‘To be honest it’s driving me slightly insane. I feel like the world is collapsing … I understand why we have to do it, I just feel like it’s harder day in, day out…’ — Reggie

In this first episode of Braided Season 2: A Little Life During Lockdown, the show’s producers reach out to one another across a quieter, hushed city bracing itself for the uncertainties of the weeks ahead. They speak of their days, their fears; the work they miss; the physicality of friends, or of getting one’s hair braided. ‘But I feel more connected to people through this [pandemic] than I do apart.’

This is the sound of Braided in lockdown, as the makers share news of their buzzing fridges; the saving grace of Animal Crossing; and the peculiar camaraderie of this solitary time.

Join hosts Matisse Laida and Agum Maluach as they introduce you to the other members of the Braided team: Georgia Willmott, Reggie Chang, Kim Handley, Danny Hillyer, Mary, and Elijah Augustine.

Scattered around Melbourne’s inner and outer suburbs, the group connect over phone calls, video chats, and for virtual story meetings that become as much about themselves and each other, as the stories they’ll go on to tell throughout the series. These are, after all, stories from lockdown—the things that have occupied their hours, their thoughts; the things they have chosen to hold up to the microphone—to shed light on, as it were, in darker times.Also this episode, we hear the first instalment of ‘Reggie’s Update’, one of many missives from Reggie’s desk you’ll hear throughout the season. The update for the month of May makes mention of a meteor shower, a queen bed, and a tenor saxophone.