Nazeem Hussain’s new ABC comedy is sweet and zippy, but there’s one actor who steals the show

Detailed summary

Separated at Birth isn’t Australia’s answer to Twins (nor is that a question anyone is asking), but Nazeem Hussain and Urzila Carlson – respectively, Australia’s most beloved…

Separated at Birth isn’t Australia’s answer to Twins (nor is that a question anyone is asking), but Nazeem Hussain and Urzila Carlson – respectively, Australia’s most beloved Muslim and South African comics – make for a solid odd duo in this warm-hearted comedy about fatherhood.

Created by Hussain and marking his first non-sketch show (Legally Brown, Orange is the New Brown), Separated at Birth opens on Victorian paramedic Sameer (Hussain) clocking off and high-fiving lesbian work-wife Donna (Carlson) over a great Thursday.

Rattling through the day’s highlights – four-stabbings, a car crash and a snake bite among them – Sameer’s leaving one small thing off the list: Upstairs, his wife Aaleyah (San’a Shaik, Class of ’07) is three hours into labour. He’s pretending he doesn’t know, screening her calls.

And isn’t right now the perfect time to check out Donna’s latest project, a dilapidated house she’ll renovate single-handed? It’s all friendly ribbing (“Were you smoking this before the auction?” he asks, picking up a pipe from the floor) before the hospital calls him in via the ambulance radio.

We’re only five minutes into Separated at Birth when Aaleyah demands a divorce shortly after baby Omar is born, but it’s hard to not feel relief on her behalf. Sameer sucks. But he sucks less throughout Separated at Birth, which follows Sameer’s attempts to grow into fatherhood, feeling an innate love for Omar that he has no idea what to do with.

Loosely, the series follows Omar’s first months marked by major Muslim customs such as Ramadan and aqiqah, a head-shaving ceremony, each a chance for Sameer to step up and/or crash out. Hussain is charming enough to make the character more of a loveable mess than a deadbeat dad, though Donna regularly tempts Sameer to give up: “Kids don’t need two parents. It’s like kidneys or legs. You’ve got a spare.”

As the show’s only white main character, Carlson’s trademark obstinance is played for cultural cluelessness, such as when she thinks Ramadan…

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Sydney Morning Herald. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.