Like in Hannie Rayson’s great play Hotel Sorrento, the narrative of One Night revolves around three women from a coastal community whose reunion after many years apart is intensified by the publishing of a novel based on their lives.
In Rayson’s play, which was adapted into a 2014 feature film by Richard Franklin, the women are sisters and the novel has made the rounds, casting a shadow over their lives. In Paramount+’s six-part mystery-drama, created and written by Emily Ballou and directed by Catherine Millar, the women are friends and the novel is about to hit the shelves when the story commences.
The show’s setup is reasonably intriguing, although there’s some early hints of an on-the-nose script. When, for instance, author Simone (Nicole da Silva) signs her contract – the culmination of “five years of blood and toil” – she leaves her signature off the page about the originality of the work. Her publisher insists there’s nothing to worry about: “Your characters are fictional, you made up a town, it’s all good.” The point of the line is to imply that the opposite is true. We know where the story’s heading well before it gets there.
A series of coincidences exacerbates the feeling that the writing is too neat by half. To start with, just as Simone is publishing her book anonymously, the victim of the crime at the centre of the story (Tess, played by Doctor Who’s Jodie Whittaker) happens to return to their picturesque home town. It doesn’t take long for a local journalist (Jillian Nguyen) to declare she must locate the author. Another key person from the past also returns at a dramatically opportune moment, orchestrated to crank up the heat to boiling point. Interesting drama often involves this sort of happenstance, but here the plotting feels very calibrated.
Some of the visual choices are also a little lacklustre. For example, using drone shots of beautiful Australian countryside and coastal areas seems to be a legal requirement for local drama these days; predictably, One Night indulges. The series (which was shot on the south coast of New South Wales) is also the latest Aussie drama based in rural and coastal communities – a genre that’ll continue long after everybody reading this has died. In 2023 alone we’ve seen Black Snow, Totally Completely Fine, The Messenger, The Clearing, Deadloch, Gold Diggers, Bay of Fires, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and the upcoming While the Men are Away.
There’s nothing wrong with setting productions in visually interesting places but the danger is that idyllic locations can feel like little more than pretty scaffolding. Millar (whose oeuvre includes Troppo, The Secrets She Keeps and Last King of the Cross) pushes too far in this direction. One significant dialogue exchange in episode two, for instance, is staged in front of large windows looking out on to shimmering aqua-coloured water and waves rolling onto the shore. This moment – and others like it – speaks to the show’s core problem: it feels too much like a series of calculations configured for maximum effect. One Night also doesn’t have much visual flavour and might’ve benefited from a wetter, moodier look, such as in The Clearing and Deadloch.
On the brighter side, the cast are rock-solid. Whittaker’s performance escalates as plot developments push her into a more intense space where she conveys repressed emotions as they return to the surface. By the end of the third episode (all I’ve seen so far) you can feel her character starting to shake the drama’s foundations. But there are some weak aspects to Tess’s story – for instance, the apparitions that encroach on her space in ways dangerously close to those in cheap horror movies.
Nicole da Silva is also impressive, making Simone’s emotional complexity and impetuousness resonate. And Yael Stone is in fine form as Hat, a close friend of Tess and Simone and the meat in the middle of the sandwich, who wants to make things right but understands there’s no clear path to do so. The past clings to these characters. It speaks to the quality of the performances that you want the best for them; you want them to heal. You might also want them in a series that doesn’t feel so contrived.
One Night is streaming on Paramount+
