Portside Date: November 5, 2017

Author: Sinead Stubbins

Date of source: March 10, 2016

The Guardian

Last year the actor and producer Geena Davis suggested a simple way to reduce sexism in Hollywood casting. “Before you cast something, just go through and do a gender check and change a bunch of first names to female,” she said. “Voila! You have some very unstereotyped female characters.”

Davis argued that by reversing the default gender of a character, that character instantly becomes more interesting – be they a doctor, a lawyer, or a criminal on the run. Over the past six weeks of watching Channel Seven’s crime drama Wanted, I couldn’t get this idea out of my head.

Wanted starts with two strangers trapped in the boot of a car, anxiously whispering to each other in the darkness. Lola (Rebecca Gibney), a supermarket worker, and Chelsea (Geraldine Hakewill), a prim office worker, are abducted after intervening in a failed carjacking and murder while waiting for a bus. After stealing their captor’s car and escaping, they discover that the murder is actually linked to a network of corrupt cops. Doggedly pursued by a hitman, they are also being chased by straight-up police officer Josh Levine (Stephen Peacocke), who is trying to figure out how they’re really connected to this crime.

Luckily for Chelsea and Lola, the car they stole had thousands of dollars in the back seat. Thus begins a mammoth race from Sydney to Queensland, across dusty Australian bushland.

The fact that Wanted stars two complex female leads should not be considered progressive in Australia in 2016 but, unfortunately, it is. (Don’t believe me? Do a quick poll in your head.) Geena Davis’s theory of female characters is particularly pertinent thanks to the prevalent comparisons Wanted has drawn to 1991’s Thelma and Louise: a landmark film about two self-sufficient women fleeing from the law – and their lacklustre lives – in a dusty car.

It’s incredible to think that the last reference point for a story like this is 25 years old.

Moreover, while Wanted’s multifaceted leads could easily slip into lazy odd-couple caricatures, they never do. Lola is older and more street smart, with a rougher manner about her – but she’s also vulnerable and unafraid to show it. When she visits her father in jail, he boasts that as “a nipper” she was never scared of anything and seldom cried. “I cried plenty,” she says, steely-eyed. “You were just never around to see it.” (It’s also interesting that sexual violence, so often clumsily used in dramas as the primary way a woman should feel threatened, is not a part of this show.)

Chelsea is the uptight, easily frightened one but she’s also resilient and calculating. It’s revealed early in the series that she doesn’t want to return to Sydney because she embezzled thousands of dollars from her workplace. Chelsea’s cluelessness often provides the comic relief. Their covers are almost blown when she clumsily attempts to steal a lipstick. “You don’t even wear lipstick!” says Lola incredulously.

But she also diffuses Lola’s tough-talking outlaw persona and calls her bluff. When Lola chooses a boring alias for a fake passport, Chelsea tells her to change it to something more interesting, “like a Bond girl”. Fifteen minutes later, she’s tackling an armed assailant to the ground.

In the finale, a male cop gently advises Chelsea that she is “not cut out” for life as an outlaw but her victories are not tokenistic. She doesn’t succeed because her enemies are dumb – she succeeds because she’s smart.

Gibney, who is the creator and producer of Wanted, told Fairfax that she wanted to make a show about two very different women surviving in and adapting to extreme circumstances. She was also determined to depict a female character in her 40s who wasn’t “invisible”. Perhaps that’s why Wanted feels like one of Australia’s most inventive and progressive dramas in years, positing itself as a refreshing change to everything else on TV. Australia seemed to agree – its finale attracted more than 1.4 million viewers, making it the top-rated new drama so far this year.

In a post-Bechdel test world, we seem to waste a lot of time worrying if a show that prominently features strong women is feminist enough instead of asking if it’s any good. And if Lola and Chelsea had been men, I don’t think this story would have been as nuanced and exciting. We’ve seen lots of stories about Australian men on the wrong side of the law, dodging assailants and searching for redemption. What we haven’t seen is Rebecca Gibney in a trucker cap trying to run over a hitman named Boke.

Of course, the fact that Wanted’s two leads are women isn’t the show’s only redeeming quality. It treads the line between a super-serious, relentless crime story and schlocky melodrama. It’s more highbrow than its not-so-subtle blockbuster advertising campaign would suggest but also includes some fun cheesiness – like a scene in which a crime matriarch serves Lola and Chelsea dinner, and then asks if they want dessert. “It’s gonna be served cold,” she says, slamming a revolver on the wooden dinner table.

After the finale aired with a cliffhanger on Tuesday night, Channel Seven has confirmed it is talking with Gibney about a second season. As far as female outlaw tales go, though, there’s one thing Wanted definitely has over Thelma and Louise: the Akubra is just so much cooler than the cowboy hat.

• Catch-up with Wanted here

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