THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM

BBC Two, 10.00pm

On the surface, a documentary about Australian Football League star Adam Goodes might not seem like the most promising way to spend an evening, no matter how talented he was. But hold fire on those preconceptions because The Australian Dream, which uses Goodes’s story to examine the ways in which Australia continues to grapple with its past, in particular with the treatment of the country’s indigenous people and the Stolen Generation, is the documentary of the week. At its centre is Goodes, a star player for the Sydney Swans whose mother is an indigenous

Australian. In 2013, while the Swans were playing against Collingwood, Goodes was abused by a 13-year-old girl who called him “an ape”. Rightly furious, the player had the girl ejected from the stadium – and that’s when things really started to get nasty.

For the next two years Goodes was subject to a sustained booing campaign and attacked by commentators and fans alike. As journalist Stan Grant, who co-wrote the film alongside Daniel Gordon, points out: “Adam was seen as an angry aborigine.” The film deftly picks its way through the controversy to present a haunting account. Sarah Hughes

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