Remake of Aussie classic leaves me hanging
I’M old enough to remember the days when you could squeeze all the members of the Australian branch of Equity into a phone box. Or, at least, that’s the way it seemed at the time.
Trust me, all you have to do is take a random look at any two television or film productions that came from Down Under during the Seventies or Eighties. The same few actors crop up in virtually all of them.
Take, for example, the two best-known soap operas to emerge from the southern hemisphere during those years: The Sullivans and Neighbours. Both shows featured nosy, gossipy battleaxes (Mrs Jessup and Mrs Mangel, respectively) played by the late Vivean Gray.
And the same actress also turned up in 1975’s Picnic At Hanging Rock, practically the only Aussie film anyone remembers before Crocodile Dundee graced us with his presence.
I should say at this point that it seemed to be on the telly on an almost weekly basis during my teens, although I don’t recall ever seeing more than 20 minutes of it.
For the uninitiated, the plot centres on a group of schoolgirls who apparently vanish into thin air during a day trip on St Valentine’s
Day 1900. For years I laboured under the misunderstanding that it was based on a true story, which is apparently what Joan Lindsay – author of the original 1967 novel – wanted fools like me to think.
This glossy six-part adaptation started with enigmatic Englishwoman Hester Appleyard (Game Of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer) dressed in widow’s weeds, although her exact marital status became less clear as time went on. We saw her paying in cash for a remotely located mansion, saying in voiceover
as she did so: ‘He’ll never find us here. A*** end of the world, new beginning.’
Next thing we knew, the gaff had been spruced up into a girls’ boarding school called Appleyard College.
That wasn’t the only thing to change, though. Whereas Hester sounded dog rough a few moments earlier as narrator, she was speaking in crisp Received Pronunciation by the time she met her new boarders.
Regardless of what the exam results were like at Appleyard College, my guess is that it
wouldn’t have made it into the Good Schools Guide of its day. We’re not exactly talking Hogwarts here; probably more like Dickens’s Dotheboys Hall.
The prevailing atmosphere is thick with oppression, repression and emotional isolation. In other words, not exactly a barrel of laughs.
Girls with a rebellious streak get strapped to a so-called ‘posture board’ as punishment.
Nor, though, is it all misery and gloom.
The outing to Mount Diogenes, a former volcano in central
Victoria, must have seemed like a nice idea at the time.
By the time the trip was over and the bus back home was ready to go, though, there were several names on the roll call that remained unticked.
Quite how the producers will sustain the mystery for the next five weeks is beyond me, especially as the opening episode dragged a bit.
Presumably they’ll be delving into the backstories of some of the main schoolgirl characters like Miranda (Lily Sullivan) and Sara (Inez Curro).
The most intriguing figure of all, though, is the creepy and very occasionally compassionate Hester. It is blindingly apparent that she has some deep and dark past, but I am really not sure that I want to know what it is.
Will I be back for another look next Wednesday? Maybe, maybe not. There is no question that Picnic At Hanging Rock looks magnificent and has a suitably eerie air to it. By the same token, though, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it is more style than substance.