Top End Wedding was a rom-com road trip that ended with the nuptials of Lauren and Ned. The series follow-up to the hit Australian movie picks up the couple’s story as they unexpectedly become parents.
“I thought there was more to Lauren and Ned, we only saw them within the very few stressful days leading up to their wedding,” says Miranda Tapsell who plays Lauren and co-wrote the movie and series with Joshua Tyler. “Josh and I always entertained the idea of what happens after happily ever after?”
It turns out what happens is parenthood. The couple assume parental duties for Taya (Gladys-May Kelly), aka the Bub of the title. Her mother, Lauren’s cousin, has died unexpectedly. Lauren, a dynamic Indigenous lawyer ticking off life goals and Ned, her British husband, move back to the Top End (where the outback meets the tropics) to raise Bub. As they juggle the responsibility of becoming unexpected parents and try to keep their marriage together, Lauren must also come to terms with her responsibilities within her culture.
“This is a couple that have made a conscious decision to be child free, which is a life choice that I don’t think is explored very much in drama,” says Gwilym Lee, who plays Ned, and is soon to be seen in season two of boy’s own action-drama SAS Rogue Heroes.
“They’re thrust into parenting. Their journey then is trying to figure out how, practically, to be parents, but there’s also a deeper question of how to bring up your child in the right way in a blended relationship.”
Prime Video has Top End Bub in Australia and New Zealand. ZDF Studios is taking it out internationally. As with the 2019 movie, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Goalpost Pictures produces. Christian van Vuuren and Shari Sebbens directed.
Kelly’s turn as Bub was her first acting gig. Tapsell and Lee are fulsome in their praise: “She’s amazing, you just put the camera on her and just let her listen and react, it’s an acting lesson,” the latter says. Ursula Yovich and Huw Higginson reprise their roles from the movie as Lauren’s parents, Daffy and Trevor, and their story unfolds further.
The series hits the familiar rom-com notes that fans of the genre love. It also brings new perspectives to the screen. “I really wanted to write a unique show from Australia, a joyous, positive show about a particular group of people, a community that I’m a part of,” says Tapsell, whose other on-screen credits include The Sapphires and Love Child.
She continues: “I also really want to change the negative stereotypes in the ways Aboriginal people are often portrayed. It’s often that there’s a lot of negligence within the families, there’s a lot of dysfunction. I wanted to show people the Aboriginal families I grew up with, where the whole village raised the kid. And also to show that the extension of family that goes beyond the mum and dad can be part of the challenge, part of the drama, because sometimes there can too be too many chefs in the kitchen.”
Piercing stereotypes is in the fabric of the Top End projects, but happened sub-consciously, she adds: “I was like, ‘Oh, wow, maybe this has been sitting in me for a long time.’”
As a Brit living with the community that his wife grew up with, Ned is the outsider in the series. Lee says: “Community is a good word to use, because I think that’s what the film was about, and that’s what this TV show is about. Ned is away from his home country, desperate to find his community, to find family, and he sees it in abundance in this world and in this part of Australia.”
He adds: “I think that will really chime with audiences. We’re telling the story of a very particular community and the Northern Territory, and actually specifically Darwin, and then even more specifically Tiwi, which is a tiny little island. In being so specific, we’ve managed to tell a quite universal story.”
Prime Video has fared well with rom-coms in recent times. Maxton Hall it’s biggest international series to date. ZDF Studios will be hoping to surf that wave as it brings Top End Bub to international markets.
For Lee, the rom-com form offers something reassuring that creates a space to tell different kinds of story. “There are tropes that people know, and therefore you can tell really interesting, deep, complex stories about identity and culture, and you know, here, indigenous history, with the familiarity and safety of that [rom-com] pattern and shape.
Tapsell, meanwhile, says there’s a time and a place for a good rom-com. “I love Breaking Bad and The Sopranos, but I think it’s nice to every now and again, when I’ve been dismayed at the news, that I can put a rom-com on and think, ‘Okay, people can change, or they can put themselves on the line for another person.’”
Asked whether there is more story to tell when it comes to Lauren and Ned, the actor and writer is unequivocal: “One hundred percent,” she says.