VivaSync

The Claudia Karvan-led show is a compelling, well-cast and welcome escape from our 2020 horror stories: a telenovela in Sydney’s inner west

Every woman has a story lodged in her brain about someone unexpectedly giving birth. It’s usually from “a friend of a friend” or something that’s been unconsciously absorbed from a news story or reality TV. But it’s always relayed to others in the same way: with a mix of total awe and abject horror.

“She had no idea she was pregnant!” the story always goes. “She’d dumped her boyfriend and was about to move overseas. But one day, she felt ... A HEAD.” It’s a campfire story that can make grown women scream – and it can be even scarier for teenage girls.

Bump, a new original series from Stan produced by The Secret Life of Us and Love My Way duo of Claudia Karvan and John Edwards, tells its story in the same way. The lead character, Oly (Nathalie Morris), is an exceptional student – albeit with compulsive tendencies – who has a nice boyfriend, a poster of Jacinda Ardern on her wall and the works of Gloria Steinem and Malala Yousafzai on her bedside table.

But, by the end of the first episode, her studies, her boyfriend and her budding sense of feminist empowerment all hang in the balance after a screaming baby erupts from her vagina.

I know that’s a shocking way to describe it but it’s quite a shocking thing to happen – and that first episode fully confronts the horror (both physical and psychological) that keeps women telling these stories.

At school, Oly doubles over in pain and spews before seizing on the floor of a toilet cubicle next to a girl fishing around for her full menstrual cup. It’s a deft parallel of what’s to come, of what these bodies can do. Blood coats Oly’s thighs in the ambulance and spatters her mum, Angie (Karvan), as a paramedic cuts the umbilical cord. With these exquisite and surreal scenes, Bump might be the first Australian TV series to feature the delivery of a placenta.

But these graphic moments aren’t used as blunt tools for a cautionary tale. Bump, at least in the three episodes previewed for this review, is not an after-school special trying to chastise young women for having sex.

It does verge on moralistic when Oly’s initial strong desire for adoption is rebuffed – “this is your baby, Oly” – but she doesn’t cop any anger or slut-shaming remarks from her mum or her schlubby and mostly absent dad (Angus Sampson). Her story, according to first-time screenwriter and co-creator Kelsey Munro, is intended to be a “good metaphor for the shock of motherhood”.

I’m not a mother and can’t judge it on that metric but it’s certainly compelling and well-crafted. Both Oly and Angie are funny and emotionally complex characters, and Karvan delivers an exceptional, understated performance.

Angie is dealing with her own fallout from Oly’s big news. Not only is she saddled with a new baby in her house but the young father (a sensitive “stoner jock” named Santi) is the son of the widowed and remarried man she’s trying to pursue romantically (Matias) as she breaks it off with Oly’s dad.

Essentially, it’s a telenovela in Sydney’s inner west.

Santi (Carlos Sanson Jr), Matias (Ricardo Scheihing-Vasquez, in his first acting role) and the rest of their family look set to enrich the story further. These first-, second- and third-generation Chilean migrants are excited to bring their culture into the child’s life.

Latino culture is rarely, if ever, represented on Australian screens and in this case it has representation off-screen too. Rising talent Steven Arriagada, whose father is Indigenous Chilean, was part of the diverse writers’ room and Argentinian-born Leticia Cáceres was one of three directors alongside Geoff Bennett and Gracie Otto.

“I’m really proud of the diverse cast that we assembled and the way that, during filming, we constantly considered ways of decolonising the frame,” Cáceres has said.

Oly and the immediate members of her family are in fact the only white characters in the series and, though they are certainly given narrative precedence, that whiteness is examined throughout – from Santi’s family laughing at Angie’s “tight hips” to Oly painfully lecturing a black nurse about being “enslaved” by breastfeeding.

It’s fitting that this sharp and sweet show arrives in full on New Year’s Day. It’s a welcome escape from our own 2020 horror stories and a reminder of what unexpected joys can arise after everything goes horribly wrong.

Bump is out now on Stan

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKymYq6vsIyrmJ2hn2R%2FcX6QaKGapl9lfnCu1KanZqqVq7amw4ysn5qqoGLAuLHErWSappRiwLa%2B0Z6YpWWjqbyzxYyonWatnprFsbHCrZydZaSasq95z5qpnqaknbywsA%3D%3D