Underbelly: Vanishing Act

Sadly this superficial retelling of the Melissa Caddick story cashes in on the underbelly name with little of the quality that most previous underbelly series have given.

No new information about the situation was given although some aspects of the dramatization did add some emotion to the story.

In truth, the 60 minutes story with the real life characters was somewhat more entertaining and informative.

Feels like these 2 episodes were rushed out while the Melissa Caddick story is still topical.

Terrible acting. Script not much better.

No suspense or feeling of drama that must have surrounded such a terrible fraud.

Some odd attempts at humour just added to the amateurish feeling of the whole production.

Some legendary and iconic Australian actors in this and doing the best they can with a terrible long, boring, corny and forced script. (Apart from the struggling card board stiff female actor playing the ASIC investigator). A doco or show cut down to less than half the time would have helped. Then would have only wasted only half our time watching it. Shame really, as generally speaking, such a such a waste of talented actors.

Large parts of this (the entire George sub-plot) are simply made up to drag the story out and try to add a twist - badly acted and badly made. Listen to the Liar, Liar podcast instead -accurate and much, much better.

Bewildered why they would sell this as Underbelly, the story is/was worthy of making the a movie.

I enjoyed the show in fact hard for me not too with Colin Friels, one of my all time favourite Aussie actors. Also Kate Atkinson, loved her since Sea Change days. Both these two do a good job as usual, unfortunately the casting of them for their respective characters was a poor choice and reflects poorly for them both.

The story and script could have been dramatised to be far more entertaining and the whole thing is messy especially the ending.

Overall worthy of a watch but by no means a gritty underworld story.

6½ rounded up.