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Mel Campbell

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Mel Campbell is a freelance cultural critic, author and commentator from Melbourne, Australia. Mel co-hosted The Rereaders podcast (2016-18), was a Melbourne International Film Festival preview panellist (2012-14), was national film editor at The Thousands (2008-13), and co-founded pop-culture website The Enthusiast (2008-14). Mel's writing on film, television, fashion, literature and media has appeared at Screenhub, Junkee, The Guardian, Metro, The Age, The Big Issue, Crikey, i-D and many more. She is currently a columnist at Overland literary journal and teaches in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. She has co-written two romantic comedy novels with fellow film critic Anthony Morris: Nailed It! (2019) and The Hot Guy (2017); her first book was the nonfiction investigation Out of Shape: Debunking Myths about Fashion and Fit (2013). She tweets at @incrediblemelk and her personal website is The Look: reviews and essays about film, TV, clothes and history.

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Severance: Season 2 (2025) 94% EDIT “Nothing in 2025 had me more captivated, more ironically … Having seduced viewers into delighting in the aesthetic rituals of Lumon Industries’ corporate mystery cult, Severance … should prompt us never to let corporations into the windmills of our minds.” – ScreenHub Dec 29, 2025 Full Review Andor: Season 2 (2025) 97% EDIT “Forget it’s a Star War; it’s no good-versus-evil pageant … instead it dramatises ordinary people’s political struggles with an empathy that bruises the heart it captivates. … A heartening polemic for a time right now, in a galaxy near, near here.” – ScreenHub Dec 29, 2025 Full Review The Abandons: Season 1 (2025) 30% EDIT “Not everyone can pull off a western. You think all you need are some cowboy hats and slowly plucked guitars. The Abandons also had the bona fides of being created by Kurt Sutter, and two excellent leads. You’d think that’d be great, right? Such a shame.” – ABC Radio (Australia) Dec 29, 2025 Full Review Annabel Crabb's Civic Duty: Season 1 (2025) EDIT “Slickly packaged, educational, and there are a lot of interesting tidbits … But I liked most that it takes us inside the actual AEC voting system. People work really hard to make sure we can be confident that we have a functioning and robust democracy.” – ABC Radio (Australia) Nov 25, 2025 Full Review The Sentinels: Season 1 (2025) EDIT “There’s something a little bit steampunky to this … it’s interesting to see the French making the superhero genre part of their own history. Not really the action-packed show I was expecting; it’s more of a slow-burn mystery … [and] I’m kind of gripped.” – ABC Radio (Australia) Nov 14, 2025 Full Review The Witcher: Season 4 (2025) 59% EDIT “It took me a while to remember where all the characters were in the story, and in fact who a lot of them were. … The unfortunate thing is that [Hemsworth] is just not as monumental as Cavill. It’s a slightly gentler version than the mean, hulking Cavill.” – ABC Radio (Australia) Nov 7, 2025 Full Review The Bear: Season 4 (2025) 84% EDIT “Exactly the sort of painfully highfalutin television Carmy would make, were he a TV showrunner rather than a traumatised culinary genius. … This turgid vibe has got to be thematic, right? The Bear is so lost up its own clacker now because so is Carmy?” – ScreenHub Nov 7, 2025 Full Review The Lowdown: Season 1 (2025) 98% EDIT “The shaggy vibe of this is so much fun. … I particularly liked that it’s made from an Indigenous perspective, so [Harjo] is always looking at [Lee Raybon] with exasperation. He’s not a white saviour at all; he’s a white bumbler. And I love it.” – ABC Radio (Australia) Oct 15, 2025 Full Review Alien: Earth: Season 1 (2025) 94% EDIT “The editing, the photography, the way it intercuts different scenes, I’ve never really seen in television before – and I’m excited, because the Alien franchise was churning its wheels without really going anywhere. Alien: Earth might be the game-changer.” – ABC Radio (Australia) Sep 3, 2025 Full Review Patience: Season 1 (2025) 88% EDIT “Really does over-egg the degree to which Patience’s autism is a disability for her … [but] I really enjoyed the way her police colleagues come round to her way of thinking; they start to value her, help and accommodate her in ways that aren’t patronising…” – ABC Radio (Australia) Aug 5, 2025 Full Review Too Much: Season 1 (2025) 80% EDIT “After one episode I was convinced it was awful, but this is the kind of show you have to stick with. … The more time you spend with these characters, the more they reveal in their small interactions. It’s those little moments that I cherished.” – ABC Radio (Australia) Jul 23, 2025 Full Review Dr Ann's Secret Lives: Season 1 (2025) EDIT “Dr Ann Jones is such a delightful presence. She just loves meeting these amazing animals … and I was 100% there for it. It’s cosy, it’s calming. … and I think it’s also a great advertisement for studying science.” – ABC Radio (Australia) Jul 23, 2025 Full Review Nautilus: Season 1 (2025) 79% 3.5/5 EDIT “Nautilus isn’t for purists, but it’s well made and solidly entertaining. And as we’re forced to witness the global atrocities of late-stage Western imperialism, it’s refreshing to relax with some escapist anti-colonialism and anti-capitalism.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2025 Full Review Exposure: Season 1 (2024) 4/5 EDIT “This feels like arthouse TV – uncompromisingly marshalling the medium’s vocabulary to express ambivalent ideas and sensations, rather than to engross the viewer in escapist storytelling and moral pageantry. It’s beautifully made on every level.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2025 Full Review 3 Body Problem: Season 1 (2024) 78% 4.5/5 EDIT “3 Body Problem won’t be for everyone – but it’s an elegant solution. … This is an absorbing scientific mystery that rewards alert viewers.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2024 Full Review Population: 11: Season 1 (2024) 4/5 EDIT “Feldman’s game performance sells a kind of humour that feels like a game of chicken between Andy and Bidgeegud’s outlandish residents. … It helps that the show is beautifully paced and very bingeable.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2024 Full Review House of Gods: Season 1 (2024) 3.5/5 EDIT “Solidly enjoyable on the level of melodrama … Like the sheikh, House of Gods is working hard to find its place and move with its times. And it’s a very absorbing balancing act to watch.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2024 Full Review Three Women: Season 1 (2024) 31% EDIT “The weakness of Three Women is that by using genre tropes from fiction, it undermines its claim to represent ‘real women’. Including Gia as an author figure only makes Sloane, Lina and Maggie seem more like characters.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2024 Full Review The New Look: Season 1 (2024) 59% 4/5 EDIT “Shrewdly and sometimes damningly, The New Look illuminates our current fraught geopolitical climate … I did enjoy this series’s moral and political complexity. But if you’re looking for respectful biopic ‘authenticity’, take a new look elsewhere.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2024 Full Review Still Up: Season 1 (2023) 75% EDIT “Still Up brilliantly captures the kind of treasured intimacy where you don’t have to mask your weirdness or pettiness, and you know they’ll always be there for you in your phone.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2024 Full Review C*A*U*G*H*T: Season 1 (2023) EDIT “I loved this tasteless show! Zen-like, you must release your expectation that it will be ‘good’ and the story will be ‘plausible’. Then you can laugh aloud…” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2024 Full Review Sometimes When We Touch: Season 1 (2023) EDIT “Sent me cruising down the world’s smoothest Spotify rabbit hole … The careers of interviewees are insightfully interwoven into the cultural and economic shifts that drove – and then killed – the soft sound.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2024 Full Review Bodies: Season 1 (2023) 81% EDIT “Its genius is the way it weaves four genres, each redolent of their cultural context, into one police procedural … The intricate, propulsive plot invites unstoppable bingeing.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2024 Full Review Crazy Fun Park: Season 1 (2023) EDIT “The tone is beautifully handled – its portrayal of loss and grief is mature and compassionate, while its gothic fantasy is a tantalising (and age-appropriate) blend of Ghost, Beetlejuice, Five Nights at Freddy’s and The Lost Boys.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2024 Full Review Drops of God: Season 1 (2023) 100% EDIT “Trying to tell people how complex and satisfying it is made me feel like a conspiracy nutter raving in front of a pinboard covered in red string.” – ScreenHub Jun 21, 2024 Full Review
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