COMEDY Series 1: 8 x 30’ HD, Series 2: 8 x 30’ HD

The family tree just grew another branch.

COMEDY

Series 1: 8 x 30’ Series 2: 8 x 30’ HD

Bess Denyar is a warm and lovely 38 year old who is married to Danny Bright, a funny and

highly evolved man, having always been comfortable being primary carer to their (now) 13

year old twins. (Twins in shared uterus only, Edwina: dark, serious, smart, Oscar: redhead,

funny, a mouthbreather.) Bess and Danny live in a beautiful home in a leafy street and life is

really very good.

Except that Bess can never shake the feeling that something’s wrong. With her. She’s what

they call in the medical profession a hypochondriac and she should know because she’s

quite high up in the medical profession; she’s an anaesthetist (she’s very good at getting rid

of pain, just not imaginary pain). Danny thinks Bess’ chronic sense of disquiet stems from

her mother, Margaret, posh, pretentious and whose impossibly high expectations could

induce an anxiety disorder in the Dalai Lama.

Bess is inclined to agree that her mother may be the root of all her problems, especially

after she discovers that she is adopted.

Julie Wheeler is a tough, pragmatic, drag racing champion, whose love of her husband, Wayne, and

their three children just trumps her love of the Wheeler Top Fuel Dragster – ‘Janis’.

The Wheeler family embraces drag racing as much as Julie – for them, it’s not a hobby; it’s a way of life.

Wayne, manager and chief mechanic, is completely one-eyed about Team Wheeler – literally, he wears a glass

eye following an accident several years earlier - and figuratively, he’s ridiculously proud. Amber, their eldest

daughter, (fiesty with a vocab to match) is a loans manager at a bank and handles the team finances, which

helps, because fiscally, things are always tight. No one thought Amber would do so well having had her son

Shawn, now 14, when she was still at school. Amber’s brother Kayne, 24, redhead, leads the pit crew and

Brianna, the baby at 22, struts effortlessly in heels on the track as ‘front of house’. The family’s not without

its problems. Since Amber’s marriage busted up, Shawn is refusing to race in the juniors until his parents get

back together and is getting into trouble with the police instead. Still, the Wheelers will see it through together.

Family is everything.

So when one day after a race, Wayne, white-faced, tells Julie that a 38 year-old anaesthetist called Bess wants

to meet them, Julie doesn’t hesitate to agree. She knows exactly who Bess is. She’s their baby girl, who she and

Wayne had when they were too young, when their family was too poor, when Julie was only 15. She’s ‘Janis’.

Created by robyn butler & Wayne Hope