‘Whose side are you on?’ is the challenge posed on the cover of the tie-in edition of The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas’s bestselling novel of 2008. Yet there isn’t really a ‘side’ in The Slap, more a series of angles, explorations, and provocations. It has a ‘way we live now’ scenario and a structure that lends itself to television adaptation, with eight chapters told from different points of view. At its centre is an incident at a barbecue, in which a man slaps a four-year-old boy. The child’s mother is outraged and determined to pursue the matter, and the destructive fallout begins.

The Slap is less concerned with the rights and wrongs of what took place, and more with what is laid bare; a narrative of expectation and identity – and, for many of the characters, consuming disappointment. It is a vision of an Australian middle class in a state of denial. Comfortably off but not comfortable, its members chafe with discontent and disenchantment. The new Australian bourgeoisie, upwardly mobile and professional, is no longer necessarily white and Anglo-Saxon.

The television series – eight one-hour instalments, from five scriptwriters and four directors – embraces the blunt propositions and abrasive energies of the novel, but it smooths out some of the rougher edges of the prose, elides protracted arguments and stretches of dialogue. Many of the episodes, however, include an occasional voice-over that is a rare false note – it never feels illuminating, and often grates.