Dog Park review: lukewarm dramedy never pulls hard on the lead

It’s almost become a cliché that Netflix series have characters repeating plot points multiple times because they expect the audience to be paying more attention to their phones. But what about a series that expects you to pay full attention and then spends half the time wandering aimlessly back and forth? It probably helps if you don’t call it Fast-Paced Hilarious Dramedy and instead give it a title something like… Dog Park.

Misanthropic lead also dislikes dogs

Roland (Leon Ford) doesn’t like dogs. It’s obvious when he runs through a park full of them, it’s obvious when his wife Emma (Brooke Satchwell) tells him he can’t go to the park without their dog Beattie (Indie) while she’s away, and it’s obvious when he’s left alone with Beattie and he no longer has to pretend for the sake of his marriage. A marriage which seems in trouble already, what with their banter sounding more like a lot of passive-aggressive sniping at each other.

Once past an opening scene where the subtext is basically text – and that text is “nobody loves Roland because he doesn’t love dogs” – it’s time to get to know Roland a little better. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem that fond of people either, his life a constant series of annoyance and furrowed brows. Then again, he is someone who corrects other people’s grammar, no wonder he doesn’t have any mates.

‘What is it about people that you like?’ he asks a self-described “people person”, and it’s clear Roland actually wants to know the answer. But all that will have to wait, because when he gets home Beattie is nowhere to be found. Turns out Emma texted her friend Samantha (Celia Pacquola) to take Beattie down to the dog park to hang out with the other dogs. Which means there’s also a bunch of very friendly dog owners there, and we’ve already established very firmly that Roland doesn’t play well with others.

Read: Why the dog park became the perfect setting for ABC’s latest comedy

What follows across the rest of the series follows some familiar patterns, though some are less obvious than others. It’s not hard to predict that the wacky dog park crew will become fixtures in Roland’s life, largely against his will; nor is it a huge shock when it turns out that there’s a bit of chemistry between Samantha (who is engaged) and the possibly soon to be divorced Roland.

Watch a scene from Dog Park

Pooches and predictability

One of the things that a great many Australian sitcoms and dramedies have in common is a certain… predictability when it comes to serving up big dramatic events. Put bluntly, there have been a lot of shows over recent years where the second last episode of the series has been the one where someone dies. Please Like Me did it pretty much every season; Aftertaste didn’t escape the episode five curse either. Does Dog Park fall into the same trap? Sure are a lot of older dogs running around that park…

Likewise, there’s been a lot of sitcoms in recent years that have decided to wrap things up with a wedding. Last year it was the second season of Mother and Son, the year before it was Colin From Accounts, in 2023 it was Wellmania. Celia Pacquola’s no stranger to this plot twist: Rosehaven also ended with a wedding. Should we expect a very special day in episode six of Dog Park? That would require a character who’s engaged to be married oh wait.

To be fair, this isn’t really a show you watch for the plotting. And if plotting beyond “will they or won’t they” is something you’re after, there’s a subplot involving the love life of Roland and Emma’s daughter Mia (Florence Gladwin) that features a twist or two. But otherwise this is just a chance for a bunch of wacky minor characters to mill about a chilly Melbourne park while we wonder if Roland and Sam will get together: it’s basically Cheers or the early days of The Office, only with more dogs and less laughs.

Dog-lovers might enjoy Dog Park more

It seems a bit obvious to say that liking dogs will help you to enjoy a series titled Dog Park. But this series really likes dogs, in a way that has them front and center for much of the series. Clearly someone at the ABC drama department has been looking at the ratings for Muster Dogs and thinking they’d like some of that sweet, sweet, four-legged action.

The counterweight to the bountiful dog love here is Roland. He’s someone you’d happily push in front of a bus early on, what with being seemingly unable to hold a conversation that isn’t a mix of frustration and… nope, it’s just frustration. He does have hidden depths, and he mellows a little over the course of the series. But if you’re someone who can take dogs or leave them, don’t be looking to him to provide the spark that’ll keep you coming back to this park.

Not that any of that really matters. What does matter is that Beattie is a very good girl who gets plenty of screen time in which she is consistently adorable. If Colin From Accounts can get two series (so far) out of a mis-matched couple brought together by a cute dog, who knows how long Dog Park can run?

Dog Park premieres Sunday 1 February 2026, 8.30pm on ABC TV, with all six episodes available to stream on ABC iview.

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