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Thirty years old, or thereabouts, and still a virgin. Sarah (Hannah Diviney) and Frank (Angus Thompson, also co-creator of this Australian series) despair of getting rid of a virginity which weighs all the more as it brings them back to their other common trait: the two young people are suffering from cerebral palsy. A series built on this foundation should rise straight to the happy ending.
In one hour – six episodes of approximately ten minutes –, Latecomers (“the latecomers”) cheerfully subverts expectations to explore, in a comedic manner, the traps of desire, which are as cruel – no more, no less – for those with disabilities as for those who are able-bodied.
Sarah is an academic and is working on a dissertation devoted to the sexuality of disabled people, a subject which makes her cruelly feel her lack of experience. Her caregiver and friend is Brandi, an older neighbor (Miriama Smith) who loudly claims her cougar status, setting her sights on the fresh flesh that passes within her reach.
Frank has dropped out of school and is living his life as a slacker (he earns money by serving as a model for the demonstration of medical devices) in the company of his caregiver, Elliot (Patrick Jhanur), who corresponds to him, to the surfer stereotype. He is also a lifeguard.
Outside of conventions
Through their wanderings, the two teams end up meeting. Initially, it is the valid libido that wins. Sarah and Frank act as caregivers’ courtship, Brandi and Elliot. It is then that the matter becomes complicated, and it would be unfair for such an inventive series to reveal the traps it sets for its characters.
These are drawn outside of the conventions which want disability (or community belonging) to provide an extra element of soul or morality. Angus Thompson, in particular, is quite merciless towards the character of Frank, who deliberately lingers in the most obtuse version of adolescence and sacrifices to the rites of Australian manhood, mercilessly pinned down here.
Sarah is hardly better, as a prematurely hardened singleton, quick to judge others, reluctant to get into the water (baptism by immersion or sprinkling being a recurring figure in the series). As for the caregivers, they are admirable in their self-sacrifice, except when the satisfaction of their desires gets in the way of their mission.
Which does not mean that Latecomers does not also depict the obstacles of all kinds that the world places in the existence of the protagonists. Their violence and omnipresence are felt all the more as we feel close to these “latecomers” about whom we would like to have news in the future.
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