Any beauty enthusiast, especially in the 1990s, would say that Travis Fimmel was one of the most handsome men in the world, sharing magazine covers with Gisele Bundchen and iconic Calvin Klein campaigns. His debut as Tarzan in the series of the same name only explored his physical attributes, so there would be no initial reason to imagine the great actor that we now know he is.

Vikings became a worldwide success thanks to its emotional performance, but unfortunately, ignored by awards shows while it was on the air. A series of independent and bigger-budget films saw Travis move between fantasy and real worlds, often no longer leading the cast, but always with characters that escaped the obvious.

If on-screen, the actor has spent the last few years dedicating himself to roles that hide his beauty, but highlight his undeniable talent, generally in Australian or independent productions, outside of them, the actor has invested his name and face in Travla beer and their are no photo opportunities with him without it being publicity. He is a businessman, after all.

Travis is not afraid to play unsympathetic and dubious characters: Ragnar was not a hero if seen by the English, sometimes not even by the Vikings, and in his last appearance on TV, in Raised by Wolves, he was once again a complex man. And behold, with the opening of 2024 a great opportunity arose to make up for the star with the series Boy Swallows Universe.

Available on Netflix from January 11th, the series has won over critics and is an adaptation of a semi-autobiographical best-seller written by Trent Dalton in 2019. Obviously, Travis is not the boy in the title, but his drug-dealing stepfather. Eli Bell (Felix Cameron) is just 13 years old and has a life that demands a lot of Kleenex at the ready: sad, poor, and unfair. There are eight episodes of insurmountable sadness if it weren’t for the empathy and charisma of the cast. The plot unfolds in the second half of the 1980s in the suburbs of Brisbane, Australia and we see Eli with his mother, Frankie (Phoebe Tonkin), a former heroin addict, his older brother, Gus (Lee Tiger Halley), a mute and without uttering a word for years, and his drug-dealing stepfather, Lyle (Travis Fimmel), living on the edge of poverty.

Lyle is the role Travis loves: clumsy, good-hearted, and a scammer. As he is a terrible drug dealer, he ends up creating a complicated situation that results in Frankie being arrested and this leads Eli and Gus to have to live with their absent and alcoholic father, Robert (Simon Baker). And it is precisely the contrast between these devious father figures that the actors shine, even though they are so wrong.

A Charles Dickens-esque tale from Australia in the 1980s promises to make us cry a lot, but also make us miss Travis. It’s about time, don’t you think?

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