NEW PARENTS UNITE!
It premiered as a one-off pilot in 2016 as part of the ABC’S Comedy Showroom initiative. A year later The Letdown hit screens, first on the ABC, and later on Netflix, who brought the very relatable, very Australian comedy about new parenthood to a new, global, audience.
Co-created by writer Sarah Scheller and actress Alison Bell (who stars as Audrey, a first-time mum struggling to come to terms with her new way of life) the series now has legions of fans worldwide, something Alison says still takes her by surprise. “We certainly had no expectations that it would necessarily land across cultural borders as it has,” she tells Woman’s Day. “It’s been really surprising, to be completely honest. We get messages from parts of Europe, Japan, Korea, Africa, South America – we have to press ‘see translation’ quite a bit.”
The multi-award-winning comedy is a genuinely affecting portrayal of motherhood – warts and all. And Alison – who was eight months pregnant with her first child when the series was greenlit – says she’s thrilled her very real experiences, which acted as inspiration for many scenarios in the series, have struck a chord with audiences around the world.
“Even though the specifics of our lives differ from country to country, there’s a shared experience of parenthood, it seems,” she says. “For a long time our stories have just been bought and remade, or appropriated and remade with a different cultural lens, so the thrilling thing about being on Netflix is that we’ve really broken through that. Yes we say ‘nappy’ instead of ‘diaper’, but it doesn’t seem to matter.”
THE LETDOWN, ABC iview & Netflix