When the trailer for SBS’s new drama The Airport Chaplain was released, it looked too good to be true: national treasure Hugo Weaving, rising star Shabana Azeez, and an endearing conceptual combination of The Terminal meets Border Security.
Fortunately, the series is even better than I’d hoped.
The role of airport chaplain
Weaving’s Tobias Wallace is the titular chaplain. He is “not an inquisitor or a priest” – more “a social worker in a fluoro vest” than a man of God. His job is to provide support for all faiths passing through Melbourne Airport and, in practice, he works as something of a fixer of myriad daily crises.
Among other examples, this manifests in: a mad, security protocol-defying dash to return a lost stuffed animal; digging through a passenger’s checked luggage to find an engagement ring for a Valentines Day proposal; trying to win the trust of a distressed unknown woman who has holed up in the airport’s prayer room for several days; and attempting to deescalate a panicked passenger with a suitcase full of contraband.
He knows and helps everyone – the cleaners, baggage handlers, security, customs and flight crews – albeit in unorthodox ways, and amid a relentless stream of arrivals and departures.
Enter terminal manager Mira
Tobias’s phone may be ringing off the hook, but the chaplain’s role is immediately cast into doubt by the new terminal manager, Mira (Shabana Azeez). Her clear remit to trim the fat and her obsession with protocol sparks something of a power struggle with Tobias.
But Mira is a complicated antagonist with her own humanising pressures coming from home and her obnoxious bosses. Most viewers will recognise her from HBO’s The Pitt, but Azeez is actually a local making her first major Australian TV debut with this series.
The scenes in which Tobias and Mira go head-to-head – when he’s not screening her calls and she can pin him down in one place – are wonderfully combative and uncomfortable.
SBS
SBS’s global Netflix debut
The Airport Chaplain is perfection from public broadcaster, SBS. For one thing, it fits the brief.
The half-hour, eight-part series effectively and engagingly uses the cultural melting pot of the airport setting to fulfil the broadcaster’s multicultural remit. We see a fantastically diverse ensemble cast of new and familiar faces, including Claudia Karvan, Thomas Weatherall, Erroll Shand, Kavitha Anandasivam, Jackson Tozer and Elias Anton.
Together they depict one of the country’s busiest workplaces and the passengers that pass through it. Hierarchical clashes within the organisation itself sit alongside quietly profound moments of cultural conflict and connection.
Inspired by real events and people, there’s a beautiful unpinning of humour and humanity embedded in the show’s subtle social commentary. The audience is privy to voyeuristic peaks into the bowels of the airport – from the lost and found to the airport bar – that cater to the audience’s stickybeak proclivities and maybe answer some questions they’ve had about why a late gate change might happen.
The Airport Chaplain also shows what SBS can, and should, do. In recent years there has been a significant reduction in the broadcaster’s drama investment. But this series aligns with a recent network rebrand and a shifting of focus towards premium content.
One of its biggest scripted releases in some time, The Airport Chaplain reinforces the enduring significance of SBS in the face of claims “there’s no need for it anymore”.
The show is a triumph for local television, and also on a global scale. The concept feels uniquely Australian yet, of course, could take place anywhere, checking that “universality” (read “saleability”) box every TV exec is looking for.
Perhaps this is why The Airport Chaplain will be the first SBS Original drama to launch simultaneously on Netflix outside Australia.
Produced by Wooden Horse, the series was co-created by Elise McCredie and Jude Troy, the team behind acclaimed Australian thriller series The Clearing.
The Airport Chaplain is now showing on SBS in Australia and on Netflix globally.
