Stateless: Rousing & Relevant

The miniseries is a format that I am appreciating more and more. It requires a limited commitment from the viewer, wrapping up its tale in a defined number of episodes, and as such, it tells that tale with a poise and incisive sharpness that is missing when you have to churn out season after season and are scrambling for storylines. Last week, thanks to a recommendation from my friend Cleo, I binged Stateless, a six-episode miniseries that tells the story of four people whose paths cross in an Australian immigration detention center. Written by Elise McCredie and Belinda Chayko, directed by Emma Freeman and Jocelyn Moorhouse, and with Cate Blanchett serving as one of the executive producers (along with having a small but powerful supporting role), this show is also an enterprise led by women, which we could always use more of in the world.

Set in the Australian Outback in the fictional Barton Detention Center, Stateless tells the story of four very different characters who will all wring your heart in different ways. There's Sofie (played by Yvonne Strahovski, who you may know from Chuck or The Handmaid's Tale, who is just resplendent in this role), an Australian citizen who ends up in this Detention Center for reasons that are slowly doled out over the course of the series and become increasingly horrifying even though you can sense what is coming from the very beginning. Then there's Ameer (Faysal Bazzi, who needs to get about a dozen more job offers STAT), an Afghan refugee who fled to Australia with his wife and two daughters to seek asylum and is now going to have to navigate the complexities of the country's immigration policies. On the administrative side, there's Claire (Asher Keddie, an Australian actress I hadn't heard of who needs to be in All. The. Things.) who works for the Department of Immigration and has been deployed to Barton to manage the myriad PR issues they have on their hands. And finally there's Cam (Jai Courtney, who generally plays blokey action heroes, but here demonstrates a wounded vulnerability that breaks your heart as the series goes on), who gets a job as a security guard at Barton, and experiences how the stress of this environment can erode his humanity. 

The series is based on true events, which makes it all the more shocking, and the writing is compassionate and intricate, weaving together all these strands to reveal the horrors of Australia's mandatory detention policy and the way it treats asylum seekers. It attacks the issue from all angles, showcasing what conditions are like both for the detainees but also the officials in charge of their care. In our current environment, where there has been a lot of talk about police brutality and "some bad apples," this show is quick to reveal how "one bad apple spoils the bunch," which is the full saying that so many people forget to mention. Even though Cam is a decent man who initially engages with the detainees and treats them kindly, the attitude of one cruel colleague (played by Rachel House, who seems like such a delightful woman in real life, but always seems to be playing villains) quickly leads him down a destructive path that will ruin him and his family. Ameer's story is utterly heartbreaking and yet all too common, and brings home the fact that this is only one story amongst those of the 80 million displaced people across the world today. Claire's evolution over six episodes reveals how seemingly heartless bureaucrats eventually have to come to terms with the supposedly fair and excellent policies they are being made to enforce. And Sofie's story is a reminder that while millions of refugees flee the developing world each year in search of a better life, there are still plenty of horrors in the developed world that can make a woman want to disappear.

Stateless is an empathetic and searing series that should rack up all the awards over the coming year if I have anything to say about it (which I don't, but oh well). It is so profoundly moving, and when the end titles came up on screen at the end of six hours, I needed a cry because I was emotionally overwhelmed. I know a lot of people aren't looking for something like that right now, but this really is an elegant and beautiful masterclass in cinematic storytelling - maybe don't binge it like I did but dole it out to yourself over a few weeks. It is an urgent and necessary story that is devastating and remarkable and I cannot recommend it highly enough.