TV review: Mr Inbetween has been under the radar for too long

Creator/executive producer/writer/actor Scott Ryan speaks onstage at the 'Mr Inbetween' panel during the FX Network portion of the Summer 2018 TCA Press Tour at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on August 3, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

Mr Inbetween (Disney+) is like your favourite book of short stories. 30-minute episodes, a self-contained story in each one, brilliant recurring characters, fizzing with energy and surprises, and relatable. Incredibly relatable.

Which is odd because it’s about a serial killer for hire. But Ray Shoesmith is also a loving father and brother and he doesn’t kill everyone because he has a moral code. 

This could be all sorts of terrible Hollywood shite, except Mr Inbetween is set in Australia and Ray is brilliantly played by Scott Ryan, who wrote and directed this three-season show.

It’s been around for a few years, under the radar for too long. The story-telling and acting is so good, you feel you’re driving around Sydney with Ray and his daughter, eating ice-cream and talking about unicorns, until Ray stops off to beat up someone down a side-street who failed to show respect. 

There is a bit of Michael Douglas in Falling Down here, an avenging hero takes it out on people who by and large deserve it. 

Every now and again the show jolts us back to moral reality with some brutal scenes reminding us that Ray is mainly in it for the money. 

We forgive him because he’s such a nice guy when he isn’t killing people for cash. 

His relationship with his daughter will chime with anyone who knows a 10-year-old girl. He is a carer for his brother, who is in the final stages of his struggle with Motor Neuron Disease. 

And he finds love of a sort when he meets a woman in the park when they are both out walking their dogs.

The storytelling is superb. We’re not told everything.

Why did he break up with the mother of his child? (We can guess by the look of naked terror that her new partner assumes every time Ray slides into view.) Why won’t Ray talk to his father? How did he become a hitman? 

There are none of the spoon-feed flashbacks you get in telly now, to show us how we got here. We’re dropped into Ray’s world and we need to figure it out for ourselves.

It flagged in season three, when they souped up the violence and dialled back the little personal vignettes that made the first two seasons addictive, but by then I had my money’s worth.

Someone told me that Mr Inbetween was a cross between The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, and for once this is true. It has the sense of tragedy that kept us watching those two shows. 

We know Ray can’t go on like this forever. The only question is will he survive? Watch it and find out.