"The Unlisted": Come for the Australian-Indian Culture, Stay for the Gay Subtexts

In The Unlisted, twelve-year old twins Kal (the cool one) and Dru (the smart one, signified by his glasses) are...

Did I say twelve?  They are played by sixteen-year old Vrund and Ved Rao, who could easily be mistaken for college students, and look decidedly out of place in a school full of 12-year olds.

If you can get past the jarring age discrepancy, the setting in the Australian-Indian community is interesting.  In the first episode, everyone is in a flurry to prepare for Divali.  I liked the scene where the jar of ghee breaks, so they have to run from store to store, but everyone is sold out, except for one shop which won't sell to Kal because he doesn't speak Hindi: "You can't pick and choose your culture."

In the second episode, a mean girl is spying on them,so they invite her into the family store and disgust her with Indian snacks like chili banana chips and nimboo pickles.

In the third episode, it's Multicultural Day, so Grandma introduces the school to the Indian sport of kabbadi.

Why not just make it a sitcom about clashing values of modern and traditional Australian-Indians? But instead we have dystopian sci-fi:

A corporation called The Infinity Group is providing free dental exams to all students, but Dru  is afraid of dentists, so he talks Kal into taking his place.  Tim (Otis Dhanji), whose parents refused to permit the checkup, goes missing.

Later everyone who got a "checkup" freezes in place.  They are being controlled by dental implants!  Plus they are super-strong and fast.

 Dru must pretend that he is being controlled, and get Kal to take his place for the athletic tests, while the boys try to unravel the sinister plot.

Eventually they find allies in their aunt, a doctor who got a job with the initiative without realizing what it was about, and Jiao  (Zachary Wan), whose implant never worked.

And four refugees who knew too much and are now on the run:  three girls and Jacob (Nya Cofie, right), although Gemma (Jean Hinchliffe) is so androgynous that I thought the character was meant to be nonbinary.

Originality of the plot: C-.  It's been done before.  See:  The Tripods.

Beefcake: D.  Most of the actors are too young to be of interest.

Gay characters: A.  The twins have a built-in gay subtext, two of the refugee girls are in a romantic relationship, an adult ally says she was "queer before there was a word for it," and lack of expressed heterosexual interest abounds.

Fade out kiss: C.  Dru states that he and Chloe are "just friends," but Grandma goes on and on about which girl thinks the boys are handsome and wants to date them.

Australian-Indian culture: A+.