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Wellmania centres around Liv Healy (Celeste Barber), who wakes up in an ambulance, rather surprised at how she got there, before we go back to her in New York, 2 days earlier, when she’s having a bit of “How’s your father” with a random bloke, before shoving her not-so-potential suitor out the door.
Liv’s a food blogger pitching for a job on a TV panel show, but the execs need to see her write an article which will see her go viral. Such important things will have to wait, though, because she lives a hedonistic lifestyle, and first heads off to Australia for her friend Amy’s (JJ Fong) 40th birthday, has her bag stolen on the beach, and it has her Green Card in it, so cant get back into the US. D’oh!
However, if she canes it with booze and narcotics, how is she going to make it for her appointment to get a new card the next morning? Well, this brings her back to her ambulance trip, and once in hospital, she finds that her poor health is going to cause problems with getting back to America.
Additionally, the local GP is clearly due for retirement, and his memory is so bad that he’s forgotten Liv’s father died… 24 years ago.
So, that’s the basic set-up, but in Wellmania, Ms Barber’s ‘fat is funny as it leads to prat falls and injuring other people’ character does feel like something we’ve seen countless times before… like with Miranda Hart’s BBC series; and it would’ve been amusing to have seen her in the TV panel show, but I presume the idea is that we’ll be staying in Australia for the duration of the series, and after two episodes, that’s enough for me.
Thanks to our friends at Netflix for the screener prior to release.
Wellmania is not available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but is on Netflix from Wednesday March 29th.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 25-30 minutes per episode (8 episodes)
Release date: March 29th 2023
Studio: Netflix
Format: 2.20:1
Directors: Helena Brooks, Erin White
Producer: Bree-Anne Sykes
Novel: Brigid Delaney
Creators: Brigid Delaney, Benjamin Law
Writers: Rachel Laverty, Romina Accurso, Nick Coyle, Amy Stewart
Cast:
Liv Healy: Celeste Barber
Amy Kwan: JJ Fong
Jesse: Rowan Witt
Isaac Huang: Alexander Hodge
Dalbert Tan: Remy Hii
Lorraine Healy: Genevieve Mooy
Gaz Healy: Lachlan Buchanan
Valerie Jones: Virginie Laverdure
Dr. Price: Anthony Phelan
Dr. Priyanka Singh: Leah Vandenberg
Damien: Felix Williamson
Ning: Gabrielle Chan
Chad: Guy Edmonds
Doug Henderson: Johnny Carr
Diane: Nicola Parry
Steven Rodgers: Tim McGarry
Guy: Zoy Frangos
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.