Trailer: HBO Max’s ‘Frayed’ is a family coming apart at the seams

London, 1988. Simone Burbeck’s life appears perfect. She lives in a mansion with her perfect husband and children, and her life is a merry-go-round of expensive renovations, dinner parties and school fundraisers. There’s just one problem: it’s all lies.

When her husband has a fatal heart attack in a disastrous session with a sex worker, the true state of their finances is revealed. Simone is broke, homeless and a social outcast. With no other options, and two teenage children to care for, she is forced to return to her family home in Newcastle, Australia. It turns out Simone’s past isn’t quite the story that she told everyone in London. Nothing about Simone is what it appears to be. Oh, and her real name is Sammy. Sammy plans to cool her heels in Newcastle while she figures out a strategy to get back to London. However, the life and the people she ran away from over 20 years ago slowly pull her back in. Sammy thought she could simply shut the door on her past. But her past is about to bash that door down.

Frayed stars creator, writer, producer and BAFTA nominee Sarah Kendall. Clelia Mountford, Sharon Horgan, Kevin Whyte, Morwenna Gordon, Rick Kalowski and Que Minh Luu serve as executive producers.  Frayed is a Merman production in association with Guesswork Television for ABC (Australia) and Sky (UK) in association with Create NSW. The series is distributed by NBCUniversal Global Distribution on behalf of Sky Studios.

HBO Max will premiere the first six episode season of Frayed on July 30.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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