Finding themselves on small screen

Two oddball lives framed by even odder illnesses inspire tight 12-minute bundles you can happily binge on, writes

MICHELLE Law and Chloe Reeson didn’t see their own experiences reflected on the screen, so they did something about it.

The good friends created the hilarious and touching web series Homecoming Queens for SBS On Demand.

The semi-autobiographical comedy, set in Brisbane, tells the story of two best friends navigating their mid-20s after chronic illness.

Reeson (played on screen by Liv Hewson) is a young breast cancer survivor and Law has lived with the auto-immune disease form of alopecia since she was a teen.

“My friend Chloe and I really connected over our individual illnesses,” she tells The Guide. “We’d go to parties with people our age and feel quite disconnected from that world. We’d leave early and commiserate with each other. We joked how it would be good if one day there would be a show out there that reflected our experience. We had a laugh and didn’t think much of it.”

But the idea stuck and after more than a year of development they found the support of SBS, which also airs The Family Law –a comedy penned by Law’s older brother Benjamin, which dramatises their upbringing on the Sunshine Coast.

Wickedly funny and packaged in binge-able 12-minute episodes, Homecoming Queens is screenwriter (Michelle) Law’s acting debut.

“It was a huge learning curve for me, but had the safety net of working with a close group of friends,” she says.

“The character of Michelle is quite different to me in reality. It will be interesting when I audiences watch it – will they wonder if that’s what I’m like in real life?

“A lot of things we joked about and the scenes developed from there. Some things were inspired by things that actually happened – often fact is stranger than fiction.”