General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Totally Completely Fine

Totally Completely Fine is a 2023 Australian dark comedy-drama television series starring Thomasin McKenzie as Vivian Cunningham, a self-destructive young woman who inherits her grandfather's clifftop house and discovers its yard contains a known suicide site, where she is tasked with talking people back from the edge.¹ The six-episode season is a Stan Original series produced by Fremantle Australia in association with Sundance Now and Screen NSW, and premiered on April 20, 2023 on Sundance Now and AMC+ with two episodes, followed by weekly releases.¹

Key fact	Detail
Format	Six-episode miniseries; total classified duration 291 minutes²^•³
Premiere	April 20, 2023, two episodes on Sundance Now and AMC+, then weekly¹
Lead cast	Thomasin McKenzie (Vivian Cunningham), Devon Terrell (Dane), Rowan Witt (John Cunningham), Brandon McClelland (Hendrix Cunningham), Contessa Treffone (Amy)⁴
Creative team	Created and written by Gretel Vella; directed by Lucy Gaffy and Adrian Chiarella¹
Ratings	IMDb 7.2/10 from about 2.6K votes; Rotten Tomatoes 100% from 6 critic reviews, 89% audience score⁵^•⁶
Classification	MA 15+ in Australia for strong coarse language, sex and suicide themes³
International release	Full box set on ITVX in the United Kingdom from July 29, 2024⁷

Spoilers

Premise

When the series opens, Vivian Cunningham is about to end her life: she cannot pay her bills, prefers alcohol to her own company, and has just incinerated her brother's vegan food truck with a faulty vape. As she climbs into a bathtub with a hairdryer, the phone rings; the grandfather she has avoided for years has died in his sleep and left her his house.¹

At the beach house on the edge of Dalton's Crevice, Vivian meets Amy, a runaway bride about to jump off the ledge behind the property, and realizes the place she has inherited is a popular suicide site that her grandfather used to watch over. Though her brothers John and Hendrix doubt her capacity for human warmth, Vivian finds that people respond to her chaotic, nihilistic brand of psychology. She 'saves' a construction worker, a lonely retiree, and a victim of domestic violence, and in the process sobers up, faces the consequences of the burned food truck, and starts a relationship with her uptight neighbor Dane, before losing someone on the ledge.⁷ Screen Australia's synopsis frames the arc as a question: in saving these people, will she slowly start to save herself?²

Production

The series was created and executive produced by WGA-nominee Gretel Vella, who wrote episodes 1, 2, 5, and 6; playwright Emme Hoy wrote episode 3 and Keir Wilkins wrote episode 4. Lucy Gaffy directed episodes 1-3 and 5-6, and Adrian Chiarella directed episode 4. Natalie Lindwall served as executive producer and Alice Willison as producer.¹ The production company was FremantleMedia Australia, with Stan Australia as the applicant, and filming took place in Sydney, New South Wales.³^•⁸

Suicide-content care. Because the subject matter centers on people at risk, the production took precautions: all heads of department took a course in suicide prevention training during preproduction.⁸ Each episode carries a warning at its start, and in one scene the characters hold up signs displaying Lifeline's phone numbers for voice and text crisis support.⁹

Reception and distribution

The Australian Classification Board rated the series MA 15+ on April 24, 2023, with the consumer advice "strong coarse language, sex and suicide themes", noting frequent references to suicide and mental health issues presented at times in darkly comedic scenes.³ In the United States it carries a TV-MA rating.¹⁰

Critical response was strongly positive on aggregate: Rotten Tomatoes recorded a 100% Tomatometer from 6 reviews and an 89% audience score from 50+ ratings,⁶ while IMDb users gave 7.2/10 from about 2.6K votes, with an unweighted mean of 7.5.⁵ Per-episode ratings rose steadily across the season, from 7.2 for episode 1 to 8.2 for the finale.⁵ Common Sense Media's review praised the biting humor and the show's exploration of the causes of suicide while criticizing episodes that drag and repeated use of flashbacks.¹⁰

Streaming reach. In Australia the series streams on Stan;⁴ in the United States it is available on AMC+ and for purchase on Prime Video.⁶ Fremantle handled international distribution,² and the full box set arrived on ITVX in the United Kingdom on July 29, 2024.⁷

Place in Australian drama

Screen Australia's Drama Report 2022-23 lists Totally Completely Fine among the Australian general subscription TV and SVOD drama titles of the 2022-23 slate, produced by Fremantle Australia with first release on Stan, premiered as of October 2023, and not Screen Australia funded.¹¹ Stan cited the series, made in partnership with AMC Networks' Sundance Now and Fremantle, among the eight titles that gave it the largest single share (38%) of drama titles first releasing on subscription TV or SVOD in FY23, its third consecutive year in that position.¹²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Sitcom and comedy series › Comedy series outside the US and UK › Premiered 2022 to 2026

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?