The Slap (M). Jonathan LaPaglia, Sophie Okonedo, Melissa George, Essie Davis, Alex Dimitriades, Sophie Lowe, Blake Davis. ABC1, 60 minutes, eight episodes
'I've heard it's rubbish,' says a fellow-traveller on a suburban train. 'What do you think?'
'Have you reached the chapter about the old man?' asks a waiter in an inner-city café. I tell him it's the next chapter I'll read. 'You'll love it,' he says. 'Amazing how he gets inside the characters' heads.'
'Isn't it wonderful?' This spoken by a face that materialises from amid the post-football throng outside Melbourne's Etihad Stadium. 'I can't wait for the TV series!'
The simple act of reading Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap in public seems to be a provocation, or at least an invitation for unsolicited opinions from strangers. The very definition of a conversation starter.
Both the book and the faithfully rendered and impeccably cast ABC1 mini-series boast the tagline 'Whose side are you on?'. Indeed, the nature and structure seem custom-built to diversify opinion. The ABC's multi-platform approach even invites viewers to register their allegiances via an online poll.
'Whose side are you on?' is, to some extent, a furphy. Each chapter, and each episode of the series, is told from the perspective of a different character. It is impossible to either wholly sympathise with, or wholly condemn, any character.
'I'd have hit him too,' is the verdict of one member of my book club, referring to the titular event — the corporal punishment, at a suburban backyard barbecue, of a recalcitrant child by a man who is not his father. None of us disagrees, per se.
But neither is anything in The Slap so black and white. The victim of 'the slap', three-year-old Hugo, has, with his precocious behaviour, damaged property and presented a physical threat to the other children at the barbecue. All this while his parents, Gary and Rosie, sit by largely passively.
We can't entirely blame Harry for intervening. But we may question his violent means. More so later, in the chapter/episode titled 'Harry', where we come to appreciate that violence simmers constantly within him. Dimitriades' stilly fearsome bearing perfectly embodies Harry's muted rage.
This is typical of The Slap's narrative approach. Each chapter not only furthers the plot, but constitutes a character study, which presents a different perspective not just on the slap itself, but on a swathe of interrelated social and moral issues that bustle beneath