In Our Blood (Sundays on ABC, binge all eps on iview) is the first Australian drama to look into how we managed the HIV and AIDS crisis so much better than the rest of the world. We should be proud that thousands of lives were saved by our radical harm minimisation reforms, many of which were later adopted by overseas countries where zero-tolerance policies had proved to be useless.
In the 1970s, Australian TV regularly showed positive gay role models but they had quietly been dispensed with by the 1980s. Into this void came the AIDS crisis, and when shows like The Flying Doctors (Nine) and A Country Practice (7Plus) dared to cover the topic, sick gay men came home to die, only to be rejected by their families. In both scenarios, the payoff for being accepted back into the fold was for them to embrace religion.
In Our Blood: Matt Day (Jeremy) and Tim Draxl (David)
Thankfully, medical drama G.P. (ABC) avoided such tropes and whilst homophobia was still there, there was much more realism. Whilst it was always a battle to do such episodes (which can be seen on YouTube, but should also be on iview), there was never any adverse audience reaction about the controversial subject, proving that audiences are always more sophisticated than they are given credit for.
The first Aussie drama since then to revisit this pandemic was The Newsreader (2021) and it will be interesting to see where they go next in the upcoming second series. In Your Blood starts a few years earlier, just as Bob Hawke is elected Prime Minister. His new Federal Health Minister, Neil Blewett, was told about AIDS on day one and together with advisor Bill Bowtell, they got straight onto doing something about it.
In Our Blood: Ryan Murphy (Tim), Jada Alberts (Deb), Anna McGahan(Michelle), Wil King (Liam)
Both of them have now been fictionalised into the characters Jeremy (Matt Day) and David (Tim Draxl) but to learn more about their groundbreaking work, check out the documentary Rampant: How A City Stopped A Plague which airs straight after the first episode this Sunday.
Even though they were years behind us in their shamefully slow responses, the US and the UK beat us when it came to telling stories about AIDS. Series like Angels In America (HBO 2003, here on Binge) and It’s A Sin (Channel 4, 2021, here on Stan) have all been critically acclaimed, so any new Australian drama needed a point of difference.
It is clever of Hoodlum Entertainment to make In Our Blood a musical. It works, because although there was trauma and tragedy during this time, the queer community came together as one to fight it, and then partied to forget it. Using dance floor anthems as musical numbers puts positivity into this series that is welcome amongst the anger and sadness.
Together with an incredible supporting cast that includes Jada Alberts, Nicholas Brown, Anna McGahan and RuPaul contestant Art Simone, this is an important drama that serves as a tribute to those who died, and a celebration for everyone who survived. Bravo.
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Mercado & Manning weekly TV podcast
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