Amid the avalanche of mediocrities premiering this week on broadcast TV, one shining spot will be the fleeting new Australian import “Mr Inbetween” (FX, 10 p.m.).
It can be found in the corners of cable, premiering after “Mayans M.C.” (FX, 9 p.m.) in half hour slots. They’ll play two episodes of the six-episode season over three weeks and it will be gone.
A coproduction with Australian FX, it will actually premiere here a week or so its premiere there.
It stars Scott Ryan as a brutal hitman who is also a caring single father, whose worlds sometime collide because of the nature of the bungling in the subcultures where he dwells. Growing out of a student film he made “The Magician,” it establishes itself as the kind of show that naturally mixes drama and comedy, just as Ryan, who also writes and produces, is the kind of character who can look absolutely menacing in one scene and a convincing softie in the next.
Filled with a lot of color and detail — actual people’s houses, Ryan told me — it has the impact of some of the best of current cable fare.
And if it sounds a bit like “Barry,” about a hitman trying to be a nice guy and getting out of the business through acting class, well Ryan thinks so to. After all, he pitched “Mr Inbetween” to HBO before they got to work on “Barry,” he says
Interesting accusation, but I don’t think you want to get Ryan too mad at you — he’s that convincing as a fixer.
Having his show picked up in the U.S. was a bit of a surprise, he said in his press conference. “I mean, I guess with a lot of Australian TV shows, they have to be remade for an American audience, and I figured that that’s what would happen, if we got lucky enough. But it was great to get picked up, for sure.”
He called his character Ray “kind of an amalgamation of a lot of different characters, I guess. But there’s some of me in there, for sure.”
Mostly, he seemed ready to have “Mr Inbetween” speak for itself, and it certainly does.