800 Words S3E1

I love 800 Words and am very glad to see it back for a third series. The last series finished with a couple of cliff-hangers. First, Jan is having twins and there were three contenders for being the father - Zac, George and a bloke who shows up from Sydney, Steve, (Mark Ferguson, who played Darryl Nielsen many years ago in Shortland Street). Second, Ike, Steve and Zac all go off on a fishing trip but their boat washes up without them.

So these are obviously the storylines to be played out in the first episode of the new series. Jan is rushed off to hospital to have the babies, but is kept in the dark about the missing men. George is caught up in the search so Big Mac is left to look after her - he seems to be having second thoughts about his rather rash proposal, and is very happy to hand over to George when he does turn up.

As for the search, poor old Constable Tom is a bit out of his depth running it (and weirdly, Gloria decides to cut and run half way through the episode) but they're good people in Weld and don't really need him to keep them on point. Even Ollie, who has an interest in seeing Ike is never found, comes to the party and uses his drone to search the coastline. It's nerd Billy, however, who has the best answers: he has been researching shipwrecks in the museum and has an idea of where the three men might be. Being a kid, no-one listens to him but he and Arlo go it alone. As soon as I saw the life-jackets it was pretty clear they'd got ashore, exactly where he predicted, but no-one in the show seemed to see it that way and got caught up in grief. So Zac and Steve had to rescue themselves, turning up at just the right moment but there's no Ike! He'd swum ashore from where the boat capsized but there is no sign of him - which tears old Shay up enormously.

There's an amusing moment when Siouxsie turns up without any makeup, and no-one knows who she is. But she keeps Ollie going with his drone, and he finally sees Ike. I don't think there was much of an internal struggle - he maybe accepted what Siouxsie told him that even without Ike around, Shay still won't be interested or maybe he's just a decent guy - but he saved Ike's life.