Waiting to exhale

If you missed local drama series Still Breathing on M-Net in May this year, there’s good news – you can binge it all on Showmax. The first thing that people do in the face of a challenge is to stop breathing, even for a second their entire bodies freeze.

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That feeling of sheer terror and panic doesn’t just go away either. In the series, eight friends are reunited when a car crash claims one of their lives. But mystery floats through their sense of grief, because Trent (Brendan Pollecutt, Tom Carter in 2013-2016 drama Wild At Heart) wasn’t the loving, caring, compassionate friend and husband he portrayed himself as. Trent took a secret to the grave that only one other person knows, and as the series unfolds, that truth seeps out like bodily fluid from a rotting corpse.

In episode 1, we get an all-too-brief introduction to the group as they try to steer themselves through the busy shipping lane called life. Whether it’s attending a school talent show to support their child, supervising a restaurant renovation or dealing with the harsh realities of medical conditions like infertility and dementia, each person has a lot on the go.

And don’t think that those wedding flashbacks, when the pals were together in one place and celebrating, won’t play a role later down the line – it’s the perfect place and time for a secret to be borne. With the friends still coming to terms with Trent’s demise and his widow Abi (Kate Liquorish, eKaterina Gromova in Queen Sono, 2020-now) unaware of the secret in his closet, here’s a proper meet-and-greet as Still Breathing carries Trent’s coffin out of the church and down to the cemetery…