MHz Choice’s slate of international programs for August 2023 includes the US and Canada premiere of the Australian comedy series Preppers.
Over the past two and a half years, US-based streaming service MHz Choice has been expanding its international TV offerings, not just in quantity but also in countries of origin — adding programs from Chile, Japan, Lebanon, Senegal, and South Africa, as well as French-speaking Canada, to its staple of Euro TV shows.
With Preppers, MHz Choice expands even further, bringing a bit of entertainment from Australia to audiences in North America.
Preppers is a comedy series that follows Charlie (Nakkiah Lui, The Letdown, Black Comedy), a young Aboriginal woman and successful TV presenter who discovers that her White fiancé and producer, Thomas (Grant Denyer, Street Smart), is cheating on her with Sophie (Brooke Satchwell, Mr Inbetween), the vapid blonde host of their breakfast TV show. On one fateful Australia Day, aka Invasion Day, Charlie loses her job, her home, her fiancé, and her reputation, all in one fell swoop.
Worse yet, when Charlie wakes up from her drunken existential crisis, she discovers she’s landed smack dab in the middle of an Aboriginal Doomsday Preppers group called “Eden 2,” who have set up camp on her grandmother’s land, where they are planning for the apocalypse. A wizened old Indigenous man called Monty (Jack Charles, Cleverman, Wolf Creek) founded Eden 2 as a refuge for Aboriginal people, not to mention a few suckers that he has conned into footing the bill. (Cuz, you know, doomsday prepping ain’t cheap.)
Joining Monty at Eden 2 are Lionel (Chum Ehelepola, The Newsreader) and Kelly (Ursula Yovich, Irreverent), a relentlessly optimistic, born-again religious, mixed-race couple; Kirby (Eryn Jean Norvill, Love Me), the mysterious host of the Agent of Truth conspiracy podcast; Guy (Meyne Wyatt, Mystery Road), a macho Aboriginal survivalist obsessed with self-image; Jayden (Aaron McGrath, Glitch), a woke millennial who sees the apocalypse as the ultimate opportunity for Aboriginal self-determination; and Fig (Luke Arnold, Black Sails), a White Australian yuppie trying desperately to fit in but swiftly booted from the camp in favor of Charlie.
At first, Charlie tries to quit prepping like she’s quit so many other endeavors. This is her grandmother’s land and she wants Eden 2 off it so she can ride out the storm alone. But Monty conveniently presents her with a 10,000-year lease that her Nan (Miranda Tapsell, The Heart Guy) signed over so he could realize his dream.
With nowhere else to go, Charlie reluctantly joins the preppers and is eventually won over by the ragtag bunch of misfits as she tries to come to terms with the dissatisfaction, loneliness, and alienation she’s always felt trying to find her place in a White Australia.
Together, the preppers face off against authentic, pre-colonial overnight First Nations survival exercises, the mythical Penrith Panther (Kate Miller-Heidke, The Divorce), a cunning Aboriginal Aboriginal archaeologist (Luke Carroll, Upright), and Charlie’s even more cunning mother (Christine Anu, The Alice). But nothing jeopardizes their survival more than a group of White preppers (played by Leeanna Walsman, Safe Harbour; Yael Stone, Orange is the New Black; Toby Schmitz, Black Sails; and Sofia Nolan, RFDS Royal Flying Doctor Service), led by the rejected Fig, who threaten to steal the life and land the Eden 2 mob have built together.
By gaining a sense of purpose, becoming an unlikely leader, and confronting the generational trauma of colonization, Charlie will ultimately realize that she isn’t as powerless or vulnerable as she thinks, and that maybe, just maybe, the end of the world might be her best chance at a new beginning…
Preppers premieres in the US and Canada on Tuesday, August 1, exclusively on MHz Choice and its digital channels, including MHz Choice on Amazon.
Get oodles more info about it on the show’s dedicated page at mhzchoice.com/preppers.
In addition to Preppers, MHz Choice is premiering programs from South Africa and countries in Europe in August, too. Read about them here and here, respectively.
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