Strange Aussie TV show "Laid"

**OC Richard** · 12th January 16, 06:57 PM

Well, it doesn't have anything to do with kilts, except that one of the main characters evidently plays bagpipes (when his girlfriend throws him out, one of the things she tosses out into the yard is a set of pipes).

It's the first Australian TV show that my wife and I have got hooked on. We watched both series.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laid_(TV_series)

It's strange. Very strange. It all starts out with a theme song that made us squirm in our seats. Then we were confronted with situations and characters that made us squirm in our seats...

Especially Marcus.

It's excellently cast. The characters grow on you, so that no matter how much you want to avert your eyes you stay with them till the quirky end.

In a nutshell, a young professional woman discovers that the men she has slept with have begun dying (from various unrelated causes- having slept with her is apparently the only thing that connects the victims). She and her best friend begin a quest to discover 1) is it a genuine pattern, or merely random coincidence? 2) if it is a pattern how and why is it happening? and 3) if it is a pattern how can it be stopped?

This perhaps doesn't seem like a premise that would lead to laugh-out-loud comedy, but it does! It's very funny, though the humour is often of the dark sort.

It was interesting watching a show from Oz for the first time. For one thing, we noted that it followed the format of British shows, with each year called a "series" and each series having far fewer episodes than a US show's "season". (I worked on a TV show once. We did 50 episodes in a year. British shows might have only 6 or so.)

For another thing, I noticed that after a few minutes nobody had accents. Interesting how quickly our awareness of them went away. Now I know what it's like for an Aussie to watch an American show.

Any Americans out there watched this show? Anyone from anywhere else? What about Australians? It aired on ABC1 and got decent ratings and won Best Comedy Series in Australia (according to the Wiki article).

**Lady Grey** · 12th January 16, 09:38 PM

Bad Aussie here, never heard of it... I just looked at iView and it's not there.
I'm my house we are currently obsessed with watching Making a Murderer
Shocking & depressing but riveting viewing.

**Bruce Scott** · 12th January 16, 11:47 PM

I am in the same 'never-heard-of-it' boat as LG.

According to Wikipedia:
"Laid is an Australian television comedy series that first aired on 9 February 2011 on ABC1. The six-part comedy series was written by Marieke Hardy and Kirsty Fisher, and produced by Liz Watts.
Laid was renewed for a second series of six episodes which aired from 2 May to 6 June 2012 but was not renewed for a third season"

I guess there will be re-runs.

**OC Richard** · 13th January 16, 04:58 AM

It's the same with many American TV shows: sometimes I run into foreigners who are fans of a US show I've never heard of.

Thing is, my wife and I don't watch much American TV. We mostly watch UK shows that aren't televised here, but which are available on Netflix, such as Luther, Doc Martin, The Fall, Broadchurch, and older ones like Father Ted, The IT Crowd, Extras, Little Britain, Hamish MacBeth, and so forth. (The Fall is the only Northern Ireland TV series we've watched.)

Laid is on Netflix, which is where we discovered it, by accident.

I'm alarmed by the knowledge that an American TV producer has got rights to Laid and intends to make a US version of it. Anyone who has seen the execrable American version of Kath & Kim will understand my alarm. It's perhaps the worst show ever made. I only survived around ten minutes of it, and am scarred for life.

**kilted firefighter** · 13th January 16, 09:08 AM

I checked out the first episode. You are correct about that opening song. It's....well,..... I.....I don't even know what to say about that. But I also noted that the first dead boyfriend is kilted in several photos.