TV extra (Sunday Herald Sun - Melbourne) July 14 - 20 .2002

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New breed of crime fighting cubs hit the streets
LION-HEARTED

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New pride in fighting crime

Nine's gung-ho new drama series Young Lions has heaps of gloss and attitude, but does it have bite? TONY JOHNSON takes a look

Taken at face value, in this case handsome and gorgeous young people such as Alex Dimitriades, Tom Long, Anna Lise Phillips, Alexandra Davies and Katherine Slattery - nine's new series Young Lions has a head start.

All the aforementioned are talented and promotable.
consequently, the series' producers, Southern Star and Michael Jenkins, are beside themselves with the flush of possibilities, dishing up the memorable series tag - "a new breed of Australian drama."

Southern Star's CEO Errol Sullivan goes further: "Young Lions has a vibrant young cast of detectives coming of age through a baptism of fire on the streets of a big city (Sydney)."

And to his and their credit, that is how the series starts with all the glitz and promise of a shiny new variation on Stingers or McLeod's Daughters.

Young Lions, which premieres Wednesday at 8.30pm, is 16 - 39 demographic heaven.  Dimitriades (Wildside) plays slick-suited and broody detective Eddie Mercer, Davies (Flatchat) is his partner, Donna Parry, Long (Seachange, The Dish) is the edgy smart-ass detective Guy "Guido" Martin and Phillips (The Boys) plays his partner, Cameron Smart.

While these pairs face off against each other in the inner city police station of South West, they are kept on the leash by their boss, a taciturn Chief Insp Sharon Kostas, played by Penny Cook (A Country Practice).

The last member of this pool is young lawyer Madeleine Delaney, played by impressive newcomer Slattery (The Road From Coorain), who has a thing for the hormonally retarded Mercer.

Series creator Michael Jenkins has painted all the right numbers, judging by this week's opening movie-length episode.

He explains his philosophy. "Young Lions is the latest generation of all that (his projects include the excellent Scales of Justice, Blue Murder and Wildside), " says, "It's really a new generation of police show; something fresh you can enjoy even if you don't like police shows.  Young Lions is the kind of police show you get when you're not making a police show.  It's not driven by violence and action.
"We wanted also to make a cop show distinguished by the youth of the leads.  They're all under 30, which reflects a new reality in policing.
"We essentially wanted to make characters who weren't rednecks or macho - people who used their intelligence, not their brawn."

Cut to opening scene of the pilot.  Country bumpkin cop Parry happens to be in town in her jeans when she notices two armed robbers in the bank.
She doesn't have her gun with her, but look at the length of the chain in the back of that ute.  Sure enough, out run the robbers and drive off, but only as far as that length of chain, sending them into the windscreen.
Enter Parry to arrest them, by the scruffs of their necks.  While such a scene is hardly original, it does set up Parry pretty quickly as a can-do femme fatale.
Next stop the big city.
Parry is now Mercer's new partner, since his previous partner was fatally shot during an attempted arrest.
Not only does Parry have to cope with adapting to the big smoke, but also a brooding, uncommunicative partner, and even some derision (from a couple of transvestites) over her hair.  But Parry's problems are nothing compared to those being faced by the other new girl on the team - Smart.

She and pig-headed partner, Martin, (Long) arrive at South West as an internal investigative team, although Martin seems intent on proving Mercer murdered a criminal rather than looking for a plausible case of self-defense.  It is obvious the attractive (and when she is allowed to be) assertive Smart, does not necessarily like her partner or his methods.

"Guido and Cameron are like two porcupines making love.  Very occasionally they expose their undersides to each other and when they do it's beautiful," she says.  Unfortunately for viewers, we will not see the best of Phillips' character until episode four, when we begin to see the wild girl, who lives and loves the night life, away from her job.

Phillips, who has already shot about half of the first series' 22 episodes, is very happy with the way her character is evolving.

"The thing that's so special about Cameron is that she'll be the character who shows us the most about the difference between the person we present to the world, and the one we are inside," she says.

"She's wise, the one who can see straight through you.  On the other hand, she's defiant, the one who invites chaos."

Smart is a nice stretch for Phillip, who last came to the attention of Melbourne audiences as Guy Pearce's wronged young lover in the recent MTC production of Sweet Bird of Youth (she was terrific).

"I feel fairly blessed with what I've done lately," Phillips says.

Blessed because she says she is easily bored.

"But I'm feeling good about this show (Young Lions) - it's quite impressive I think," she says.  the twentysomething actor, who grew up in Darwin and toured the Territory with a youth theatre group before moving to NIDA, represents the new breed eschewed to by the producers.
Phillips is engagingly forthright and blunt.
"I haven't been overly impressed with Australian (TV) drama the last few years," she says.  "I'd always said no to series television (meaning a continuing role - she has had guest parts in The Secret Life of Us, Water Rats, Murder Call and Heartbreak High), but I was seduced with the idea of meeting (writer-creator) Michael Jenkins, and he talked me into it."
Is she happy he did?
"They (the producers) had a psychoanalyst come in and look at the pilot and she didn't know any of the characters (and so based her judgments of the performances)," she says.  "She said Cameron was the most complex character and the most interesting."
Then she laughs.
"Then again, they could have been just telling me that."
Either way, Phillips epitomises the best of a stellar young cast, in a series that shows considerable promise.

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