A disturbing, original story of power and corruption in the name of cashed-up religion hits screens in Prosper – streaming on Stan. It’s a sin as the Sydney-set family drama takes aim at false idols, writes Stephen A Russell.
Prosper: Season 1
A menacing patriarch with a quick temper, mired in dubious goings on behind his ostentatious showman’s personality. Competitive siblings sniping at one another as they catch helicopters between austerely palatial but personality-deficient homes, country retreats and pristinely presented workplaces. An empire is roiling as it rolls out an international campaign…
No, it’s not a new season of Succession, but instead the equally addictive, Sydney-set Prosper, the latest soon-to-be water cooler show presented by prolific home team supporters, the Stan originals team. Created by Matt Cameron (The Clearing) and Jason Stephens (Lambs of God), it feeds on the bad vibes surrounding Australia’s actual scandal-mired megachurch export Hillsong to tell a disturbing, original story of power, corruption and collateral damage in a cashed-up, happy clappy cult.
Rake star Richard Roxburgh is magnetically malevolent as Cal Quinn, slippery founder and lead pastor of the cashed-up U Star church, who has over-extended their kingdom with designs on securing a foothold in the lucrative US market via LA. All about peace, love and prosperity while preening on stage in front of a giant LED screen, behind the scenes he’s snorting cocaine in his hotel room with off-the-rail devotee Rosa (Brigid Zengeni, The Artful Dodger). A mess he expects his loyal but not entirely impressed wife Abi, a magnificently steely Rebecca Gibney, to fix. As these men so often do.
Scions with eyes on the prize
As trouble brews in their seemingly perfect marriage, it also sets up strife amongst their children in this gripping eight-part series where everyone has a motive to seize the thorny crown. So used to seeing Ewen Leslie as an out-and-out frightening type, here he’s actually a little cowed as eldest son Dion, who obsesses over his father whilst also coveting the top job. A desire stoked by both his ambitious wife Taz (La Brea’s Ming-Zhu Hii) and a slimy political operative Jonathan (Matthew Backer). The latter is also in bed with the would-be Tory Prime Minister Dan Gascoigne (James Saunders), who is being preened by Cal, with a view to changing charity laws that adversely affect their empire.
Dion’s at loggerheads with prodigal son Jed, played by The Witcher: Blood Origin star Jacob Collins-Levy, who split from the family three years ago, determined to run a grassroots soup kitchen devoid of cashed-up compromise. When Abi pays a visit, recalling how they had to “beg and borrow” to start up U Star, Jed interjects, “The stealing came later.”
Cal is determined to bring Jed back in from the cold to help with the US foothold by presenting a united family story of religious glory. This exacerbates Dion, who may not be the most charismatic follower but has been there by his father’s side all along. A situation Taz knows best how to work when she coaxes Dion to pull off an impromptu roadside fountain baptism with drug-addicted American superstar Maddox (Alex Fitzalan), whom U Star is aggressively courting. Meanwhile, Cal can’t quite keep his own foot soldiers in order as violent trouble brews over Jed’s tenuous leasehold and his refusal to stay schtum over his family’s more nefarious dealings.
Meanwhile, 16-year-old son Mo just wants to party, borrowing dad’s car without actually having a license and indulging in a spot of drunken trespassing. Sister Issy, much like Sarah Snook’s Shiv but much nicer, seems to have her shit together more than the rest, but not unlike Matthew Macfadyen’s Tom Wambsgans, her husband Benji (Jordi Webber)—as aspiring as Taz—has his eye on the prize, more directly competing with Dion while the scion’s ire is trained on his tapped-out brother.
When Rosa’s situation takes a terrible turn, the fault lines rumbling beneath this corrupt house of cards threaten to bring it all tumbling down, prompting a whip-smart Abi to enlist Taz in bringing Rosa’s daughter Juno (Andrea Solonge, Class of ’07) into the fold. One of the show’s most intriguing plotlines, it exposes the insidious way that feverish cults wrap their tendrils around those they abuse the most, the poor if not so meek. Solonge is incredible to watch, writhing in the Quinns’ vice-hiding grip.
Let he who is without sin
Tightly plotted by Cameron and co-writers Belinda Chayko, Liz Doran and Louise Fox, with smoothly addictive direction from Jennifer Leacey and Shaun Wilson, they tease out the Quinn family drama with aplomb, expertly headed up by Roxburgh at the top of his game as ever.
Cal’s machinations are instantly addictive, as are the push-and-pull pugilism that breaks out amongst the Quinn clan’s combative kids. But it’s Gibney’s Abi who steals the first episode’s wickedest line when, in the aftermath of the Rosa hotel room drama, she witheringly spits, “I have a party to organise.”
Of course, troubling types ushered out of parties in dark-tinted window limos have a habit of washing up dirty secrets in ways that will shatter even the most powerful of pretenders. Judging from the first three eps of Prosper, there are untold televisual riches ahead of us as the Quinns go to war in this biting takedown of the false idols.
