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| Australian Broadcasting Corporation | National Broadcasting Corporation |
By Morris Dean
The Australian and American TV series The Slap (2011 and 2015, respectively) are so similar, it's fun and interesting to watch them both and see how they're different. The opening episode of both series portrays a birthday party at which an adult male administers a sound smack to someone else's misbehaving child, and both series explore the aftermath of that slap, going on for a total of eight episodes, each told from the point of view of a different character. The story, in both series, includes a man's near fling with his children's babysitter, incriminating photographs taken at the birthday party by a teenage boy who's a friend of the babysitter, a family friend's becoming pregnant by a man half her age, a family feud, a court case, and threats of breakup in a couple of marriages and several friendships. The Australian series is set around Melbourne, the American around New York City.
