peevish woebegone man is in need of a new lease on life. In a sense, Eddy is similar to another character recently played by LaPaglia, who dealt with leases in a different sense: mopey real estate agent Frank Mollard in the 2015 Australian film A Month of Sundays.
A series less ambitious than Sunshine would Mighty Ducks the narrative and hook it around Eddie, telling a life-back-on-track story by way of a buzzer-beating sports yarn. There’s that, certainly, but a hell of a lot more, with writers Matt Cameron and Elise McCredie – and director Daina Reid – using the underdog sports narrative as means to frame a mystery/crime drama revolving around a community of South-Sudanese Australians.
Jacob Garang (Wally Elnour) has basketball posters plastered across his bedroom walls and dreams of making the big time. He belongs to local team the Sunshine Kings and is the most passionate of his fellow players and friends.
The group, however, are distracted; more so than usual. Santino (Autiak Aweteek) complains, at the local public park early in the first episode, that “somebody stole my fuckin’ stolen car” – a line that could have been played for laughs if the tone captured by Reid didn’t suggest something very wrong might have gone down.
The night the aforementioned car went missing, the daughter (Tiarnie Coupland) of its owner (Vince Colosimo) wound up in a coma after being violently assaulted. The script cleverly conceals who knows what and why, prying some details open through an investigation from a sympathetic lawyer (Melanie Lynskey) and returning to the night in question via a series of flashbacks, woven into the fabric of the narrative in ways that feel utterly organic.
The writing maintains nuance on and off the court. We know Jacob and his friends are prime suspects due to the colour of their skin, just as we are aware the group get up to real trouble. Sunshine’s arresting opening image, accurately indicating fine work to follow from cinematographer Bruce Young (who recently shot the also excellent Blue Murder: Killer Cop) depicts a hoodie-clad teen walking away from a car that’s on fire.
The South-Sudanese Australian performers – gleaned from a pool of unprofessional actors – contribute fine, gritty performances, with several standouts including Wally Elnour, Ror da Poet and Autiak Aweteek. And of course there is LaPaglia, whose saturnine, Eeyore-like schtick is irresistible. You kind of want to give the guy a hug and you kind of want to slap him in the face: the perfect combination for a classic, Buttermakian character.
When Jacob pesters Eddy, who he knows from frequenting his shop, to coach the team, hoping he will replace the pleasant but ineffectual local reverend (Kim Gyngell) – well ... can you guess whether, after considerable umming and ahhing, he eventually agrees? And did I mention that Eddy is a once-coulda-been-great NBA player, whose career ended in ignominy?
To get the sports tournament mojo working, while at the same time raising the stakes of a hard-bitten drama about race relations with powerful implications, is no easy feat. This sort of balancing act is very difficult to get right, requiring the genre stuff to stand on its own terms while the nub of the story explores greater and more meaningful context. The trick is to get audiences to care about the game, but to invest wholly in the journey rather than the outcome.
Cameron and McCredie introduce perhaps one nail-biting on-the-court moment too many (so many buzzer beaters!). But you know the writing is kicking serious goals – or shooting serious hoops – when one craves more cliché moments, not fewer, because you know how satisfying those moments are going to be; how greatly they’re supported by interesting drama.
It’s clear early on that we are in good hands and the trajectory of the series doesn’t disappoint: Sunshine is one of the standout Australian TV shows of the year. When Eddy finally indulges in a “what my father once told me” monologue, another trope of the disaffected coach, by God, he – and the series – has earnt it.
• Sunshine begins on SBS on Wednesday 18 October at 8.30pm
