New to land on Paramount+ is the highly-anticipated Australian original Playing Gracie Darling.
When we begin, the year is 1997 and a group of young teens are hanging out. The group consists of Gracie Darling (Kristina Bogic), her best friend Joni (Eloise Rothfield), Jay (Kavan Meegamuge), and Anita (Scarlett Simmons), and in true 90s fashion, they’re performing a seemingly harmless séance. Until it takes a dark turn.
Now 27 years later, no one has seen Gracie since that fateful night, and now Frankie Darling goes missing. After Joni (Morgana O’Reilly) receives a call from Jay (Rudi Dharmalingam), she leaves her daughters Mina (Chloe Brink) and Lulu (Stella Miller) with her mother, Pattie (Dame Harriet Walter), and returns home to where it all began.
It turns out that Jay’s daughter Raffy (Saisha Sundaralilngam) was friends with Frankie and was there the night she vanished – “Something evil got inside her,” she tells Joni, “Something called… Levi?”
The Darlings are supporter of the locally divisive wind farm, which has made them enemies to many in town. Mainly, Jay’s ex wife Anita (Annie Maynard). Frankie’s mother Ruth (Celia Pacquola) wants people out here searching for her child, but her own mother Moira (Anne Tenney) has been hardened by the loss of Gracie all those years ago.
As Joni investigates, flashbacks come through and its clear that the two Darling disappearances are linked, but how the series ties it all together is a mystery, with only three of the six episodes provided for this review.
Playing Gracie Darling, created by Mirana Nation, has some spooky scenes and is able to manage the two time periods with mesmerising performances from both sets of casts. Morgana O’Reilly and Anne Tenney, in particular, shine throughout.
Play a game of Gracie Darling and get lost in this double timeline mystery.
4 Stars
Playing Gracie Darling is now streaming on Paramount+.
