What is the plot?

Meghan Shaughnessy and Agatha Fyfle are two women from different worlds. Meghan has two children and is married to a successful man who works at a sports TV station. Agatha is a lonely woman with a painful past, divorced and currently working in a small community supermarket. They have only two things in common: both have the same length of pregnancy and both hide secrets that could undo everything they have each built and planned. When the two women cross paths, they will unleash some life-changing events.

I have spent some time without seeing an Australian production, lately I have only been watching British mini-series, it has been a pleasure to find this Australian drama, which leads to a psychological crime thriller, with a too flat direction, but whose story is entertaining.

It's not a high level mini-series, it's not a masterpiece, but it's only six episodes that can be seen quickly and the whole mystery of the plot, although it's predictable from the first chapter, fulfills the objective of making us spend some time with interesting scenes.

The mini-series reminded me of an episode of the series La Ley el Orden , with a mixture of soap opera melodrama. There are troubled marriages, infidelities and a psychopath traumatized by his painful past.

Meghan's character represents the ideal of the perfect life. They live in a good area of Sydney, her husband, Jack Shaughnessy, is successful, works at a sports TV station, they are the parents of two beautiful children and she is currently eight months pregnant. A marriage with a seemingly perfect life. Are they really happy? Is Jack really faithful to his wife? And she, what secret does she keep? Is she really that son of Jack?

The other character, Agatha, is a low-income woman who works in the market in the community where Meghan lives. She has a very painful past, her parents were hard on her, she was abused by a religious boarding school teacher, and she divorced a man much older than her, after losing a baby. Now she is alone and pregnant. Is Haylen Cole, the young man who joined the Navy, the father? Why so much mystery? What secret does he keep? Is it all true?

The worlds of these two women will cross, each with her secrets, sufferings and sorrows. Their lives will be totally affected, for one of them more than for the other. These women are willing to do anything to achieve their plans and protect what they love most.

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The Secrets He Keeps is a six-episode mini-series, adapted from the novel of the same title, published in 2017, by Michael Robotham, a well-known Australian writer specializing in crime novel writing. Produced by Australian production company Lingo Productions and distributed by DCD Rights, it premiered on the Network Ten television channel and is available on other digital platforms. For example, in England it is available on BBC One.

Robotham worked for a long time in England, as an editor at The Mail on Sunday , during which he also participated in more than twenty biographical book projects, some as a ghostwriter. But in the late 1990s, he returned to his country, Australia, where he began writing crime and police-related novels. He has created the Joe O'Loughlin novel saga, of which, as well as have been adapted as films in Germany. Another of his novels, Life or Death, is also being prepared as a mini television series.

The Australian writer has participated in the development of the script for this mini-series version of his own novel, collaborating with the two main writers, Sarah Walker and Jonathan Gavin,

It was directed by Catherine Millar and Jennifer Leacey, two women with extensive experience in Australian television, where they have worked as directors on other television series. Their work is correct, it seems to me that the narrative pace is a bit flat and they don't take risks, they go for sure, what they know how to do.

Jessica De Gouw plays Meghan. She is an actress known to fans of the series Arrow, where she played Helena Bertinelli. She has also participated in many other series, such as Dracula and Blood of Vienna. In film, she has recently worked in Gretel and Hansel. She is a good actress who reflects all the suffering Meghan must go through when the crime they tell us about in the mini-series occurs.

The English actress Laura Carmichael plays Agatha. She is an actress who achieved notoriety by playing Lady Edith Crawley in the successful television series Downton Abbey. She has also been seen in the production of The Spanish Princess. In The Secrets she Keeps, she continues to prove herself as an excellent actress, bringing to life Agatha, a woman whose life is a living hell due to a past that has driven her crazy.

The other actors in the cast do not shine much, some of them have too weak performances. Only the actor Michael Dorman, in the role of Jack, is capable of transmitting that desperation and impotence, a totally desperate father, but at the same time he is a very passive character. The reins of the story are in the hands of the two female protagonists.

Trailer

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