Mr Inbetween Season 3 [8/10]

What a shame, selfishly speaking, that Season 3 of “Mr Inbetween” is apparently the final hurrah. Season 1 was superb and Season 2 was even better. In Season 3, once more we follow the mostly humdrum everyday life of Ray Shoesmith, with his daughter and his friends, a life punctuated by brutal violence, for Ray is an assassin and a fixer. The show’s core rationale is the exploration of Ray’s alien but quotidian character amidst a netherworld of crims. As writer, Scott Ryan is a master at gently interweaving Ray’s paradoxical strands, and in his portrayal of Ray, Ryan is flawless. The other actors are as perfect, often in very Ocker roles. Throughout, any dialogue is pitch perfect. The nine half-hour episodes making up Season 3 whip past as unmitigated delight, and when the final credits roll, I realized that even though I long for Season 4, perhaps Scott Ryan is right when he says, in a Sydney Morning Herald interview, “It feels like it’s time to do something else now, you know?”