Outrageous Fortune Season One

Umbrella Entertainment / 3 disc set / region 4

Featuring Robyn Malcolm, Grant Bowler, Antony Starr, Antonia Prebble, Siobhan Marshall,

We don’t get to see much New Zealand drama (probably because they don’t make enough of it) but when we do we are always blown away at the high quality of it. No exception is Outrageous Fortune, season one of which has just been released by Umbrella, which at times manages to out Shameless Shameless.

Grant Bowler plays Wolfgang, the head of the petty thieving West family, but when he is sentenced to four years in jail, his wife, Cheryl, decides that the time is right for the family to go straight, not that any of the family is overly interested in what she thinks of course. Youngest daughter Loretta is more interested in blackmailing her teacher, her 18 year old sister Pascalle is a wannabe model who has been targetted by an unscrupulous photographer, meanwhile brother Van is working for an Asian family with possible Triad links and only his twin brother Jethro is on the straight and narrow having just graduated from law school (the twins, poles apart in terms of character are excellently played by Antony Starr).

If you haven’t caught up with this show yet (it has suffered somewhat in the schedules and has appeared on three different Australian channels) then this is the perfect opportunity to spend some time with this totally entertaining comedy drama series.

Extras take us behind the scenes in a short featurette and there is also a photo gallery.