GLITCHED Visions Challenging Australian Cultural and Televisual Conventions
The ABC’s high-concept genre series Glitch is a decidedly ‘Australian’ take on an international trend of shows about resurrection. First broadcast throughout July and August 2015, the show was created by industry mainstays Louise Fox and Tony Ayres, and centres on a small town in rural Australia where the dead are coming back to life. But Glitch is less horror series than a piece of magic realism, presenting itself as a realist Australian drama that has been invaded – or perhaps infected – by genre TV. Through this communion between social realism and genre, Glitch attempts to disturb the concept that there is a singular vision of ‘Australia’ – a notion that has been uncritically repeated in local, Eurocentric storytelling since the conception of Terra Australis Incognita.
Glitch follows police sergeant James Hayes (Patrick Brammall) as he tries to uncover the mystery of why formerly deceased locals are returning from the dead – including his wife, Kate Willis (Emma Booth), who died from breast cancer. The series begins with the introduction to its central mystery as six muddy, naked bodies emerge from their graves. Filmed in the fog of country night, the image is beautifully primal. It is telling that these strangers – stumbling around a cemetery, confused and nude – all react in human ways: with shyness, disgrace, pain, uncertainty. Glitch is not interested in playing with zombies; it is devoted to the fallout – social, personal and psychic – experienced by its core characters, as well as how they interact with one another and what it means
