Slide (TV series)

Plot

SLiDE tells the story of five Brisbane teenagers in their final year of high school making their way from school to adulthood. Tammy and Ed have been friends since they were five years old. Luke knows Ed from scouts and school, but he moves in a different crowd. Eva is at school with them but she keeps to herself. They all spend their weekends in The Valley, seeing music, going to parties, stealing experiences they’re not yet entitled to. When Scarlett arrives from Melbourne an unlikely friendship grows between the five teenagers.

Main

Ed Newman (Ben Schumann) is the central character of the show. He spends most of his time with Tammy Lane who has been his best friend since they were five. He has also been friends with Luke Gallagher since they were kids, but they began to moving with different crowds a few years back. Ed is a geek who develops a crush on Scarlett Carlyle when they first meet at her father's hotel where Ed works. He is a bit socially awkward, and is quite embarrassed about being a virgin for the first few episodes, but remedies the situation with his neighbor (whom he does not care for) early on. After trying to get a fake I.D and getting caught, he finally gets into notorious club "Duck Duck" after Eva steals an I.D and Ed, posing as a transgender female, gets let in. Upon entry, he spontaneously kisses his boss from the catering job he did earlier that day, sparking a real kiss between them. Eva sleeps with him after he gets depressed because he kissed a man and he tries more than ever to fit in with the crowd. In episode 5, he begins to like Eva after their one night stand and he is not sure how to approach her. In episode 7, Scarlett kisses Ed as a goodbye present for leaving the gang unexpectedly. In episode 8, Ed loses a chance of getting a car and he says to Phillipa, "Fucking you was the worst mistake I ever made!". In episode 10, he admits he loves Tammy and has sex with her at Luke's house, then finds out Tammy later on sneaks out and has sex with Luke. Ed is extremely preoccupied with sex, which leads him to do terrible things to his friends in the name of achieving it. He seems generally friendly, comes off as nice, but does so many asinine things to his friends, one wonders why they keep being his friends. He actually better fits the stereotype of Luke's blonde surfer-boy persona than Luke does.

Tammy Lane (Gracie Gilbert) is Ed's best friend, list maker and hard worker. She has an eccentric dress sense and is an aspiring music journalist and frequents music gigs in the Valley. She dislikes Scarlett, having labelled her a "troll" in the first episode. Tammy is frequently thought of as a stereotypical good girl, but occasionally attempts to break her image. She has a budding crush on Luke as he finds he also has for her and their relationship progresses throughout the season. With her opening up more, she finds that she can accomplish anything that she sets her mind on, if only she were as confident as Scarlett. Episode 4 finds Luke getting jealous at other men watching her as they both work at a party, her being labeled a "prostitute dressed in lycra." They end up in the club and finally take the jump to get together, much to Scarlett's jealousy. In episode 6, she breaks it off with Luke for him having sex with Scarlett at Tammy's house in episode 3 and in episode 8, she exclaims her love for Ed, only to be thrown back like a rag. In episode 10, she wants to lose her virginity after school is over, she then goes to Luke's house and loses her virginity to longtime best friend, Ed. She later sneaks out and has sex with Luke and Eva catches them.

Scarlett Carlyle (Emily Robins) is the female central character of the show and fashion conscious spoilt girl that lives in a fancy hotel. Originally from Melbourne, with her troublesome ways and antics, her mother sent her to live with her father at Urban Hotel in Brisbane. Being that her father is constantly busy with work, she feels that she must be bad in order to get any attention from her father. After meeting Ed on episode 1, she arranges a birthday party for him, telling him to invite heaps of popular people. When everyone arrives, Ed and Tammy are nowhere to be seen, the party gets out of control after Luke texts everyone he knows to join them. After a burning lounge chair falls off the top of the penthouse building in the hotel, she gets into a heated argument with her father, because any attention is good attention to her. Episode 3 finds her trying to vie also for Luke's attention, but she sees that he is infatuated with Tammy instead and continuously tries to get him to pay attention to her.

Eva Lee (Adele Perovic) is a rebellious tough girl with pink hair and an "eff you" attitude. Known to being a lone wolf person, she finds comfort in the art that she illegally creates all over Brisbane. Known for rebelling against authority, she speaks the truth and doesn't hold back, to the expense of the four new friends she's made. After spontaneously sleeping with Ash (whom she met in episode 3), she finds out that she isn't as tough as she thought and that her new-found friends may be exactly what she needed all along. Eva is adopted and in one episode met her biological brother and was close to meeting her birth mother, but ended up not wanting to. In the last episode, she catches Luke and Tammy having sex.

Luke Gallagher (Brenton Thwaites) is the cool attractive surfer guy that everyone wants to date. After meeting Tammy, he finds that he is deeply attracted to her. Not feeling anything like it before, he is unsure how to approach her as she is very different from the girls he's used to. After getting jealous of other men staring at Tammy at a party Ed, Tammy and himself worked at, he realises that he can't let any opportunity slip through his fingers and begins to open up to her more. While in the infamous "Duck Duck" night club, he kisses her after much sexual tension throughout the first few episodes, making room for a new relationship. Luke's parents died when he was younger and he lives with his older brother, Dylan. He got in a car accident in the second to last episode and suffers a concussion and Tammy helps Luke get through it. In the last episode, he has sex with her, not knowing she just had sex with Ed.

Recurring

Production

The series is a co-production between Hoodlum and Playmaker Media for Foxtel. The ten-part, hour-long television series was devised as a multiplatform online/television drama, for FOX8 and will feature an online and social media experience (utilizing Facebook and Twitter) to communicate with the audience, including a graphic novel that will coincide with the events of the series. The series was commissioned as part of Foxtel's initiative to produce more Australian made content across its owned channels and encourage Australian production to other cable channels in Australia.

Early screenings of the first episode have had the series be described as "Furiously funny and fearlessly frank" and has been likened to a more upbeat, comedy focused version of the British series Skins. Fox8 commissioned ten episodes for the first season, the biggest scripted project that FOX8 has ever commissioned.

A response to an e-mail regarding the show's future from a Fox8 representative stated "We can confirm that Season 2 will not be back for 2012, but may be revisited further down the track."

Critical reception

Many articles and blogs have compared the series to the British series Skins. Online media blog TV Tonight said about the series, "it is hard not to pigeon-hole the show as an 'Australian Skins.' But this is lighter in tone, if less emotional. Bris-Vegas offers a little more hope and sunshine than bleak Bristol, but in its first outing there isn't as much character."

Home video release

The first and only season of Slide was released on DVD for Region 4 on 15 March 2012. The series is also available for digital download on iTunes.

Filming locations