Love My Way

One day you wake up and you're in your thirties. How'd that happen? Still semi-broke, still negotiating with you 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 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 and 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 manner; 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.

LOVE MY WAY SERIES ONE - Available to Rent from December 1st 2005, and to own February 2006.

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Love My Way - Episode 1 - Don't tell me your dreams

Frankie is a mad ball of life. Her substance abusing flatmate Tom doesn't want to know about her dreams, but they're obvious to her workmates at the newspaper - she's smitten with hunk journo Felix, and they're hooking up at the Awards tonight. But Frankie's dream fulfillment has lots of obstacles. There's Julia, who's about to give birth and her husband Charlie (who happens to be Tom's brother, Frankie's ex and the father of Frankie's daughter, Lou). Frankie's rock 'n' roll mum Di makes life messier and her in-laws Gerry and Brenda can barely keep things together. Together with Tom's lover, the psychotherapist Gina, and Frankie's lovestruck workmate George, Frankie is at the centre of a web of relationships which are pulled and strained by the strongest desires and contradictions of the human heart.


Love My Way - Episode 2 - What's in a name?

Frankie is trying to deal with the humiliation and fallout of rejection on the Walkley Awards night. It doesn't help that Connie and Felix are canoodling in front of her and offering pity. She seeks solace with George - a drink, maybe uncomplicated sex, straight friendship? Tom's friend, Nick leaves rehab announcing that he's changed. With Nick's sudden death, Tom is forced to question whether his own quest to rehabilitate himself is doomed or not. While Charlie and Julie are in new-baby heaven - they can't decide on a name. Chad? Dylan? Ridge? They celebrate with a dinner party that ends with an unexpected twist.


Love My Way - Episode 3 - Crazy Love

When Julia's ex-boyfriend, Howard, is in town for the weekend, past and present worlds collide. 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.


Love My Way - Episode 4 - 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 fro 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.


Love My Way - Episode 5 - 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 shoplifting. When store manager, Dominic, catchers 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.


Love My Way - Episode 6 - 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.


Love My Way - Episode 7 - My Family up a Tree

Frankie has a change of heart about Howard but her newfound enthusiasm puts Howard on the back foot. Meanwhile, Frankie's working on her entry for 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 the class - her own very special family that just keeps growing and entangling.