TL;DR – This is a profoundly chaotic show, some of that is intentional amusement, and some of that is unintentional interactions of tone and pacing.

Disclosure – I paid for the Stan service that viewed this series.

Sunny Nights Review –

There are times when a single pitch is enough to get you to take a chance on something: Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden are siblings who get in over their heads with Rachel House, a mobster, as they try to push their spray tan business in Sydney. That is a sentence that makes you want to see how the hell they pull such a chaotic idea off. Well, it worked for me if nothing else.

So, to set the scene, American siblings Martin (Will Forte) and Vicki Marvin (D’Arcy Carden) have moved their spray tan business, Tansform, to Sydney, Australia. Martin is going to get back with his wife after they separated and she moved to Sydney. Vicki is there to help get out of the life she’s in and make some bank. However, they are both profoundly outside of their element, even before Martin gets catfished, and all of a sudden, they are up to their ears in debt and might just have the mob after them all because of an exploding crocodile. Now, from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.  

Cast

This is one of those series where the cast is a perfect storm that you never expected, but you are amazed to see. Even before we get to the main cast, I want to shoutout all the guest spots who come in and give stellar performances. Much of the show would not work unless these small parts pop as well as they do here. You need that oddball energy to sell the dark comedy vibes. Getting Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden as your leads in any situation is a catch that you cannot turn away. However, having them as brother and sister is such a fantastic choice because they bring the chaotic sibling energy to the show. Their dynamic is the anchor for the show as they smash through the many fish-out-of-water experiences they find themselves in.

For a show about getting on the wrong side of organised crime, you need an antagonist that fits the world. Here we have one of the great character actors of the modern era, with Rachel House stepping up to join the fray. She does a remarkable job of making Mony as unhinged as you would expect, but also brings the touch of sympathy as you see someone going through a profound trauma, not knowing that the people she works for are the main perpetrators. Add Jessica De Gouw as a confidence woman trying to get out of the business, and an assortment of characters like Megan Wilding as an animal handler turned investigative journalist, and you have a stunning cast.

I do want to take a moment to talk about the biggest surprise of the show with Willie Mason. I have seen a lot of former NRL stars try to act, and unless it is complaining about Melbourne Storm players causing hail damage, it always falls flat. So, I was not expecting much from him in this series beyond maybe the stunt casting to get eyeballs on the product. Well, I am more than happy to admit when I am wrong. He brings a range I was not expecting and a sympathetic understanding to his character. You care about the journey that Terry is on because of the humanity he brings.

Tone

Where the series becomes a bit hit or miss is with its tone that sometimes clicks together into a fantastic, chaotic tableau of amusement and sometimes brings sighs of derision. The central premise of this show is to place people slightly out of their comfort zone and then amp up their chaos by introducing one disaster after another. Martin has put everything on the line to win back his wife Joyce (Ra Chapman), which is made difficult when he has a moment of weakness and then gets forced to pay a bribe to stop a sex tape. This escalates all the way to him sort of accidentally killing the main boss’s brother, Kash (Miritana Hughes), at the end of the first episode. It is the hook that you need to be there for all the chaos that continues, and the first stone that rolls down the hill, starting an avalanche of bad choices.

These bad choices then interact with everyone else’s bad decisions, and that is how you get the chaos everyone finds themselves in. Some of these choices, like Martin always telling the truth at the worst possible moments, feel earned by the characters. Others, like all their money burning up in the car because they needed to have the heater on for a moment, feel painfully contrived. This is mixed with choices that feel a bit confused, like they were writing to both an Australian and an American audience. A good example is how everyone is kind of chill with a crocodile being in Sydney up until it had a guy’s hand in its gullet. That would be global news if it happened up in Brisbane, let alone Sydney.       

Pacing

Another area where it did not quite come together is the pacing. Whenever you are writing a story about compounding calamities, it is always hard to get that to flow as well as you need. Also, before I jump in with my criticism, I will say that most of the series lands at a pace that you would want for a show like this. However, the more things go on, the more you feel that there was enough content for a five or six episode series that was stretched out. The character of Joyce feels useless to the story after the first episode and until the sting in episode six, but even then, she is more of a vehicle for Nova than anything else. A lot of the disasters feel artificially constructed rather than naturally occurring, and this interrupts the cascade. It is not enough to derail the series, but it is enough to give you pause in places, especially as the final episode feels more like setting up a season two than properly closing off season one.    

In the end, do we recommend Sunny Nights? Look, there is no doubt that there are some rough edges around the series. However, when it is firing on all cylinders, it is a delight to watch. The production is solid, the stunts are incredible, shout out to that one standout Texas switch, and it brings the chaos you want in a show like this because the characters are giving performances that make you want to watch more. If you like Sunny Nights, we would recommend to you Deadloch as it also understands how to capture stellar performances while getting into the weirdness of Australia.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Sunny Nights yet?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Sunny Nights
Directed by – Trent O’Donnell, Phil Lloyd
Written by – Nick Keetch, Ty Freer, Marieke Hardy, Lally Katz, Clare Sladden & Niki Aken
Created by – Nick Keetch & Ty Freer
Production/Distribution Companies – Screen Australia, Cineflix Rights, Jungle Entertainment, Echo Lake Entertainment & Stan
Starring – Will Forte, D’Arcy Carden, Rachel House, Jessica De Gouw, Ra Chapman, Willie Mason & Mary Steenburgen with George Mason, Matuse, Megan Wilding, Emma Lung, Hazem Shammas, Justin Rosniak, Harry Greenwood, Chum Ehelepola, Gareth Davies, Patrick Brammall, Aaron Glenane, Miritana Hughes, Ewen Leslie, Fayssal Bazzi, William Zappa & Claudia O’Doherty and Leon Ford, David Roberts, Phil Lloyd, Michael Hing, Melek Karakus, Cheng Tang, Sarah Aubrey, Vincent Wray, Danielle Walker, Nicholas Hope, Genevieve Hegney, Rick Donald, Chika Ikogwe, Samuel Falé, Justin Smith, Felicity Ward, Leon Ford, Mary Coustas, Nick Boshier, Roman Delo, Arka Das, Darren Gilshenan, Deborah Faye Lee, Nathan Diab, Tanya Hennessy, Eliza Logan, Michael Fung, Suzanne Iorfino, Fanua Panapasa, Jeremy Sims, Annie Maynard, Alan Dukes & Duncan Fellows
Episodes Covered – Transform With Tansform, Blinders On, Baby, Not A Drug Drop, Roy, Next On The Board, Dumbest Girl Alive, On A Cellular Level, A Journey Down The Uncertain Road Of Yes & Whatever Is Necessary