Love My Way

(2003)

TV-MA

Romance

Drama

One day you wake up and you're in your thirties. How'd that happen? Still semi-broke, still negotiating with your ex about your daughter, still wondering what you're going to do when you grow up. Frankie, 31 (CLAUDIA KARVAN), is a tempestuous ball of mad life; a painter who also illustrates for a living at a large daily newspaper. She lives with Tom, (BRENDAN COWELL) occasional depressive and cook in the local rehabilitation hospital and Lou (ALEX COOK), her eight-year-old jazz-dancing daughter. Just down the road but in a much nicer house, that has a mortgage not a landlord, lives Charlie, 35 (DAN WYLLIE), architect, surfer, emotionally stunted and Lou's father. He's Frankie's ex and Tom's brother. Charlie's remarried to Julia, (ASHER KEDDIE) a 30-something woman with firm dreams about her life that are about to come true and scare the shit out of her. Add to the mix, Di (GILLIAN JONES), Frankie's fifty-something bombshell rock and roll mother, a terminally broke second hand furniture dealer: Gerry (MAX CULLEN) and Brenda (LYNETTE CURRAN), Tom and Charlie's Mum and Dad who drive cabs and experience epiphanies on trips to Fiji. This is an exploration of big characters dealing with the deepest of human emotions. Love, hate, truth, lies, jealousy, anger and death. It deals with the randomness of life and the bloody mindedness needed to carve out a place in the world. These people are family by blood and family by proxy. A web of relationships which are pulled and strained by the strongest desires and contradictions of the human heart. We see them at their worst, these people are too close for manners; and we see them at their best, negotiating their lives with and for one another and looking after their children, their lives and loves as best they can. Love My Way is an exploration of the love that binds us, the relationships that define us and the dreams of grown ups.

DIRECTOR

STARRING

S01:E01 - Don't Tell Me Your Dreams

Frank is rushing through her work so she can pick up her commissioned painting and get herself ready for a much anticipated date at the Walkley Awards with Felix. The commission is cancelled by an inappropriate shade of green and she has to ask her ex partner's new wife, Julia if she can borrow clothes for the night. Tom, who is dealing with old school friend, Nick who is currently a patient at the rehabilitation hospital he cooks for and the bizarre attraction of Gina the psychotherapist, just wants to get home, cook some pasta and have a joint. Charlie escapes work for an hour and goes for a surf and gets his mobile phone and cash nicked from his car, leaving him un-contactable by his heavily pregnant and possibly labouring wife, Julia. Into the chaos is Frank's eight year old daughter, Lou who needs a T-shirt for a dance at school; Gerry and Brenda, Tom and Charlie's well meaning parents, and Di, Frank's mother who smashes her car leaving it impounded with the Police. Julia is in labour and freaking out about a house full of people when she wanted to labour Her Way when Charlie finally arrives home and has to sort out the mess. Frank makes it to the Awards and has a big pashy night on ecstasy with Felix. The consummation of their relationship is halted abruptly with the birth of Julia and Charlie's baby boy in the backyard blow up pool. After dawn eggs and champagne Frank walks home alone and decides to pop in to Felix's house to finish what they started. Unfortunately she finds he has hopped into bed with another woman. Frank is left totally humiliated as they hear her amorous tap-tapping outside Felix's window.

S01:E02 - What's in a Name

Frankie is trying to deal with the humiliation of the fallout from the Felix debacle last week. It doesn't help that Connie and Felix are canoodling in front of her and offering pitying looks and lo-cal muffins. She seeks solace with George, a drink, maybe a fuck, straight sex, straight friendship?Tom's friend Nick leaves rehab announcing that he's changed. Kills himself. Tom is forced to question whether his own quest to rehabilitate himself is doomed or not. He gets hammered at the funeral, ends up comatose in the back yard. Frankie rushes him to the hospital. Charlie and Julia are in new baby heaven, picking a name, throwing a dinner party to celebrate which goes badly awry.

S01:E03 - Crazy Love

When Julia's ex-boyfriend, Howard, is in town for the weekend, past and present worlds collide. New-baby stress meets IKEA mayhem, and Charlie's jealousy blows out of proportion. Julia's grateful for the escape - she's grappling with the exhaustion and identity-crises of new-motherhood and Howard's arrival stirs up nostalgia for her old life…a nostalgia that lingers and leaves her wondering 'Am I really happy?' Frankie wants Lou to come and stay with her fulltime now that Toby's arrived. Frankie also discovers Di's having an affair with the married Bill. Tom's giving Gina the cold shoulder and his new anti-depressant meds are playing havoc with body and soul.

S01:E04 - Spin Cycle

Tom's gone off his meds, and as he spirals further and further down into himself, into the place he loves to hate, those that surround him want the blow-by-blow description of the fall. Chaos erupts and personal relationships are stretched, spun, and hung out to dry. Frankie, adversely, is trying to break out of the old onion-skin that has encased her for so long. She babysits Toby when Julia returns to the workforce, and when she's pulled over for drink driving by a policeman, Jai, she is drawn into an unlikely sexual encounter.

S01:E05 - Stick Sisters

When Charlie forgets her birthday, Julia tries to put an unsettling dream and the other glitches in her day aside to enjoy a quiet day's shop-lifting. When store manager, Dominic, catches her, Julia finds herself first confiding in and then pashing him when he lets her off the hook. Charlie and Julia have to navigate some rocky terrain when it becomes clear they might not want the same things from life. Meanwhile Frankie's thrilled when Julia's ex, Howard, invites her out but when everyone rains on her parade Frankie feels compelled to sabotage her own date before it sabotages her. Tom's back on the meds and trying to "keep himself nice", until Sonia, the audacious single mum of Lou's best friend, sneaks under his radar.

S01:E06 - To Dance With Death

Frankie's falling in love and it's interfering with her life. As she tries to manage all of her 'identities' - painter, Mum, employee, lover - she wonders if she's got enough room or courage to really love Howard. Charlie and Julia haven't recovered from Charlie's confession about his ambivalence towards fatherhood. An argument escalates and Julia takes Toby to stay with her parents…for a while. Charlie tries to continue his life unaffected, but when his dad, Gerry, gets bashed in his cab, he starts to unravel.

S01:E07 - My Family Up a Tree

Frankie has a change of heart about Howard but her newfound enthusiasm puts Howard on the back foot. Meanwhile, Frank's working on her entry for the prestigious Blake Art Prize - the deadline looms as she grapples with spiritual inspiration - and as love with Howard stalls, she can't help feeling a little jealous of Tom's wild, burgeoning anti-love-fest with Sonia. Charlie and Julia cautiously re-build their relationship - with Latin love, shared surfs and sunrise secrets, while Lou presents her family tree to her class - her own very special family that just keeps growing and entangling.

S01:E08 - A Different Planet

Tom and Charlie realise they're living on different planets when Tom flags a career change as a cab driver. Tensions simmer between Julia and Frankie as Frank's relationship with Howard really blossoms. It's only when the extra-ordinary occurs that their orbits fall into a dark harmony and the extremes of both their alienation from each other and their unique togetherness are played out.

S01:E09 - Only Mortal

Frankie and Charlie are deep in their own worlds of pain. Frankie can't let Lou go. She finds solace in dreams and the arcane while Charlie turns to work, drink and nicotine to numb his grief. He won't open up and Julia is left to grieve alone. Tom's driving cabs and trying to gently urge Frankie forwards but she's just not ready. So she retreats into the past and together, she and Charlie struggle to find a way through the darkness.

S01:E10 - Garden of Love

When Frankie and Charlie end their brief affair, they each look to other means to deal with their continuing grief. Frankie immerses herself first in sex and valium and then in her art, to find a way forward. Charlie puts the house on the market while Julia is left with only memories of the man she fell in love with. As Charlie and Julia contemplate the fate of their marriage, Frankie and Tom's relationship deepens and Frankie is finally able to glimpse some light and hope.

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