PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK
Gone Girls
Bloody daft place for a picnic, if you ask us. But they didn’t listen.
UK Broadcast BBC Two, finished US Broadcast Amazon, finished Episodes Reviewed 1.01-1.06
On Valentine’s Day 1900, three young women and their teacher go missing on a trip to see Mount Diogenes. The simple synopsis of Joan Lindsay’s book Picnic At Hanging Rock has taken on mythic properties in the years since it was first published. Once you’ve read it, or seen Peter Weir’s 1975 film, you can’t forget its woozy vision of girls in white lace disappearing into the Australian bush.
Taking on a remake feels risky when the film is so embedded in popular culture. But series creators Beatrix Christian and Alice Addison don’t care. Instead of tying themselves to the source material, they’ve made a miniseries that takes time to flesh out the girls and explore what happened to them before going to the Rock.
At first the series feels a little shallow. Rather than being figures of enchantment, the central trio – Miranda, Irma and Marion – appear as pretty and hollow as porcelain dolls. But stick with it and you’ll grow to know them as intimately as they know each other. Set in a reclusive boarding school, the series invites us to peek at the inner lives of these women and the rituals that come to define them. As Irma and Marion undress and caress Miranda one evening, the series is cast in a witchy glow, creating the impression of a priestess and her subjects.
The performances are riveting, especially from a chilly Natalie Dormer, who rises to the sour potential of her character’s name, Mrs Appleyard. Half villainess, half misunderstood heroine, she tears into the girls at every opportunity with harsh words and corporal punishment. Though there’s something otherworldly about her, too. With her sharp cheekbones and upturned nose, it wouldn’t be surprising if she turned out to be a vengeful pixie come to punish loose morals.
Of course the central mystery hangs over each episode. Have the girls been killed? Is Hanging Rock haunted? The fact that you begin to care more about the girls than cracking the mystery is a triumph. And while shows like this can be dismissed as being just for women, for every dreamy scene, there’s a caustic and biting one lurking just round the corner. Kimberley Ballard