As it turns out, Cleave has mostly been protected by his cellmate, Malcolm (Dan Wyllie), a strong and sweet young man who has a terrible crush on Cleaver. Let's just say that with Malcolm's protection and Cleaver's savvy, he soon finds some dirt on his appeal board judges and he gets out. Oh, but the way he does it...
Once free, he finds that a great many things have changed. For one, his practice, including his stable of regular clients and his secretary, Nicole (Kate Box), have been poached by Scarlet (Danielle Cormack, Wentworth), and if he wants to work, it'll be as her junior. No more shocking than that is the fact that best friend Barney (Russell Dykstra) and Nicole have a baby together and Nicole, said baby, and Nicole's angry Polish mother have all been living in Cleaver's old apartment. Plus, because of his jail stint, no one is banging down his door seeking his representation. He also discovers that Barney has been hiding a shocking medical secret from him, his ex-wife Wendy (Caroline Brazier) is getting married to her boyfriend Roger, a sports therapist, and his son Fuzz (Keegan Joyce) is headed to do missionary work in the Congo. At least not much has changed with old friend and former lover Melissa (Adrienne Pickering), well, except for the fact that Ron Howard is making a movie of her relationship with deceased fiance Joshua and she's now super rich. Oh, and they've changed Cleaver's character up a good bit in the film, much to his chagrin.
His old pal Cal McGregor has also been released and has become tied up with business mogul Tikki Wendon (Genevieve Lemon), a woman working to install a large casino in place and using every politician to her advantage to do so. Cal has a popular new talk show (on Tikki's dollar, of course) where he pushes Tikki's issues and berates politicians and has become quite popular. Cleaver will become entangled with Tikki when he takes on a seemingly unrelated case, but one that turns out to have deep tendrils. Cleaver also meets his old prison pal Malcolm's lovely sister, Felicity (Jane Allsop), and he becomes smitten, although she is a bit less interested than he is. However, fate keeps bringing them together time and again.
Rake: Series 3 disposes of the case names as episode titles and, along those lines, focuses much more on the happenings in Cleaver's life than the individual cases he takes on, especially since several of them span more than one episode. Throughout this season, Cleaver, Barney, Nicole, Scarlett, Missy, and even Harry "Sorry" David Potter (Matt Day) will come to grips with what is really important in their lives and who they want to share it with. There's plenty that happens in this season and the season finale finds Cleaver literally dangling in a bit of a cliff-hanger. Who knows what the rogue attorney will get up to next season, but with everything that happened in Rake: Series 3, I can't wait to see.
