Australian stories
New drama series The Heights is aiming to reflect the real family and community dramas that are playing out across the country. Actor Marcus Graham tells DANIELLE MCGRANE about this new soap opera with a conscience.
It’s a move not many would have predicted, that the ABC would enter into the world of soap opera creation.
Yet among the hard-hitting Australian drama, current affairs and inventive comedy, the national broadcaster has launched its own 30-episode series called The Heights, and it’s the closest thing its ever got to Neighbours and Home and Away.
But, while they may all share large interweaving casts and an abundance of episodes, the comparisons end there.
The Heights follows the lives of six families who live in Arcadia, a social housing tower, and a gentrified inner-city area surrounding it known as Arcadia Heights.
Filmed in Perth, the series shows a diverse cast living in a world where backgrounds, social classes and cultures mix in a realistic, and entertaining manner, so it’s not quite what immediately springs to mind when you hear the words “soap opera”.
With two-thirds of the main cast coming from diverse backgrounds, the idea behind
The Heights is to reflect the true Australia and the real- istic family and community dramas that are playing out around the country every day.
Marcus Graham is an actor not unfamiliar with the soap world having got his big break on Australian TV playing Wheels in the early ’90s TV favourite E Street and recently starring in Home
and Away, but for him The Heights feels different. “I reckon it’s like Home and
Away with diversity and content,” Graham said.
“It’s set in a housing commission and the whole sense of community is what the drama is about, I think.”
Graham plays Krez “Pav” Pavlovic, he’s a medically retired ex-cop who deals in weed to make ends meet.
“Pav is an ex-cop who has an injury, he has a bad ankle because was chasing some dude and he fell off a balcony,” he said.
He’s also the ex-husband of Leonie Farrell, played by Shari Sebbens. Leonie is a corporate lawyer and the mother of Pav’s children, Mich (16) and Kat (10).
Pav lives in the housing commission while Leonie lives in a modern townhouse in Arcadia Heights and they co-parent their children.
“He’s living at the housing commission and his wife is an Aboriginal lawyer. He’s still bringing up the kids and one has moved in with him, and he sells pot so he’s an unconventional guy but he’s a really good guy,” he said.
“He’s actually a great guy who doesn’t have an agenda, loves kids, loves cooking, loves his family, loves to smoke a joint. So he’s a lovely character to play.”
There’s also some potential romance in the works for Pav because of his connection to emergency room doctor Claudia, played by Roz Ham-
mond ( Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell).
“The show seems to focus on the connection with people rather than the disconnection,” he said.
“A lot of soap-opera drama can be like when a character’s wife comes over and she berates him, and then his son hates him – where the relationships are disastrous.
“This show seems to focus on, ‘What happens if they work it out? What happens if they actually come through something and there’s a greater connection between family members?’ So it’s lovely to do a drama that’s focusing on the positives around family and community, and we’re working with some people who have never done any acting before.”
Graham is happy now that Australia finally gets to see the show, and the chance to watch a more relatable drama unfold on their TV screens.
“It’s really a family show,” he said.
“It’s been great to be a part of it and long may it continue.”