With its multiple families and multi-generational focus, Bump has turned its storytelling into a tapestry. It’s found a worthy balance between contemplation and humour. It’s worth asking: why stop now?
Claudia Karvan, Angus Sampson and Anita Hegh in Bump.Credit: John Platt
“That ending we wanted fit well with this season’s timing. We also didn’t want to overstay our welcome,” Karvan says. “We’d told the stories and had a perfect ending. We didn’t want to run this into the ground – we cherish this project. We wanted to go out on a high.”
Debuting on Boxing Day, an annual Bump tradition, the 10 episodes of the final season see the creative ensemble tie together potent symbols of life and death. Oly and Santi, whose daughter Jacinda (Ava Cannon) is now a primary school student, are expecting their second child together, while Angie is facing a recurrence of her cancer. Ending a show is both a freedom and a responsibility, and Munro and Karvan have stayed true to both approaches.
“I feel very free, very proud,” Karvan says. “But in saying that we did take on some very confronting subject matter, and with that came sobering responsibility. It weighed on us to tell it in the right way.”
The new season’s second episode, which finds a teenage character from the show’s next generation pregnant, has a telling and multifaceted dialogue about abortion from various perspectives. The third episode, written by Munro and peppered with observations from the real-life experiences she had during her mother’s treatment for lymphoma, is a patient, detailed portrait of Angie’s days getting treatment in a cancer ward.
These assured episodes are the final vindication for the decision years ago by Bump’s eventual producer, John Edwards, to introduce Karvan, with whom he had previously created Love My Way, to Munro, a former Sydney Morning Herald journalist and aspiring showrunner. The two women proved to be a formidable partnership.
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“My instinct about Kelsey was that she was obviously really smart, hard-working. I felt like I connected with her and related to her very quickly,” Karvan says. “Ironically, it’s taken a few seasons to realise that while we share so much and have so much in common, actually we are very different. And that works. We’re not yessing each other’s ideas, we’re kicking the tires on them. She’s a sane and professional and intelligent human. It’s great to wrestle out ideas with a person like that, and that’s one of the reasons for the longevity of the show.”
For Karvan, 2025 will be that rare year this century when she doesn’t have a television show she created, produced and/or starred in lined up to screen. But with The Secret Life of Us, Love My Way, Spirited, Puberty Blues, Doctor Doctor and Bump on her CV, she has an impeccable television credit score.
“There are a few things I’ve been developing to pitch around, then there’s an exciting thing that I think will happen, which I’m doing a lot of research for but my lips have to stay sealed,” Karvan says. “2025 is looking great. I’m a pretty optimistic person, happy to dream.”
Bump (season 5) streams on Stan from Thursday, December 26.
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