There is a familiarity within the Australian creative scene that gives audiences a unique kinship with the actors who appear on our screens and stages. These are the faces we have grown up with, who we have aged with, and who we innately feel like — were we to run into them at the pub — we could share a beer with. It gives our home-grown productions a warm, fuzzy feeling because, not only do we recognise familiar streets, landmarks and cafes used as filming locations, but we feel an instant intimacy when recognisable faces appear. The pride is palpable.
Occasionally, a production comes along that is so successful in creating that feeling of familiarity you can’t help but smile when you watch it, even if the subject makes you cry or shift uncomfortably in your seat. And that, in a nutshell, is Dalliance.
Hugo Weaving and Heather Mitchell in Dalliance. The good friends have worked together for more than 40 years. The six-episode drama series charts the fallout from one big, life-changing event and the ways it radically upends a group of 60-something friends. Exploring everything from female friendship and the path to parenthood to sex, desire and ambition, it’s the latest endeavour from John and Dan Edwards, the father-and-son production duo behind Bump and The F Ward .
The series also marks a reunion for long-time friends and collaborators Heather Mitchell and Hugo Weaving, who star as would-be romantic interests, Dani and Billy. Their on-screen rapport is instant, but when you’ve shared stage and screen for over 40 years, that’s to be expected.
“I feel so blessed every time I get to work with him,” Mitchell says of her decades-long friend. “From when we first worked together … there’s always been a lot of laughter, a lot of fun and ease. It hasn’t changed, really, over the years. And that’s the thing about getting older. [With] people you’ve known for a long time, you sort
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