Another one of those multi-part things that sets you up with some distant past puzzle and you have to decide whether the journey is going to be worthwhile or a disappointment. This one start quite promisingly though.
Jodie Whittaker has been in UK for a while, returns to Australia and reconnects with friends Nicola Da Silva (who has written the novel of the title) and Yael Stone. The novel though is a thinly disguised version of true events.
Perhaps unfortunately we're watching it contemporaneously with another 'Something happened in the past. What was it? Do we care? - after x hours' (Under the Bridge). Halfway through this is turning into The Stupid Woman, as da Silva has appropriated her friend's rape without her consent, made it all easily identifiable, and has aroused the anger of the local hard-nut Scottish crime bar owning family, with whose son, naturally, Whittaker's daughter becomes besmirched. And she's drinking too much to think of putting up surveillance cameras at her demented Dad's isolated farm.
If the point of all this is that rape is notoriously difficult to prosecute, and that there is a culture of toxic male masculinity in Australia, then these are hardly news. I was quite glad when it was over.
As for this new trend of opening Australian TV with a nod to the indigenous people of these lands, it feels like too little, too late. What would be better is positive discrimination towards Aboriginal people both in front of and behind the camera (certainly no evidence of the former, anyway, here).
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