Invisible Boys opens with a sound montage of news reports from the 2017 marriage equality win, then a television screen showing then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s press conference. “They voted yes for love,” Turnbull says. Then his face shatters, as a teenage boy with dyed red hair screams and smashes the screen with a baseball bat.
It’s a hell of an opening to writer-director Nicholas Verso’s adaptation of Holden Sheppard’s 2019 young adult novel of the same name. The young man is 17-year-old Charlie Roth (Joseph Zada), who idolises My Chemical Romance and has big dreams of becoming a rock star. When the series begins, no one knows he’s gay, but that quickly changes when he has a rendezvous with a married man via a hookup app and is forced to out himself before the man’s wife does. That sets off a chain reaction that affects other boys who are everything and nothing like him in the coastal city of Geraldton, Western Australia.
Like The Breakfast Club if it was set in a regional mining town, there’s the jock, Kade “Hammer” Hammersmith (Zach Blampied), an Indigenous AFL hopeful who is struggling to escape both the toxic masculinity on the field and the expectations of his family; the straight-A student, Zeke Calogero (Aydan Calafiore), a shy but incredibly horny overachiever from a traditional Italian household; and brooding, bad-boy farmhand Matt Jones (Joe Klocek), who captures Charlie’s heart.
These boys all have different challenges to contend with but the crux is the same: they’re gay in a tight-knit conservative community that openly frowns upon homosexuality. Each gets an episode from his point of view, giving the viewer a more intimate understanding of these characters and their motivations and challenges. The threat of violence, or being found out, is never far, adding a thick air of tension that hangs over the series like a shroud.
All four actors play their roles with depth and complexity – these are not simple characters and there is no clear moral compass. The character of Hammer is particularly multifaceted, with actions that are sometimes deeply uncomfortable to watch – Blampied’s portrayal is excellent, both pitiable and vile. He’s balanced out by his beloved aunt Doris (Elaine Crombie), a rare example of a positive adult role model in the series.
On the opposite side of the coin is the formidable Pia Miranda – I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to make me hate the Josie Alibrandi, but her performance as Zeke’s racist, homophobic mother had me seething, even if it is a somewhat predictable cartoon villain role (“I’m not a hateful person … I just want what’s best for you,” she says at one point). Fellow Australian film nostalgics will appreciate a nod to Miranda’s beginnings in a scene where the Calogero family participates in a passata-making day.
The show was shot in Perth and Geraldton, and the vast beauty of the landscape stands in contrast to the oppressive social atmosphere. There are gorgeous shots of nature and wildlife, including one episode where bees are used as a metaphor and captured up-close – it’s beautifully done, offering an extra layer of meaning. Those visual metaphors are elsewhere in the show, too: the Calogero family’s long dining table mirrors The Last Supper, as Zeke awaits his parents’ judgment – and his own fate.
Invisible Boys has shades of other queer media of the last few years, sliding neatly into an in-demand genre. Charlie and Matt’s romance, formed on the road, reminded me of the dusty plains of Goran Stolevski’s Of an Age; an unlikely, slow-burn romance between two other characters brings to mind the delightful Heartstopper. The snappy dialogue and realistic teenage behaviour recall Netflix’s Heartbreak High reboot – though that was nowhere near as sexually explicit as Invisible Boys often is.
Music is a big part of this show, with a spotlight on Australian artists – but there’s some disconnect between the 2017 setting and the soundtrack of these teenagers’ lives. Much of the music comes from the “indie sleaze” era, from TV Rock to the Presets – what 2017 teenage party was playing those tracks? There are some clever choices, though: Dragonette’s 2007 track Competition, with its taunting chorus “your girlfriend’s got competition”, plays in a scene where Hammer and Zeke are dancing at the deb ball with their oblivious female partners; Kylie Minogue soundtracks one of the show’s most euphoric moments.
Struggling with identity in a politically fraught time, and in a small town, is undoubtedly a pressure cooker situation. But towards the end of the season, with a sharp tonal pivot in the final two (of 10) episodes, Invisible Boys begins to play into the cliche that queerness and relentless trauma go hand in hand, and veers close to trauma porn with a major plot event. It feels worrying to perpetuate a storytelling trope that should be on the way out. At this point, do we really need to see this suffering to believe that it’s real?
But there is joy, too: Invisible Boys is, ultimately, about the healing power of community and chosen family. There are genuinely moving moments between these boys who’ve found one another in a hopeless place, and an optimism that they’ll all find their way.
Invisible Boys is streaming now on Stan
