If you work in media you’re used to writing about big cultural moments and TV shows, but now Mamamia has mixed things up by becoming the content.
In a couple of weeks, Foxtel’s Binge is dropping its highly-anticipated comedic drama Strife.
The plot follows “imperfect” publisher Evelyn Jones who goes from writing a blog on the internet, to becoming a force to be reckoned with in women’s media.
In the opening trailer, which you can see below, you see the show’s protagonist Eve navigating her divorce and being cancelled by the media.
In the hilarious snippet, we see her editorial team pitch content ideas including whether flavoured yoghurt can treat thrush and also the “celebration of the slut”.
When one of the male colleagues suggests a men’s column he is met with stony silence.
Sounds familiar you might say? Well, the drama is actually based on Mamamia founder Mia Freedman’s memoir Work, Strife, Balance.
It has been adapted for screen by Australian screenwriter Sarah Scheller and is set in the early days of digital media publishing. It was later commissioned by Foxtel Group and will be streaming on Binge from the 6th of December.
Quoted on Mamamia, Freedman, who worked on the development of the show, said she had no interest in it directly mimicking her life.
“I had no interest in making a show about myself and Bruna [producer Bruna Papandrea] agreed. We wanted to tell a story about a complicated woman who starts her own business. About the complexity of ambition and motherhood, and the force that is female friendship. About what it’s like working in a startup alongside women, creating intimate content that bonds you in ways that can be intense and problematic and wonderful”.
“About long-term relationships and the time in a woman’s life – her 40s – when the world seems to open up at the same time as your fertility shuts down. It’s about choices and challenges and the dichotomy of being a public person who wants a private life even though that life is something that feeds her work”.
“It’s not a story about me but it’s inspired by aspects of my life and career during the time Mamamia started and began to grow.”
