PICK OF THE DAY

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, 9.05PM, BBC2

IT’S 1900, and hard-hearted headmistress Hester Appleyard (a rather youthful-looking Natalie Dormer) runs her private girls’ boarding school in the Australian bush with a cool cruelty. On Valentine’s Day, a group of pupils (including Madeleine Madden, Lily Sullivan and Samara Weaving, pictured right) and their governesses set out to enjoy a picnic at the landmark known as Hanging Rock, only for events to take a terrifying turn when three girls and a teacher disappear into thin air. An adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel was already memorably filmed by Peter Weir in 1975; this new sixparter, though stylish and sumptuously produced, gets off to a languid start, but is still

worth watching.