Latest news with #RichardFlanagan
Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
An affair with your aunt? I never made a beeline for mine
T here are not many Booker-winning novels of this century you would be happy to tip your camera at. I suppose you could try with last year's winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, in which some astronauts do absolutely nothing of interest while circling the Earth at 16,000mph. If I were Harvey I'd have put a couple of aliens in it, maybe a horrible one hiding in the water tank and another — a friendly one who helps to defeat the one in the water tank — banging on the porthole trying to get in. Or anything, frankly: a line of interesting dialogue, or a compelling character. Perhaps even a story. And so it has been for most of the century, except for 2014 when the Australian Richard Flanagan took the prize for what was a comparatively conservative work of fiction — and here is The Narrow Road to the Deep North (BBC1/iPlayer) on Sunday nights, the work of Screen Australia and starring Jacob Elordi, who titillated the world in Saltburn and is receiving superlative notices.
Belfast Telegraph
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Belfast Telegraph
TV Review: With star turns from Hinds and Elordi, hats off to the casting director of The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Ciarán Hinds, a passionate love story, a prisoner-of-war camp, explosions and a bookshop pick-up… welcome to the world of a new five-part drama. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, based on Richard Flanagan's Booker Prize-winning novel, plays out over three timelines. It starts with a bang in Syria, 1941, and although it's quite hard to make out a lot of the action (it's beautifully shot but I questioned the strength of my glasses at how dark it was), this is a series to welcome you in from the start.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
'Moving and confronting' war drama with perfect Rotten Tomatoes score FINALLY streaming on BBC after agonising wait
After a long three-month wait, UK fans can finally view all five episodes of Jacob Elordi 's acclaimed World War Two drama on the BBC. The critically acclaimed show, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, has secured an impressive 100 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics branding the drama a 'powerful' and 'gritty' watch. Based on Richard Flanagan's 2014 Booker Prize-winning novel, the Amazon Prime series follows Australian doctor Dorrigo Evans, portrayed by the Saltburn actor, 28. The army surgeon is haunted by his past affair with his uncle's wife as he reckons with his time as a far East prisoner of war building the Burma railway. A synopsis for the show reads: 'From the passion of forbidden love to the pain of life as a prisoner of war – the unforgettable story of one man's reckoning with the echoes of guilt.' The story of love, loss, and regret has already been hailed by US and Australian audiences as an 'utterly immersive' masterpiece. A review in Slate reads: 'It's gorgeous, ugly, and stirring, with parts that seared themselves into my brain, and it got me to read a really good novel.' Meanwhile, The New York Times said: 'There's a visceral quality to most scenes as the show teases out the pains and pleasures of the body along with its grander ideas about the mind, the heart, the world, war.' The Guardian reflected: 'You never doubt the show's realism, or the compassion underpinning it. This is less about the theatre of war than the psychological stain it leaves.' Meanwhile, fans have also highly praised the show, adding: 'A moving, confronting drama. Like the novel, it jumps about in time, but this mirrors the central character, haunted in old age by the memory of his time on the line.'; 'While I can't speak to the historical accuracy of the show, it was easily one of the most jarring, tragic, and captivating stories I've seen in a long time. 'It portrays the rawness of life—its profound losses, fleeting moments of love, and the absence of clear redemption or triumph,' another said. One viewer also hailed the show as 'beautiful and well acted' while another said that the series 'just destroyed them'. Amanda added in her review: 'I still cannot think about it without crying. Every moment, and every character, were compelling.' The army surgeon is haunted by his past affair with his uncle's wife as he reckons with his time as a far East prisoner of war building the Burma railway While Joanne Conrad declared: 'Perfection, terrifying and moving to the soul,' Directed by Justin Kurzel and written by Shaun Grant, Jacob stars alongside Odessa Young, Olivia DeJonge and Ciaran Hinds. Earlier this year, Jacob told The Guardian that the cast involved in the prisoner of war storyline underwent a gruelling six-week boot camp to replicate the bodies of the emaciated imprisoned soldiers of the era. Reflecting on the experience, he told the publication: 'We were all in it together, so there was this great overwhelming amount of love in the whole process. He continued: 'It was incredibly challenging but deeply necessary, of course… because nobody wanted to phone that in or make a mockery of it.' Earlier this year, Jacob told The Guardian that the cast involved in the prisoner of war storyline underwent a gruelling six-week boot camp to replicate the bodies of the emaciated imprisoned soldiers of the era (Jacob pictured in April) As previously mentioned, the new series flits between different timelines, and director Justin recently revealed what was most important to Richard when bringing his novel to life. He told Hollywood Reporter: 'Richard always said to me the most important thing to him, even though he gave his permission for me to really own it in some way as a piece of cinema, was the tapestry of different time changes. He added: 'Being deliberately forced into those different moments of memory were really important to him. That was the only feeling I had going into it.' The Narrow Road to the Deep North is now available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
The 10 best prisoner-of-war dramas, from Stalag 17 to Colditz
Being a prisoner of war is a fate no one could wish for and films and TV dramas won't let us forget that. Whether in the bleak chilliness of central Europe or the steaming jungles of Burma, the plight of the PoW on-screen is one of torture and sadism at the hands of their military captors. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, showing on BBC1/iPlayer and based on Richard Flanagan's searing novel, is just the latest example. But there's often light in the dark — gallows humour and no shortage of British pluck — as this list below shows. 10. Escape to Victory (1981) It still sounds absurd: Sylvester Stallone in goal, Michael Caine at left back, Bobby Moore at centre half, Pele up front, all taking on a Nazi team. But come on, this bank holiday matinee favourite is highly enjoyable. The plot isn't so far-fetched either, being inspired by a real story: the 'death match' between the Ukrainian team and a Nazi German side in 1942 in occupied Kyiv. The Ukrainians won 5-3. Rent Tenko 9. Tenko (1981-84) The travails of the malnourished women internees as they were roasted in an Asian internment camp after the fall of Singapore in 1942 were popular in the 1980s (about 15 million viewers). It wasn't so much the sight of boils, scorpion bites and torturous labour that kept us glued to it, more the intimate interplay between the women. U 8. Colditz (1972-74) The 1955 film The Colditz Story was the fourth most popular at the British box office that year. Yet it was in the early 1970s that escape from Colditz-mania really took off thanks to the TV series starring David McCallum, Robert Wagner and Edward Hardwicke. Most affecting is Michael Bryant as Wing Commander George Marsh, who feigns madness to get repatriated. It works, except it leads to a genuine psychosis and he is committed to a mental hospital. DVD 7. Empire of the Sun (1987) Christian Bale was impressive on screen even at the age of 13. In Steven Spielberg's take on JG Ballard's semi-fictional memoir — about his boyhood internment during the Japanese invasion of China — some of the best moments come when Bale's expat finds himself bonding with John Malkovich's brash American Basie in the camp (and look out for a young Ben Stiller). It's worth revisiting. Bale would later turn PoW again in Werner Herzog's 2006 jungle-survival film Rescue Dawn, also pretty good. Rent 6. Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983) A cult classic more for its musical connections — a blond David Bowie on the poster and Ryuichi Sakamoto's celebrated synth soundtrack. Yet there's still much curiosity in a tale of Bowie's eccentric English free spirit defying the strict, code-bound cruelties of Captain Yonoi (Sakamoto). An oddity, but Akira Kurosawa and Christopher Nolan put this among their favourite films, so who am I to argue? Rent 5. The Deer Hunter (1978) Michael Cimino's portrait of a Pennsylvania community wrecked by a war far away slowly builds a sense of dread before exploding into its famed central sequence in Vietnam. No matter how many times you see it, when Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and John Savage's characters — taken captive by the Viet Cong — are forced to play Russian roulette, your heart is in your mouth. StudioCanal Comedy leavens the suffering in Stalag 17 ALAMY 4. Stalag 17 (1953) The original Second World War PoW film set the template for others, but it still has a feel of its own. The director Billy Wilder's sharp eye for comedy means there's a knockabout fun to the scenes inside Barrack Four as the American prisoners try to keep up morale — 'I'll get you a date with Betty Grable!' Even the camp commandant is played by Otto Preminger as a twinkly-eyed buffoon. There is grit undercutting the humour, of course. Rent 3. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Long before The Narrow Road to the Deep North depicted Burma's Death Railway we had Alec Guinness's stiff-upper-lipped English colonel leading a battalion of British PoWs as they toil away at a bridge. His stubborn national pride in the face of gruelling sadism means the Brits build a better bridge than their captors could. The face-offs between Guinness's Colonel Nicholson and his nemesis Colonel Saito, played by Sessue Hayakawa, are what endure. Sky/Now 2. La Grande Illusion (1937) Jean Renoir's classic is like a Great Escape from a more civilised age. Erich von Stroheim is unforgettable as the stiff-backed German aristocrat who treats his imprisoned French counterpart Captain De Boieldieu with gentlemanly respect. There's a great clip on YouTube of Orson Welles telling Dick Cavett that this film would be on his ark if he could save only two. The other? 'Something else,' he says. DVD 1. The Great Escape (1963) How true to life was the most loved PoW epic of all? Apparently by March 1944, when 76 men tunnelled out, the German guards knew the war was nearly over and were happy to be bribed with cigarettes. And in the tunnels the men's poor diet meant that their bowels were so loose they often had to go to the loo right there and then, which I don't recall happening to Charles Bronson. No matter, Steve McQueen on a motorbike is immortal and that theme tune became the whistled soundtrack to every great escape since. Sky/Now
Irish Times
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Narrow Road to the Deep North review: Unflinchingly savage war tale starring Ciarán Hinds is a gruelling watch
There are war movies and there are movies about war, and The Narrow Road to the Deep North ( BBC One, Sunday nights, 9pm), Justin Kurzel's adaptation of Richard Flanagan's Booker -winning novel about the forced construction of the Burma-Thai Railway by Australian prisoners of war (POWs), falls unambiguously into the latter category. This is Kurzel's first foray into television, but he gives short shrift to the conventions of the medium, essentially making a five-hour film of unflinching savagery and darkness. The darkness is both figurative and literal. The Narrow Road is a gruelling watch. It is also a strain on the eyes, with much of the action shrouded in shadow, making it often difficult to discern what is going on. That is perhaps a mercy. Much like the book, the series is a rebuttal to cinema's historic tendency to portray the second World War as a jolly jaunt in distant climes. The moral centre of the piece is Belfast actor Ciarán Hinds . He plays the older version of Dorrigo Evans, a surgeon from Tasmania captured by the Japanese in Indonesia and forced to labour on the notorious Burma Death Railway. READ MORE As empathetically brought to life by Hinds, Evans is a successful doctor who reluctantly recalls his war years for a journalist. But just below the patrician surface lurks unresolved trauma. The source of that pain is made dreadfully clear in the flashbacks to the war, where the young Evans is played with charismatic stoicism by Jacob Elordi . Flanagan's novel drew on his own father's experience of war. Kurzel's version hits like a sort of negative image of David Lean's Bridge on the River Kwai. That film depicted the war in southeast Asia as a triumph of stiff upper lips over Japanese cruelty. But the Narrow Road to the Deep North removes all the romance. In its place, there is nothing but cruelty and humiliation, exposed ribs and unmasked savagery. The awfulness to come is hinted at in an early scene in which Evans' unit is taken prisoner by the Japanese, who declare their incarceration an incomprehensible shame and that the only way the POWs can redeem themselves is by building a railway. To their captors, Evans and his comrades are dead already. What follows is not a punishment but natural retribution for their lack of honour. Horror is blended with heartache through flashbacks, in which Evans embarks on an enthusiastic affair with his uncle's wife (Odessa Young) shortly before shipping out to war – and despite being engaged to his girlfriend (Olivia DeJonge). Oddly, the same plot device is central to Sebastian Faulks' first World War elegy, Birdsong. What is it about young men who are about to potentially meet their maker and the forbidden rhapsody of the love of an older woman? Sunday nights on the BBC tend to be dedicated to superior, cosy crime or binge-worthy drama. The Narrow Road to the Deep North is something else. It's slow, difficult TV. But it is worth the effort, and Hinds has never been more commanding as a man who has left hell but knows hell will never leave him. The Narrow Road to the Deep North is on BBC 1, Sunday, 9pm
