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After The Party is another drama which has first aired in another country, namely New Zealand for this one, and the same also happened for ITV’s recent Until I Kill You.
Here, Penny (Robyn Malcolm), the matriarch of the family, is not one to take for a fool. She’s forthright, doesn’t take any prisoners, and as a teacher, she even goes as far as almost embarrassing one of her students when after confiscating their phone with very inappropriate content on it, she brings the footage up on the classroom projector, to have a discussion about it!
Peter Mullan (Baghead), as Phil, comes back into everyone’s lives, but not everyone is pleased to see him, not least his ex-wife, Penny, since, as the trailer shows, he’s been up to no good with someone far too young, at the party, and given that she’s exploded at him in front of everyone else, and with his history of similar events, he’s going to wish he never returned to see ‘after the party’, or any other time there.
So, it does make you wonder why he came back! And then why get a job at a school?! He’s just making trouble for himself, in my view.
Phil’s lewd behaviour doesn’t help, either, when their forthright daughter, Grace (Tara Canton), starts trying to be suggestive about how… ‘blessed’ she is, chanting about how they’re “just breasts” and is more buxom than most adult women, given that her character is 15 years old. Er… 15? The actress is 21, and clearly does NOT look 15. Who did the casting for this?!
Penny certainly leads an adventurous lifestyle, since not only does she have a full time job to contend with, but she models for life art drawings, and even goes kayaking at night, albeit to sabotage the boat that’s been sat in the dock since forever, and is causing rather an issue.
However, that’s before she starts snapping at a student, similarly to how Claire did in The Listeners, also out this week, so there’s a shortage of script supplies of late.
So far, I’ve seen the first two episodes out of six, ands it’s fine and well-acted, but it’s pretty slow-moving. I might check out more, but it is odd that we’ve had to wait so long for this to come to the UK.
After The Party begins tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm, and will be on All 4. Personally, for this one, I saw the New Zealand broadcast.
It’s not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but when it is, it will be listed on the New DVD, Blu-ray, 3D and 4K releases UK page.
Cert: 
Running time: 45 minutes per episode (6 episodes)
Release date: November 20th 2024
Channel: Channel 4
Format: 2.00:1
Director: Peter Salmon
Producers: Helen Bowden, Liz DiFiore, Peter Salmon
Writers: Martha Hardy-Ward, Emily Perkins, Sam Shore, Dianne Taylor
Music: Caitlin Yeo
Cast:
Penny: Robyn Malcolm
Phil: Peter Mullan
Grace: Tara Canton
Ollie: Ian Blackburn
Tom: Elz Carrad
Simon: Dean O’Gorman
Walt: Ziggy O’Reilly
Bridget: Mia Blake
Joy: Catherine Wilkin
Ruth Nixon: Tanea Heke
Graham: Peter Hambleton
Kate: Kirana Gaeta
Kahu: Tamati Moriarty
Jodi: Tess Jamieson-Karaha
Nathan: Zack Ziogas
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.