Double Trouble (2007 - 2007)

Children's series
13 episodes x 30 minutes

Series synopsis:

Double Trouble is about twin Indigenous girls, both born in Alice Springs but separated at birth and unaware of the other’s existence. City-dwelling Yuma (Cassandra Glenn) meets Kyanna (Christine Glenn) for the first time when Yuma accompanies her art dealer father (Myles Pollard) to Alice Springs. The twins cross paths by chance and, without telling anyone, swap places. Yuma must adjust to life with her mother in a remote Indigenous community outside Alice Springs while Kyanna is now living in a bustling beachside suburb of Sydney with her father, stepmother and stepbrother (James Fraser) and training for a dance competition with Yuma’s competitive best friend (Basia A’Hern). As they try to keep the secret from their families and friends, life for the twins begins to get very complicated.

Curator’s Notes:

Double Trouble is a live action children’s television series produced by CAAMA, the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association. The same story inspired Disney’s family film The Parent Trap (1961), with Hayley Mills playing both sisters, and the 1998 remake starring a 12-year-old Lindsay Lohan. Both films were based on a 1949 German novel, Erich Kästner’s Lottie and Lisa.

The novelty in Double Trouble’s reworking of the story comes from its Indigenous characters and contrasting settings. One sister lives with a white nuclear family in the city while the other has access to an extended, traditional Indigenous community in the bush. The series happily mines the obvious potential for fish-out-of-water comedy and dramatic misunderstandings inherent in the clash between two such different worlds. Double Trouble also taps into the wonder of what it would be like to discover a secret sibling or second family and the mysterious bond between identical twins.

Double Trouble is a co-production between CAAMA, the Nine Network and the Disney Channel. It’s significant for being the first Indigenous children’s series, and possibly the first drama series produced by an Indigenous Australian association with Indigenous directors, writers and key cast. It’s also the first children’s series produced in the Northern Territory (it received funding support from the Northern Territory Film Office). Despite its uniqueness behind-the-scenes, Double Trouble still competed on a level playing field with other children’s shows, screening nationally in a regular weekly children’s TV timeslot.

Unlike The Parent Trap movies, which rely on special effects to enable one actor to play both sisters, Double Trouble stars identical twins Cassandra and Christine Glenn. Both were seniors at Glossop High School in South Australia’s Riverland Region when they were cast. Although neither had prior acting experience, both could dance (which was crucial for one of the story’s subplots) and no doubling was required during filming. Their natural, sometimes slightly awkward screen presence (befitting their characters being 'fish out of water’) is a large part of the story’s charm, making it easy for young teenagers to empathise with them. The strong supporting cast includes Tom E Lewis (The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, 1978 and The Proposition, 2005), Aaron Pedersen (Water Rats, 1996-2001 and City Homicide, 2007-current) and Lisa Flanagan (Australian Rules, 2002, and September, 2007).

There were two directors for the different story strands – Richard Frankland (Harry’s War, 2000) directed the Sydney sequences while Wayne Blair (The Djarn Djarns, 2005, and Black Talk, 2002) worked in Alice Springs. Despite the potential logistical nightmare of shooting in two cities with different directors, the series maintains a consistently colourful and breezy style, thanks in no small part to the editing of Rowena Cowie. Also worth noting is the contribution of production designer Tim Ferrier (Mary Bryant, 2005 and Farscape, 1999-2003) in creating two distinct environments for the girls. The work of director of photography Allan Collins ACS (Beneath Clouds, 2002) on the series was recognised by the Queensland and Northern Territory Awards for Cinematography in 2007.

Other accolades for Double Trouble include an Australian Writers’ Guild ‘AWGIE’ Award for Best Children’s Television script to Danielle McLean for episode seven and a nomination in the same category for David Ogilvy’s script for episode two. The series was also nominated for a 2008 AFI Award for Best Children’s Television Drama and was a finalist at the 2007 ATOM Awards for best children’s television series.

Double Trouble screened nationally on the Nine Network on Saturday mornings at 10.00 am between August and November 2008. It was also broadcast on Imparja Television in the Northern Territory and the cable Disney Channel before release as a two-DVD set in February 2009. The series was sold to overseas territories as disparate as Barbados, Croatia, Kenya, Vietnam, Sweden.

Stephen Groenewegen

Titles in this series