Loveday Writing

The pilot kicks off inside the jury room with Clara (Michelle Lim Davidson), the jury forewoman, looking at the photos of the murder victim, Belinda Brooks. She is told by Daniel (Sullivan Stapleton) that they need to make a decision on their verdict, as she is the only juror who doubts the accused’s, Heidi (Tess Haubrich) innocence, based on a “gut feeling” she has.

It’s revealed as they’re deliberating that Belinda’s husband, Paul, testified that he made coffee for Belinda and that she had made the decision to sack Heidi. Heidi arrived with a smoothie and dry cleaning for Belinda, he went out for a run for 30 minutes, he came back as Heidi was leaving and she told him that Belinda went up to the roof to smoke a cigarette. When he went up to the roof, he couldn’t find her but looked over the edge and found her dead body on the ground. He also revealed that Belinda lost their baby at 23 weeks and was diagnosed with depression. The jury is then forced to go back to the court room with a verdict and despite her doubts, Clara decides to find Heidi not guilty, and the trial concludes.

Outside the court room, the jurors say goodbye to each other and Clara tries to convince everyone to stay in touch and meet up for a reunion, but only Margie (Magda Szubanski) is interested. Ollie (Lincoln Younes), a juror who didn’t take the case seriously, leaves to hit on the junior solicitor who worked for the prosecution. Clara and Heidi see each other from a distance and Heidi smiles at her.

Clara goes home to find her ex-husband, Dom’s, girlfriend, Mandy throwing some of her biscuits out. Mandy has come over with Clara’s two kids in tow as they need to use her printer to print out their homework. The kids force Mandy to reveal that she and Dom have bought a house together. When Clara confronts Dom at his furniture store, it’s revealed that she put time and her life savings into launching his furniture store, but he refuses to sell her half of the business so she can buy her own house.

We then cut to Margie in her home planning her wedding to her partner, Trish. When she appears upset, Trish asks Margie if the trial is messing with her head, but she tells her that it’s not. Later, in the middle of the night, Clara visits Belinda’s grave and hears someone coming towards her. After she hides behind the tombstone and then jumps up, it’s revealed that Margie has also come to Belinda’s grave. Margie tells Clara that she came to visit Belinda’s grave as she wanted to acknowledge that Belinda was more than just a person in gory photos in a court case.

Margie and Clara discuss the case, with Clara revealing that Margie thought Paul murdered Belinda. Margie admits that she didn’t see Belinda as the type who would kill herself, but also says that Clara should move on with her life, and stand up to both her ex and her boss, who isn’t paying her properly.

We then cut to Daniel, who is revealed to be a school teacher who was on bereavement leave when he was called for jury duty. When he goes to see his boss, he has a cut above his eye, which he tells her is a squash injury. She tells him that the staff are concerned that he hasn’t processed his grief, however he dismisses this and tells her that he’s ready to go back to work.

We then cut to Clara at work, at the Department of Town Planning. Clara tries to ask her boss for a pay rise as she is currently doing the work of two people, however he refuses. When she goes back to her desk, she looks at the ‘Free Heidi’ Facebook page and calls Margie, whilst she is at work in her butcher shop, commenting on how many details are shared about Heidi on the page. Margie tells her to just book the reunion dinner.

We then cut to Ollie discovering that a luxury apartment he was trying to sell has been assigned to a rival colleague due to his absence. His rival colleague calls him an arsehole but offers to take him out for a drink, which he refuses, and leaves. Ollie leaves to go to the reunion dinner that Clara organised at an Italian restaurant and he’s the first to arrive. Margie and Clara then arrive and he asks them if they think he’s an arsehole, they say yes. Daniel then arrives, much to their surprise, and when Ollie asks about his injury, he tells him he got it from playing lunchtime footy.

When Ollie sees Heidi walk into the restaurant to get her takeaway order and the others question the odds of her coming in, Clara reveals that she found the restaurant as it was mentioned on the ‘Free Heidi’ Facebook page. Clara goes over to Heidi and says hi and invites her to meet the others, saying it’s okay, if they don’t discuss the trial. When a restaurant waiter asks if the others are going to show up and they tell him the others stood them up, he says he needs the table and can’t give them another one. Heidi then invites them to her apartment down the street.

When they get to Heidi’s apartment, she tells them that even though her parents are wealthy and she loves them, she wanted to buy her apartment by herself, which is also why she was working for Belinda. When they sit out on Heidi’s balcony, Clara, now drunk, asks her if she definitely didn’t do it. Ollie, Daniel and Margie call her out, and Heidi says no and she wanted to go on the stand but her solicitor wouldn’t let her as a legal strategy. Clara also tells Heidi about her situation with Dom and she wishes that his store would burn to the ground.

As Clara and Margie have had too much to drink to drive, Daniel drives them all home. However, Clara gives him the address of Dom’s furniture store instead of her home. When they get there, Clara does a drunken dance towards the store and asks Ollie for an evaluation of the property. Daniel and Margie get her into the car and take her home. The next morning, a hungover Clara wakes up to a knock on her front door by the police who tell her that there’s been an incident at the furniture store, it’s revealed that the store has burnt down.

Clara and Dom are interviewed by police as they suspect they may have set the fire themselves for the insurance money, especially after they show them the surveillance footage of Clara’s dancing in front of the store. Clara then tells them that she and the others went to a barbecue at Margie’s, and she has to video call them later to tell them she’s done this and to corroborate her alibi. The junior prosecutor Ollie hooked up with after the dinner overhears the call.

After the video call, Daniel is seen taking bags of hidden money out of his bookshelf and going to some underground fight club, which is revealed to be the true source of the cut on his eye. The episode ends with Clara picking up her kids from school, only to find Heidi waiting for her. Heidi tells Clara that she heard about the fire from her social media news feed and wanted to see her, as Clara told her (apparently offscreen) where the kids went to school. Clara ends the conversation quickly and gets into her car, unsettled by the interaction. She sees Heidi in her side mirror watching her.

Overall, I felt that this pilot did its job of establishing the show’s premise and characters. The choice to go back and forth between the four jurors and their lives was a good one, as we got to know them at a good pace, although we didn’t find out too much about Heidi.

As Heidi has been accused and acquitted of murder, we’re yet to find out not only if she did murder Belinda, but if she also started the fire at the furniture store, and what kind of person she really is. I have no doubt that the show will have this be a thread throughout the season, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

I also appreciated some of the unanswered questions that were posed about the four jurors, such as why Daniel is in a fight club, if Margie has a history of mental illness based on Trish offering to not go into work when she sounds upset, and why Clara doesn’t assert herself both to her ex and boss.

I’m looking forward to reviewing the rest of the season.

Stray Observations:

Running gag – Ollie trying to reassure himself that he’s not an arsehole by asking Margie, Clara and Heidi whether he is one or comes across as one.

-Belinda was 40 years old when she died.

-Margie referred to Daniel as ‘Grumpy Guy’ when they were on jury duty.

-Ollie’s last name is Tallis, Clara’s last name is Rossi.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “I’m a feminist. I didn’t feel comfortable convicting a woman.” “The victim is a woman.” “Feminism is so complicated; we should workshop this over a drink.” (Ollie-Junior Solicitor-Ollie)
• “Am I an arsehole?” “Yes.” “I’m being serious.” “So are we.” (Ollie to Margie and Clara, then Margie and Clara in unison, then Margie to Ollie)
• “What were you doing?” “A kind of dance. I had some wine.” “Then, what’s the gesture you’re making?” “The dance involved putting my middle finger up, several times.” (Detective Sarti-Clara going back and forth on the surveillance footage showing her drunkenly and angrily dancing in front of Dom’s furniture store)
• “He’s a real estate agent, I asked for a quote on the property.” “At 12.27am?” “Is there a law about what time you can have a property consultation?” (Clara-Detective Sarti-Clara on Ollie appearing in the surveillance footage)
• “You have very strict ideas on what time people should do things.” (Clara to Detective Sarti)