Assignment 1 – Part 1
The Last King of the Cross (Paramount, 2023) is a crime-drama series-serial based on Lebanese-Australian businessman turned Kings Cross nightclub mogul, John Ibrahim’s autobiography, tracking his and his brother’s journey of crime including gangland violence, murder, and drug abuse.
According to Dunleavy (2017:103) the term ‘series-serial’ can be attributed to ‘dramas […] whose progressive overarching story marks them as serials but whose concepts incorporate a series-like problematic to provide a flow of additional stories and ‘guest’ characters’. The benefit of which is that it ‘helps to sustain the larger volume of episodes’ (2017:165) and, given the show’s chronological story and interweaving of perspectives, it is able to be defined as a series-serial.
Strengthening this, Aronson (2004:10) states that, ‘the serial presents the viewer with a family – often a number of families. It also presents the audience with a ‘village’ in the form of whatever community it depicts. Romance is often central to the serial, as are plots permitting the play of strong emotions’. This notion is illustrated in The Last King of the Cross, as it centres around the Ibrahim brothers, their family, and romances. Likewise, it also focusses on a ‘hub’ (Kings Cross, Sydney), described by Yvonne (2014:37) as something that ‘remains the same and is returned to each week’. Their book, Writing for Television : Series, Serials and Soaps (2014) also reinforces Dunleavy’s claim that dramas have ‘an overarching storyline’ (2014:37).
Conclusively, Paramount’s 2023 crime-drama, The Last King of the Cross can be defined as a series-serial. This is so because the show fits within the notions scribed by three independent authors: Dunleavy (2017), Aronson (2004), and Yvonne (2014). These notions being the presence of a series-like problematic, reoccurring characters and romances, and a setting or hub in which the community is set.
Readings used:
Dunleavy T (2018) Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television, Routledge, Abingdon.
Aronson L (2004) Television Writing: The Ground Rules of Series, Serials and Sitcom, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Yvonne G (2014) Writing for Television: Series, Serials and Soaps, Harpenden, England.
Assignment 1 – Part 2
The following story-beats occur over two episodes: “Episode 4”, “Episode 5”.
- Nasa Kalouri meets with Eddie and the Ibrahims to discuss Kings Cross before he pulls a gun on the ‘drug-peddling scum’. AFP officer Elizabeth Doyle arrives pulling a gun on Nasa, much to the chagrin of corrupt cops Declan Mooney and Brian Crellan.
- John Ibrahim visits Nasa at his home to persuade him to clear the bad blood before someone gets killed.
- Nasa appears on A Current Affair, exposing the NSW police as corrupt, though, the Vietnamese claim that his evidence won’t deter them from trying to takeover Kings Cross.
- At a café, Nasa is once again approached by the Ibrahims warning him to ‘go away for away’.
- As Nasa walks up his driveway he is gunned down with a burnt-out car being reported alongside his death, sending Sam into a drug addiction.
- Sam, meeting with John, wants to know who killed Nasa while John thinks he had it coming. Sam, angry at the world, unknowingly beats up a cop, aggravating the corrupt cops.
- Crellan and Mooney meet with Doyle and slyly suggest that Sam killed Nasa.
- Demi shows up to Sam’s house but is shut down and warns John about Sam’s increasing drug habit.
- John visits Sam to reprimand his drug use before Sam threatens him.
- Waali Mansour tries to cut Sam into a drug scheme, being supplied by the Vietnamese with which he is effectively at war.
- Tony kills a witness of a previous double homicide in which John was one of the victims, to clean up loose ends.
- Crellan assures John that as long as they say silent Doyle and Co. cannot do anything.