By TANIA PHILLIPS
ANZAC Girls
ABC1, Sundays, 8.30
Starring: Caroline Craig, Alice Ross-King, Elsie Cook
GIVEN the hype and promotion and the story itself, ANZAC Girls – the new mini series on ABC1 seemed to have a lot going for it – and it does.
It is visually beautiful, timely and portrays the ANZAC legend from a totally different angle and I wanted to like it and for the most part I did but I couldn’t love it.
The vision of the battle from offshore and from across the Dardenelles was beautiful and frightening and there were some solid performances but clunky scripts and wooden performances from some of the younger actors let down the first episode, at least.
The mini-series had been hyped as “Honouring the Centenary of the beginning of WW1, ANZAC Girls is a moving new six-part series based on the unique, and rarely told true stories of Australian and New Zealand nurses serving at Gallipoli and the Western Front”. The girls were being lifted from the side characters to the main players.
Caroline Craig, best-known for Blue Heelers, stands out as Matron Grace Wilson in an ensemble cast which centres around Alice Ross-King (Georgia Flood) and her colleagues Elsie Cook (Laura Brent), Olive Haynes (Anna McGahan), and New Zealander Hilda Steele (Antonia Prebble).
It is hard to be too tough on this drama, even when it drifts from drama to melodrama, which it does quite often.
But don’t get me wrong, writer Felicity Packard has still provided us with a story that should be told and is told, for the most part, really well. She has drawn from The Other ANZACS by Peter Rees as well as diaries, letters and photographs for this “true-life” dramatisation.
There were more than 3,720 Australian and New Zealand nurses serving overseas during WWI and they played an important role and endured horrors that young women, even nurses, of their age would never have imagined seeing. Their lives were tough and their stories worth telling.
Fifty-six of the nurses were awarded the Royal Red Cross, 201 the Associate Red Cross and seven won Military Medals but without them the horrific death toll could have been a lot worse.
And while it was hard to immediately believe and invest in some of the characters early in the story, there is enough that is good about this drama to keep you coming back to watch.
– Tania Phillips
