Mike Ginn
The best of plans can be thwarted and, when the pressure comes on, the cracks begin to show. As the incidents in their worlds play out, three families bound by love and broken by betrayal, find their lives unknowingly touch one another, and then a final single event brings them together. This is not a love story but a story about love; three loves, three lies and one more chance.
Milton, a college dropout, was only supposed to cook meth for one day. Broken out of rehab by a brash young woman and her trigger-happy ("ex") boyfriend and driven to a remote cabin the woods, Milton finds himself drawn into a dangerous love triangle gone haywire. The couple's deadpan half-truths spin around Milton like a song on repeat. They seem to read him like an open book, until a mysterious message opens his eyes to his cursed existence. With unlimited ammunition, any hunting tool they could desire, and an ever-growing body count, for what did Milton really sign up?
The contemporary story of Chinese New Zealand-born over-achiever Emily Chu, raised to believe she can get anything she puts her mind to. Even if 'anything' is at odds with her traditional Hong Kong born parents' wish for her to become a doctor like her two older sisters. Everything is coming up roses - until she meets James, a European New Zealander, and accidentally falls in love with him. But if her father finds out, she will face disownment. By the time Emily realises that she's sacrificing the respect of her family to follow her heart, James, too, has fallen irrevocably in love and there's nothing for it but to try and keep their relationship a secret. Happy endings don't come easy, if at all, but that doesn't mean they don't happen. But for Emily to get one, she needs to show James and her family that she has learned a lesson about the selflessness of love.
William McInnes (Look Both Ways, Sea Change) is the can-do barbecue dad of the title in Brendan Donovan’s affectionate comedy-drama. He plays a Howick cleaning contractor, whose hopes and dreams include success in local body politics. But his real passion is kart-racing and he’s grooming his teenage sons, 17-year-old Marc and 14-year-old Ed (real-life brothers Josh and William McKenzie), as future motorsport heroes. He’s borrowed so much money to make it all happen that it stretches the love of his wife Gail (Robyn Malcolm of Outrageous Fortune fame) to breaking point. When the boys collide on the track, Gazza’s world is turned upside down, causing a crisis that tears at them all — forcing him to fight to keep his dreams afloat, and his family together.
