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It's been awhile since I watched a TV series. I think it was at the beginning of last year when I started watching Blue Heelers, beginning with the very first episode but stopped somewhere in the sixth season when I was sick to death of Constable Maggie Doyle's ongoing witness protection drama.
I love watching TV shows, especially as they're shorter than movies and easier to sit through in one sitting. Finding a good series that you're actually prepared to sit through for the whole season . . . is another thing.
I've subscribed to YouTube Red for about a year now as I love watching YouTube but hate ads. I always knew you could access premium content with your subscription but it never really interested me until last week.
I started watching the first episode of Wayne and even though I'd watched the trailer late last year and didn't think much of it, something about the show has now got me hooked.
The main character is 16 year old Wayne who first comes onto our screens as a wimp who can't or won't fight back. After instigating a brutal beating without defending himself, Wayne instigates a second round of bashings when the offender thinks he's dished out enough.
Maybe it's hard not to feel sorry for Wayne, who clearly seems to be struggling with a lot of issues, including having a mother walk out on him and his dad some 11 years earlier, his dad now dying of cancer plus trying to cope with a huge amount of aggression and anger that is slightly comforted by incidents of his violent outbursts.
Wayne's a very hard to read character who rarely, if at all, shows any emotion. The synopsis for the series describes him as having a heart of gold, which at times could be quite questionable when he's knocking out a classmate with a trumpet or smashing a bike to pieces while the owner is tied to a pole with a bike lock.
Of course it's always easy to justify reasons and excuses for his violent outbreaks: no parental guidance, no discipline, no supervision, lives in a very rough neighbourhood and perhaps more importantly, his acts are a result of what he perceives as an injustice.
The school bully bashed with a trumpet was picking on a weaker kid. The guy tied to a pole with a bike lock was abusing the shopkeeper who might have been his girlfriend. He rescues his girl crush Del from an abusive dad and two numbskull twin brothers after they gave him a brutal bashing for hanging out with her. Wayne returns and drops a TV set on the two brothers and fights Del's dad, ending with Wayne biting off the dad's nose. Nice!
I'm now up to episode eight out of the first season's ten episodes and there's definitely something that has a hold on me, although it's very disappointing I only have three episodes more to watch before it's all over.
And it's only at this point that I realise I have the hots for Sergeant Stephen Geller (played by Stephen Kearin), despite the fact he has ginger hair, which is usually something that puts me off (apologies to red heads!)
It turns out this American actor's been around for awhile and is well known by many of my colleagues, none who've watched the Wayne TV series. His biggest previous role seems to be from Kirby Buckets (2017), a children's animation and comedy TV series, as well as providing the voice for a number of cartoons and Sims video games.
I find his character very compelling, intriguing, mysterious and definitely hard to define or categorise. Just when I'm sure he's being a smart ass, I realise he's actually being serious. Which makes him look dumb but turns out, he just might be very smart which could be a pretence in order to toy with a character. It's hard to know for sure if he's winding them up on purpose or not.
I seriously can't seem to put my finger on a concrete description of his character. Maybe it can't be done and maybe this is on purpose but I've never seen a character like this before which makes it all the more fascinating and unpredictable.
And now I have the hots for him.
Apart from maybe Ruby Rose's brief guest appearance in Orange Is The New Black in Season 3, I don't think I've felt this way about a public figure/actor/character for a long time, particularly when they're shrouded with such mysteriousness.
And I still can't completely work out, other than Sergeant Geller's minor role, why or how Wayne has a hold on me. Which for me, will end in three episodes time, so who knows what I'll be feeling then.