Buried

The new web series Buried is marketed as a comedy about being a mother, but before you start having flashbacks to The Letdown, stop. Buried, it turns out, is an entertaining and occasionally funny horror.

Abi Cohen (Miriam Glaser), a stressed-out single mum of two, is trying to get her primary school-aged daughter Rosa (Audrey O’Sullivan) to school when a cyclist (Alex Yakimov) almost runs Rosa down. What follows is a pretty standard driver-cyclist interaction: Abi gives him a blast for not watching the road, he cycles off not caring what she thinks, and Abi gets into the car and off they go to school. Except whilst taking a shortcut, she encounters the cyclist again. And accidentally kills him.

With baby Leo (Hazel Howe) in the backseat crying, and Rosa moaning that she’ll be late for school, Abi feels she has no choice but to dispose of the cyclist’s body as quickly as possible. But it’s not as simple as popping him into the boot and driving out to the bush with a shovel, Abi has to dodge a seeming obstacle course of other people, who all threaten to uncover the secret she’s trying to bury.

Buried has a classic horror/thriller plot but set in the everyday world of solo parenting and suburban mores, and it ratchets up the tension well. Louise Siversen (Prisoner, The Games), Alicia Gardiner (Deadloch), Genevieve Morris (No Activity) and Michael Faaloua Logo (Colin from Accounts) are just some of the well-known performers playing characters who almost work out what Abi’s up to. Heather (Eliza Matengu) is another memorable person for Abi to dodge. She’s the mum at the school gate who seems to have it all – and be able to do it all – except she’s got a secret too.

Running over 5 x 7 minutes-long episodes, Buried far from outstays its welcome, leaving you wondering what might happen if this became a full 6 x 25 minutes series. It also leaves you wondering why so many people making comedy hybrid shows always seem to pair comedy with drama, leading to mostly disappointing results (In Limbo, Austin, White Fever… you know the kind of shows we’re talking about).

Horror pairs far better with comedy than drama, partly because it’s not meant to be serious and partly because, like comedy, it’s pretty good at surfacing ordinary human anxieties. So, maybe one of the shots in the arm that Australian screen comedy needs is less comedy-drama about suicide and “finding yourself”, and more comedy-horror involving ordinary people with chainsaws?