'Aftertaste' TV comedy draws on the South Australian alternative cultural quirks around food and wine in hills
Erik Thomson and Natalie Abbott and as feuding father-and-daughter chefs in the television series Aftertaste, set in South Australia.
Image courtesy Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Aftertaste, a South Australia-made television comedy series based on aspects of the state’s lifestyle, went into its second series on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2022.
Made by Closer Productions through the Adelaide Studios at Glenside, the first Aftertaste series, set around Uraidla in the Adelaide Hills, was a gentle mocking of Adelaide’s celebrated food and wine scene. It included cultural landscape of natural wines, dishes with intimate personal stories, micro-brewing and romance among the wine barrels.
It also had a nod to Adelaide Hills alternative culture with its main character, disgraced international chef Easton West (played by Erik Thomson), caught up in a drum circle where he takes psilocybin, under the spiritual direction of a tiny shaman called Wood Duck.
The second season was filmed mainly between Kangarilla and Meadows in the hills of Fleurieu Peninsula, south of Adelaide. Thomson, previously known for playing likeable middle-aged fathers (Packed to the Rafters, 800 Words), savoured Aftertaste role, created by writers Julia De Fina, Matthew Bate and Matt Vesely, of the bad-boy chef whose arrogance and temper saw him insult and assault a food critic and lose his job. Angry at everyone, his character returned home to the Adelaide Hills in the first series, bringing his ego and grudges with him.
Most of the second series took place at an old stone house that Thomson, who came from New Zealand but lived at Port Willunga, also on Fleurieu Pensinsula, recognised, along with the series' situations, as quintessentially South Australian. Thomson and his wife Caitlin McDougall and their two children shopped at the local farmers’ market and ate micro greens, while Caitlin’s mother and stepfather previously owned the Penny’s Hill Winery.
Thomson said he actually had been to a drum circle in the Adelaide Hills, and a sweat lodge: “I love South Australian culture; I love the fact that people have these micro micro-breweries, and little cottage industries have popped up. Everyone should be able to laugh at themselves and we are giving people the opportunity to do that.”
