TV Review - Stateless (2020)

There's some parallel meta-commentary here, regarding what this series is doing and why it's available on a wider scale. This is an Australian TV series. There are a lot of TV series from Australia that are made and don't get a wide release or at least a release here in the United States, even with the advent of streaming series like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. For example, Barracuda (2016) was a critically-acclaimed, Australian series that after nearly five years hasn't been made available in the U.S., not on any major, streaming platform. The question is why does this series come to the U.S. and not Barracuda? One could argue various reasons, but one clear reason is because Oscar-winner and worldwide celebrity, Cate Blanchett is a featured actor and the producer of it. Barracuda didn't have that kind of celebrity and name-recognition. It's not to say that a series from Australia or any foreign country couldn't be brought here without a celebrity name attached. If the series has another hook like it being some genre work, such as action, comedy or thriller, then that could be enough. This series though doesn't have that hook. It's more a drama dealing with emotionally traumatic issues. Without a celebrity name or exciting hook, a straightforward drama is perceived as less of a thing to be sold on a worldwide scale.

Ironically, the series in some ways is trying to make that same point within its narrative. Except, the narrative perhaps doesn't underline that point and really make clear how egregious the meta-comparison actually is. In 2005, in South Australia, a controversy erupted concerning the Baxter Detention Centre, an immigration detention facility for non-citizens or aliens like undocumented travelers, asylum seekers or those about to be deported. The controversy was about unlawful practices and abuses at this detention facility, people being held there that shouldn't have been and mistreatment of them, while there. Prior to 2005, there had been protests of the facility, but the spotlight was really put onto it in a more wide-scale way. The reason the spotlight came in 2005 is because a white woman named Cornelia Rau who had been reported as a missing person in Australia was discovered to be at Baxter when she shouldn't have been. She had a mental illness and should have been in a hospital. When Rau's case was reported in the news, that stirred the controversy and brought the spotlight. Rau's celebrity as it were was able to bring more attention to this issue, just as Blanchett's celebrity is able to bring more attention to this series in general, enough to get it distributed in America.

Yvonne Strahovski (The Handmaid's Tale and Dexter) stars as Sofie Werner, the fictionalized version of Cornelia Rau. Sofie is an unstable woman whose family tries to get her help, but she keeps running away from them. She is an aspiring dancer and she eventually gets involved with a dance company called GoPa. This company is based on a real-life company called Kenja. This company was formed by a man named Ken Dyers and a woman named Jan Hamilton. Kenja is the combination of both of their first names, Ken and Jan. Dyers was charged for sexual assault and eventually child molestation. He was perceived as a rapist and pedophile whose company was actually a sex cult. It was never proven and Dyers was never convicted, but it was believed that Rau was a victim of Dyers. This series also heavily implies that Sofie was a rape victim and it's what triggers her mental illness, as well as her eventual flight that leads to her being held at the detention facility, which here is called Barton, the proxy for the real-life Baxter Detention Centre.

Strahovski's performance is great as this mentally ill woman or a woman that is driven to mental illness as a result of an extreme trauma, that of her possible rape. It's a through line that's handled rather well. So much time is devoted to it and to her that it can't be seen as anything other as the series' driving force in many ways. However, it's not until the second episode that the series establishes the location of the detention facility and settles us there. It's then that the series shifts a little bit and it feels as though it might become an Australian version of Orange Is the New Black, a series about the inmates and guards at a women's prison in New York, one of the best TV shows of the past decade. However, Orange Is the New Black made some mistakes that it seems this series also makes.

Orange Is the New Black was also based on a real-life woman who was imprisoned. The woman was white but the majority of the women she encountered in prison, especially the majority of women who were being abused, mistreated or who had the hardest time were women of color, women with black or brown skin. Orange Is the New Black wanted to reflect that and be an ensemble that gave voice to those women of color in prison, trying to survive. For the most part, the series did a great job of giving voice to those women of color. The mistake is the elevating it did to the white woman's story, elevating it in the beginning above those women of color, focusing perhaps too much on the white woman. After the first season, the series corrected this mistake and balanced things.

However, it was a catch-22 because the white woman's story was the tool that opened the door to telling the stories of the women of color. It could be argued that if not for her we would not know about these women of color. Yet, the white woman's story was arguably lesser or not as traumatic. Ultimately, she got to be free and have somewhat of a happy ending. This was not the case for the women of color, so the imbalance of the show's initial storytelling was problematic. Here, one can't deny the trauma that Sofie experiences and her story is a tool to exposing the greater issues with immigration in Australia. While Orange Is the New Black had seven years to correct that imbalance, this series doesn't have nearly that amount of time. Thankfully, the series does call out that exact criticism, but it doesn't correct it with actual substance, namely digging into other people in the detention facility who aren't Sofie. Unfortunately, it's not just Sofie's story. Other stories about white people take up oxygen and time that could have and perhaps should have gone to the prisoners at the detention facility.

Jai Courtney (Suicide Squad and Terminator Genisys) co-stars as Cam Sandford, one of the white guards that works at the detention facility. Despite being a big, buff guy, he's not exactly the hard man that one might expect. Through him, we start to see some of the abuses and mistreatment of prisoners. He wants to be more compassionate and humane, but peer pressure and pressure from his bosses push him to be more aggressive and even violent toward the prisoners. He tries to fight it, especially as it starts to affect his personal life. He has a wife and little kids who he's trying to support.

Telling Cam's story is fine. Despite him being a white guy, his story isn't problematic, as it lends to the greater story about exposing the corruption or the corrupting force of the detention facility. The series though doesn't stop with Cam. It goes into his fellow guards and particularly into Cam's boss, that of Claire Kowitz, played by Asher Keddie. Keddie is a well-known, white Australian actress, well-known only in Australia and doesn't have the global celebrity of Blanchett, but, any production in Australia would really want her, so I don't begrudge her presence, but again, it comes at the expense of digging into the stories and lives of the people of color.

Fayssal Bazzi also co-stars as Ameer, one of the aforementioned people of color. The series does a good job of digging into his story and life. It's just unfortunate that he's really the only one whose backstory is explored. Orange Is the New Black would constantly do flashbacks, which revealed the backstories of the prisoners. This series does a similar thing for Ameer. Yet, of all the prisoners, Ameer is the only one that gets those kinds of flashbacks. Even if he didn't get flashbacks, the series does provide us with his perspective or point-of-view while in the detention facility. Ameer is an immigrant from Afghanistan who fled from the Taliban and the war-torn country with his family.

Even though I would have liked more about the other people of color at the detention facility, what this series does with Ameer and his story is powerful and heartbreaking. No matter the missteps of this series, I would still recommend it, if only to see Ameer's story and the amazing performance from Bazzi as an actor, along with Soraya Heidari who plays his daughter, Mina.

Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. / 6 eps.

Available on Netflix.