This TV show is an award-sweeper in Australia where it’s from but remains little-known elsewhere. Suburban families live in a fragile but quiet environment – marital affairs are rampant but hidden, custody battles that were once fierce have quieted down, etc. However, when the black sheep of the community returns after a ten-year absence, everything comes back to the surface – starting with the discovery of a dead body. Ben Mendelsohn (Bloodline) is excellent here, and he’s supported by an amazing cast. Tangle is like a toned-down Big Little Lies, or a more cynical Parenthood.
The lives of two generations of two wealthy families intertwine as they clash and connect over money, sex, scandals and secrets in Melbourne.
No one would ever accuse the producers of employing an inaccurate title. “Title” moves the viewer through the threads that tie the characters together, sometimes with love, but more often than not with love made difficult by individual desires and dynamics that get in its way. The loss of a complex patriarch and businessman brings no relief but only ushers in new awareness — or new means of pushing away from awareness — of those traits which keep knots in the threads, which keep love just out of reach.
Ben Mendelsohn is an extraordinary talent, better than any I have seen in portraying a full bodied psychopathy. The rest of the cast are no slouches!
I was casting about and watched this out of boredom and now fear the return to the mundane as it is over.
I do not agree with the comparison to Pretty Little Lies, which is stuffed full (too full) of the common cliches of American life. The depth of Tangle is exponentially greater. Perhaps they are just doing television better “Down Under.”