This week has seen the premiere of Schapelle Corby: The Hidden Truth, a documentary detailing the incarceration and trial of one Schapelle Leigh Corby, a woman defended and derided in equal measure in Australia and abroad. 

The documentary uses undercover footage from inside Kerobokan Prison, Bali, where Schapelle has been since being found guilty of drug trafficking in 2005, as well as behind-the-scenes interviews and glimpses of the legal team and her family. Schapelle Corby: The Hidden Truth will probably be described as 'warts and all' but the truth is far more complex and so much less aesthetically pleasing.

The guilt or otherwise of Schapelle aside, the documentary gives us an inside glimpse of a family out of their depth and mired in their own vortex of self-induced hopelessness. The Corbys are apparently described in the promotional material for the series in the US as 'a family who couldn't find their way to the beach, much less around the Balinese legal system' and that's about the most polite thing you could say about them. 

Their behaviour veers from hysterical to angry and back again, sometimes within minutes. Given the situation they're faced with you can't much blame them for their lack of direction and coherance, but taking into account the length of time they have to mobilise their efforts and the legitimate offers for help they received, the coherence of their decisions leaves a lot to be desired.

Watching the Corby family gives us some idea of just how much of an unwinnable battle Schapelle faced when she first arrived at Denpasar airport and told a Customs Officer the 4kgs of pot packed neatly inside a boogie board bag was hers. With swearing and yelling their default method of communicating, the Corby family struggle to traverse the Balinese legal system and deal with the hoardes of media which surround them. 

The result is the worst and best kind of reality TV: the family as slow-motion car wreck and the viewer as ghoulish bystander.

The lack of Corby commonsense is highlighted by several errors in judgement, the first of which was their decision to allow as much media coverage as possible of their stricken sister and daughter to be broadcast to Australia and the world. The incorrect assumption that exposure would equate to empathy ignores the fact that the Indonesian Government had at their disposal a reasonably attractive poster child for the perils of drug trafficking. 

But that's the least of their troubles. The family does themselves no favours by talking to the media, because it exposes them for the simple bogans they are. Exposure also gives the media the chance to dig a little deeper into their lives, and the picture which emerges deepens the hole the family are seemingly intent on digging for themselves.

At the heart of all of this is a young woman in a gaol in Indonesia. Schapelle is convinced of her own innocence, yet helpless to prove it, and surrounded by a group of people who if not deliberately then certainly disingenuously seem to be doing everything in their power to make sure she stays exactly where she is. The family is scornful of the Australian and Balinese Governments and accuse them of abandoning and ensuring the ongoing ordeal that is Schapelle's life, all while blissfully ignoring their own complicity in her demise.

The family is a cast of characters who wouldn't feel out of place in an episode of Sylvania Waters; you can almost see Corby's Mum Rosleigh Rose sitting in a front bar with Noeline Donaher sharing a shandie and screeching at each other without listening. It's not very fair to judge people by their appearance, but I reckon Rosleigh Rose's eyebrows are pencil thin not because she plucked them to obscurity, but rather because they got tired of the frigging noise and just decided to vacate her face. 

She's the kind of Mum who defends her child to the death, having famously said that while her three of her kids might be in gaol 'at least I know where they are', but in doing so does them a gross disservice. Her rants are the worst kind of narrow-minded simplistic babble; she is the very epitome of in the deep end and drowning loudly.

The star of the show Schapelle is understandably in a heightened state of Holy Shit, crying, hyperventilating, attempting pragmatism in an environment where she may be locked in a crowded cell for days at a time one week, and receiving visitors by the cement pond the next. It is fascinating to see her in her now natural habitat, wide-eyed with fear and yet chattering on, trying not to think about the life sentence she's been threatened with. 

That she maintains at least some kind of blind hope in the face of the blunt reality of her situation is admirable, but the hopelessness of it all as she sits surrounded by the worst kind of supporters is particularly hard to watch. Given her level of anxiety, I'd say a spliff or two would significantly help relieve the tension, but I'm pretty sure that idea wouldn't go down well at Kerobokan.

Schapelle after all is the forgetten soldier in this war, left alone in her cell in between visits with nothing but time and noone but a confederacy of idiots to help her. Even the reasonable members of her defense team are lost in the miasma of moronity which surrounds her. Their good intentions are stymied by the family's insistence on following what are revealed to be lies and half-cocked schemes, including relying on the testimony of a jail snitch who is later revealed to be an opportunist probably looking for a free trip to Bali before he gets sent down for rape. 

The bit players in this bogan melodrama are equally unhelpful to the cause: a Corby brother suggest Schapelle think of the experience as 'like a reality TV show', apparently not being able to discern the fundamental difference between a 20 year gaol term and six weeks playing Survivor on a tropical island. Somehow I doubt the Kerobokan Prison camera crew will look the other way while Schapelle performs some simple grooming procedures, like waxing. You didn't think those female Survivor contestants were just naturally hairless did you? 

The suspension of disbelief doesn't work in Schapelle's case: this reality show has no end, and there are no prizes. Hell, except for the occasional visit to the psych ward where she gets to sleep on a real bed for the first time in 4 years, albeit having had to lose a little of her sanity to get that luxury, who's been watching the Schapelle in Gaol Hell show of late? 

Until this documentary aired, she'd been largely absent from the media's gaze for a while.

Her younger brother displays a level of dull stoicism achieved only by blissful ignorance of the world and it's petty concerns, such as the fact his older sister is doing hard time for something she apparently did not commit. He seems blithely unaware of the seriousness of the situation, despite having been there when Schapelle was taken into custody. Largely unable to communicate any concepts greater than 'I dunno' and 'Yeah', he nevertheless does his bit for the family, denying everything and smiling benignly for most of his interviews. It can't be determined whether he even understood the questions, such was his lack of discernable reaction to them. 

Mercedes Corby, a long time resident of Bali and conduit for information about the island for the family, is portrayed as moving in circles beyond her level of comprehension with all the grace of a turkey in stilettos. In her, we see the protective sister gone mental, variously pushing and shoving guards and media out of the way, spittle-spray screaming at them in moments of pure feral anger which are stunning in their ferocity. I'm not sure what Mercedes Corby actually does for a living, but she has taken on the role of Chief Corby Headkicker with unbridled enthusiasm. 

Her loyalty to Schapelle is evidenced by her fierce belief in her sister's innocence, or at least her commitment to the belief anyway. To be fair, she wouldn't be much of a sister if she didn't bristle at the very suggestion Schapelle was trafficking drugs. At the very least her half-arsed approach was just a misguided attempt to ensure her sister received a just trial and some empathetic treatment by the media: I'd expect the same from my sister. I'm pretty sure if I used the words 'just' and 'empathetic' in a sentence to my sister she wouldn't screech 'I'm not just fucken pathetic ya scrag' but hey; we're not Corbys.

Mercedes' shrill voice, matched with the kind of vocabulary one can only attain by a steadfast refusal of all but the most basic reading material echoes in scene after scene. Her anxiety and distress are palpable, but very clearly expressed. True: she seems less distressed about the events playing out before her than with her own lack of control over them. 

A telling scene late in the documentary sees her coaching the apparently gormless Schapelle in a media interview, advising her to not answer questions of she doesn't want to. In her quieter moments, Mercedes' true character is demonstrated: a not-so-bright but quite shifty character, eyes narrowed like a hawk as she looks for the loophole, an out for her sister and beleagured family.

The stupidity of rejecting offers from the Australian Government for Queen's Council representation, as well as Australian Federal Police DNA testing of the pot in question pale in comparison to accepting help and support from Crazy Ron's mobile phone entrepenuer Ron Bakir, a man shown in the documentary to be more damaging to the defense case than all of Corby's family put together. 

The man purported to be Schapelle's White Knight is revealed to be an interfering, self serving bankrupt whose motives for helping the gaoled Aussie are as murky as his business dealings. 

He accuses the prosecution of attempting to procure a bribe and exagerates his role in the Corby saga for his own gain, coming off as little more than a small man with a self-inflated sense of worth. But hey; he's convinced of his own White Knight status, and claims he's just trying to help an unfairly imprisoned girl. The venomous enthusiasm with which he turns on the Corby clan once the trial is over and the shit has stalled the fan tells us more about his character than his mugging for the camera while extolling his own virtues ever will.

Schapelle's father Michael is another larger than life and excruciating to watch character, that kind of bombastic bogan who decided early in life the best way to make people listen was to enunciate each word like it hurt to say it. He glares menacingly into the camera and declares 'weeee nevah fucken saaaaaaw the baaaaag. No-one fucken tooooouched iiiiit' in the most exagerated way possible. I'm thinking if this is the tactic he took in interrogation rooms it's no wonder he gets busted every time he takes a wrong step. 

His wild-eyed hoarse rants are cut short only once by a self-conscious Mercedes who makes the very canny decision to ask the camera crew to stop filming: it's the last we see of Michael, who passed away earlier this year and the image we're left with is a self-described ratbag who has probably been described as far worse by associates and family, and deservedly so. His appearance in the documentary wouldn't help change the minds of the growing number of Australian re-forming their opinions about Schapelle Corby's guilt. 

Early on he admits being the carefree type who often 'went out for milk and didn't come back for two weeks'; watching him and the rest of the Corbys you realise what Schapelle's been up against from the start. 

The documentary heightened my feelings of empathy for Schapelle. Regardless of her complicity in the events which led to her imprisonment, she hasn't been assisted by the many people around her, all with their hands out, their own interests in the forefront of their minds and their mouths open in crass protest when they might better have helped her cause by staying firmly shut.

The rot's set in now, helped along by wave after wave of bad press. This documentary, a startling and honest portrayal of a family thrust into a situation so far beyond their limited understanding of the world it borders on the surreal is a final blow to Schapelle's hopes of maintaining her innocence in the eyes of her countrymen and women. It might be guilt by association, but then, that's what got her imprisoned in the first place, right? 

In the Balinese judicial system, possession equals ownership unless you can prove otherwise. Schapelle couldn't; the legal team and her supporters were too busy courting and playing the media game to remember to come up with a good defense strategy.

In the court of public opinion, the Corby family antics and their proximity to their embattled daughter and sister smear her with the pungent scent of familial ties. Schapelle meanwhile sits in a Bali gaol, counting days, hours, minutes and seconds, limited in her ability to speak on her own behalf, and misrepresented and managed by well-meaning but misguided family and friends at every opportunity.

Schapelle Corby is due to be released in 2024. Looking at that number would send me to the hospital with depression. Perhaps with all that time on her hands she started reflecting on exactly how she ended up where she is now. That would be one hell of a moment of clarity, don't you think?