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Irish Times
a day ago
- 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
Irish Independent
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Sincere retelling of the horrors of World War II prisoners puts the drama back into Sundays
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, starring Ciarán Hinds and Jacob Elordi, tells the story of an adulterous Australian who became slave labour for the Japanese as they built the notorious Burma Railway Sunday night dramas used to be as unavoidable on the telly as the news. It was what you watched when you knew you hadn't done your homework, and that Monday was lurking just over the horizon. There's been a bit of a falling off in the Sunday drama since then. The Narrow Road to the Deep North (BBC One) looks like filling that gap. In one way it is absolutely your traditional Sunday night drama: handsome hero just going into the army at the beginning of World War II. Beautiful women throwing themselves at the handsome hero, who also reads the Latin poets – although in translation, I think. His future in-laws are filthy rich. What could go wrong? But The Narrow Road to the Deep North is also really shocking, because, although it opens with a scene showing killings in Syria – horribly topical – the handsome hero is a medical officer with an Australian platoon that is eventually taken prisoner by the Japanese. The Australian soldiers become slave labour for the Japanese as they build the notorious Burma Railway. The sufferings of the Australians are appalling: starvation, disease, beatings and torture. Survival seems almost impossible. One of the questions asked by the this series is: what happens to you if you manage to survive? The Narrow Road to the Deep North is told across three timelines. Ciarán Hinds plays Dorrigo Evans in old age. He's a bit of a hero in Australia, because of his wartime experiences. He's a respected if controversial surgeon. He's a celebrity of sorts. Discussing what happened to Australians who were prisoners of war of the Japanese is simply impossible. 'Because you weren't there,' as he tells an uppity young woman journalist. But then there are a whole lot of things the old Dorrigo won't discuss – like his ongoing adultery habit. The second story is the development, before he enters his army service, of a passionate affair between Dorrigo and the beautiful Amy, even though he was engaged to the beautiful Ella at the time. The young Dorrigo is played by Jacob Elordi, who starred as Elvis in the film Priscilla and also as the ravishing young rich boy in Saltburn, so no wonder he is getting so much action. And the third story is the life of the slave labourers on the railway, in all their misery. It is alarming to see how thin the actors, and even the extras, have made themselves in order to play their roles as human skeletons. They went on a six-week weight-loss programme, apparently. Although Elordi, who reportedly underwent the same regime, still looks remarkably well. He's pretty much the only Australian prisoner of war to keep his shirt on, whilst his fellow prisoners are pretty much naked and the picture of wretchedness. One thing that shines through here is the love that these beaten men showed each other, which is as clear as the horrors they had to endure. But however bad the actors look, it is safe to assume that no television programme can reproduce the real suffering. This is a true story, with real survivors. One of whom was Frank Pantridge, a doctor like the fictional Dorrigo but from Northern Ireland, who was imprisoned by the Japanese. His health was permanently affected due to his sufferings as a slave labourer on the Burma Railway. He later invented the portable defibrillator which at one time made Belfast the safest place in the world to have a heart attack. He has been called the father of emergency medicine. Another remarkable survivor was the artist Ronald Searle. He invented the anarchic St Trinian's stories, and also illustrated the comic Molesworth series. Searle was a young British soldier taken captive by the Japanese. In the camp, after having worked for 16 hours per day, he drew his fellow soldiers and what they were enduring. In response, his Japanese captors broke his right hand. What they had failed to realise was that Searle was left-handed. He drew and drew – he made his first St Trinian's drawing whilst a prisoner – and he hid his sketch books for safekeeping under the bedding of the prisoners who had contracted cholera. He eventually died aged 91. In Australia, the experiences of their troops at the hands of the Japanese naturally left a vivid scar. The series is based on the novel of the same name, which won the 2014 Booker prize. Its author Richard Flanagan, who is from Tasmania, had been partly inspired by the wartime captivity of his own father. ADVERTISEMENT Learn more This story is now fading from general memory, as the survivors have died. But there is another story, of the South Asian civilians who worked on the Burma Railway, amongst them Tamil and Malay people, who died at an even greater rate than the British and Australian soldiers. It remains to be seen whether the television version of The Narrow Road to the Deep North can live up to the history that gave birth to it. The different timelines can be confusing and – this is a familiar viewer complaint at this stage – some scenes are literally very dark. But it is a sincere retelling of a terrible story and well worth a watch.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
TV tonight: Jacob Elordi and Ciarán Hinds are outstanding in a stirring war epic
9.15pm, BBC One Jacob Elordi and Ciarán Hinds are outstanding as the younger and older Dorrigo Evans, a war hero turned surgeon, in this haunting second world war drama. Based on Richard Flanagan's Booker prize-winning novel, the Australian epic tells Dorrigo's story over three timelines: a promising student who is engaged to be married into a well-to-do family; a Japanese prisoner of war who witnesses unimaginable horrors while building the Burma railway; and a retired traumatised man who is grappling with his past – including an intense and illicit love affair with his uncle's wife Amy (Odessa Young) – while doing publicity for his memoir. A stirring watch. Hollie Richardson 8pm, ITV1 Lauren Lyle returns as the young Scottish cop with the gumption to unravel ice-cold historic cases. This time round it's a doozy: the unsolved kidnapping of an oil heiress and her baby at the height of the miners' strike. ('Scotland's John Paul Getty,' mutters her boss.) Pirie and her team must piece together what really happened outside a Fife chip shop 40 years earlier. Graeme Virtue 8pm, Channel 4 Jimmy Doherty already has zebras, meerkats and capybaras at his wildlife park in rural Suffolk. But brown bears? That's a different matter. After launching a huge appeal to fund the building of a new home for Diego from Sweden, Jimmy also needs to find him a suitable flatmate – and what if they don't get along? Ellen E Jones 8pm, BBC Four Nicholas McCarthy was born without his right hand and he is the world's only professional one-handed concert pianist. He's making his Proms debut with Ravel's atmospheric Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (which pianist Paul Wittgenstein commissioned after losing his right arm in the second world war). HR 9pm, Channel 4 Elisabeth Moss (with an English accent) leads this espionage thriller written by Steven Knight. She plays MI6 spy Imogen, who is recruited by the CIA to go undercover and find out whether French woman Adilah El Idrissi (Yumna Marwan) is an Isis operative. Will Imogen be able to learn the truth and stop a terrorist attack? HR 10.20pm, ITV1 Kate Kniveton is a former MP who was abused by her husband, ex-Conservative minister Andrew Griffiths, for more than a decade. She has since campaigned for a ban on domestic abusers from seeing their children. In this candid documentary, Kniveton shares her story, listens to others' and shows the work she's doing. HR The Amateur, out now, Disney+ Rami Malek lends his disquieting intensity to this surprisingly enjoyable spy thriller. He plays a mild-mannered CIA cryptographer sent on a bloodthirsty revenge quest after his wife is killed in a terrorist attack. What's fascinating about this film is that, had the lead been any other actor, it would have devolved into generic pulp. But Malek, in the hands of director James Hawes, really leans into the character's psychopathy. He has a dead-eyed stare throughout, the sort you'd usually expect to find on a film's antagonist. Sure, this is a globe-trotting Bourne-style romp, but you're never allowed to forget the ethical iffiness of, say, blowing someone up inside a swimming pool. Stuart Heritage All-Ireland Senior Hurling: Cork v Tipperary, 3pm, BBC Two The championship final at Croke Park, Dublin.
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Ciarán Hinds: ‘A sex symbol? If that's the way you want to put it, OK'
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan is one of the most viscerally challenging novels ever written about war. Set among a group of Australian POWs who have been forced to work on the construction of the Burma railway in 1942, the Booker Prize winner is unsparing in its depiction of violence, starvation and never-ending toil. A new adaptation, which starts on BBC One on Sunday, is equally graphic, and The Telegraph's critic Tim Robey said that one ' would need superhuman stamina to consider binge-ing it '. Yet perhaps the most devastating moment comes at the end when Ella Evans turns to her husband Dorrigo and tells him: 'You're the loneliest person I've ever met.' It's a damning comment after decades of marriage, but Evans is a man still carrying the weight of guilt and failure from his time commanding the POWs, and is also haunted by a doomed love affair. When asked by a journalist to be interviewed about the Second World War, Evans (now a respected-if-maverick surgeon) shuts down. 'There were people who just saw too much,' says Ciarán Hinds, who plays him. 'They'd been through hell. And you don't want to share hell with anybody, do you?' We are talking over Zoom because Hinds is filming in Dublin. He looks fit and relaxed, with those large, slightly sad eyes still penetrating. His voice is warm and rich, his Belfast accent still resonant. While viewers may find his latest project harrowing, Hinds says it is necessary to show such horrors, 'to try and understand the brutality that humans can inflict on each other, and also the suffering that people go through. All that is part of the same life package to me. It's not about indulgence or grossness, it's elemental.' The young Evans is played by Australian heartthrob Jacob Elordi, best known to UK audiences as the Byronic, indolent aristocrat in Emerald Fennell's Saltburn. Is he flattered by the casting? 'I was quite surprised,' admits Hinds. 'But poor Jacob Elordi. Look what he turns out like! The horror for his future!' Hinds is perhaps being somewhat disingenuous. At 72, he is still considered a sex symbol. 'Oh, if that's the way you want to put it, OK,' he says, waving the comment away. 'Some of my bones feel old, but my spirit feels kind of lively, just let down by the physical attributes. People tell me I look much younger, [that I am] a much younger spirit when I'm on screen.' It was probably the role of Captain Wentworth, smouldering and secretly sensitive, in Roger Michell's 1995 take on Jane Austen 's Persuasion (considered by many Austen fans as the best adaptation of any of her novels) that set the tone. 'I think it was rather short-lived, but you put any guy in a sailor's frock and people's heads will turn, no matter what.' You would imagine that Hinds has been turning heads since arriving in London from Belfast to study at Rada in the early 1970s. 'I arrived with a bit of a chip on my shoulder just because of what was happening over there [during the Troubles]. It was 1973, it was mayhem. I was at university for a few months, ostensibly studying law, but I applied to drama school in London because there weren't any in Northern Ireland, or I might have stayed. Hinds paints me a picture of a young man 'with flared jeans and really long hair, going round in sandals – Irish hippies were always a bit behind the times, what was hitting London in the late 1960s, we were getting in the early 1970s – but there was a look about me that made my friends a bit scared of me. Why? 'They said it was because I came from Belfast. 'You were different, you just had this hair, you're going like, 'Who wants it?'' But I was lucky because they were very open with me, asking seriously about what was going on back home because they knew there were problems, but they didn't really understand them.' Hinds tells me that as he started to grow accustomed to London life, he began to understand the English. 'I saw the goodness in people. And I was hearing about things like divorce, which didn't happen in Ireland – people suffered each other. I was amazed to hear that parents could still be friends despite it. It was a great revelation.' Hinds doesn't live in Northern Ireland. He has a home in London and one in Paris, in the shadow of the Père Lachaise cemetery, which he shares with his French-Vietnamese wife, actress Hélène Patarot (their daughter, Aoife, is also an actress and appears in the Dune: Prophecy series on Sky). His home in the French capital represents relaxation. 'You know when you go home at the end of the day and just want to put the kettle on? That's what I do when I get to Paris. You know, I have a box of Barry's tea bags. I don't do the cafe life that you should do in Paris, but it's because I live there.' Hinds is relaxed and charming company, yet there is still a residual sense of the 1970s firebrand. When we talk about returning to the country of his birth, he does not rule it out, cheered by what he sees as its evolution. 'I see a lot of changes, in both north and south. I go back a couple times a year to see family, and thank God, it's just a lot more open,' he says. 'I mean, there's still too many flags, and there is still the dark underbelly, but at least it's contained.' It is clear that coming of age during the Troubles (he starred in Kenneth Branagh's award-winning Belfast and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor) have left their mark on Hinds. Raised as a Catholic, he tells me he was fortunate enough to do dance and drama out of school where there were no religious boundaries. Yet he also had to endure a segregated education system, and today supports the Integrated Education Foundation charity. 'It's so important that you don't separate Catholic and Protestant kids at the age of four and educate them separately, filling them with versions of 'them' and 'us'. I think [integration] has been happening – very slowly – over the last 30 or 40 years, but it'll take generations to really happen. 'A positive move to integrated education doesn't mean to say that you can't have religion.' It's strange to consider that Hinds has been on our screens for half a century. (He thinks so too: 'God, have I? I haven't been counting!') But then his career has been a slow burn, gradually building up credits in the 1980s in high-profile films such as John Boorman's Excalibur, as well as some meaty theatre (notably Peter Brook's celebrated 1987 staging of The Mahabharata). Today, he is one of a small selection of actors who carry weight in big-budget blockbusters (Frozen, Justice League, Game of Thrones) and high-end passion projects such as a Broadway revival of The Crucible opposite Saoirse Ronan and Ben Whishaw. His performances are all, however, marked by a thoughtfulness, his characters always rooted in a psychological reality. Hinds will soon be seen in a new adaptation of John Steinbeck's East Of Eden for Netflix. I wonder if quality roles such as this are getting harder to come by. 'I think there are still roles out there,' he says carefully. 'It depends on how you look at things. 'If you set your sights high about what your pay grade is or who you expect to be working with, that then obviously narrows your choices and closes doors. 'Things have changed since the big corporates have come in, you know, Netflix and Amazon and Apple,' he says, alluding to the amount of money such companies have at their disposal. 'But it's not about the amount of money they need, because usually they can make them on relatively sane budgets, it's about how much you need to tell the story with authenticity and truth, as opposed to what we made with these special effects. Much of the cinematic universe is turning into one big PlayStation.' Hinds does, however, feel optimistic for the future. 'There will always be space for storytellers and great filmmaking. Maybe the adventure is still on.'
Daily Mail
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Iconic Aussie pub transformed for new Jacob Elordi miniseries
An iconic Australian country pub in a tiny town in NSW got a taste of Hollywood when it became a film set for Jacob Elordi 's new hit show The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Situated in the Southern Tablelands, 322km from Sydney, the Captains Flat Hotel features in the hard-hitting Amazon Prime Video miniseries. The Narrow Road to the Deep North tracks an army surgeon's torment over his past while he struggles in a Thai-Burmese prisoner of war camp during World War II. According to WIN Canberra, the beautifully maintained heritage pub was selected by the show's creators for 'historical authenticity'. Producers slipped into Captains Flat, which as a population of 491, in late 2023 for filming and many locals joined the cast as extras. WIN also shared a selfie of Hollywood star Jacob, 27, dressed as his character in the show - a Major in the Australian Army. Other photos shared by WIN include one of the cast members dressed in 1940s costumes enjoying a meal between filming scenes. The Narrow Road to the Deep North received critical acclaim after it dropped on Amazon Prime Video on April 18. Jacob, who rose to fame in the drama Euphoria and the controversial film Saltburn, plays Dorrigo Evans, a prisoner of war in a Japanese prison camp during WWII. The story, based on the novel by Richard Flanagan, spans decades and also deals with a love affair between Elordi's character and his uncle's wife, played by Australian actress Odessa Young. Famed Irish actor Ciarán Hinds plays Dorrigo as an older man in the series. Elordi has also been busy filming a movie adaptation of Wuthering Heights with fellow Australian Margot Robbie, 34. In preparation for his role as Heathcliff, the actor revealed unruly locks and very long and bushy sideburns as he posed on the red carpet at the 75th Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin in February. Filming for Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Wuthering Heights has been ramping up lately, with Margot seen donning a dramatic wedding gown while strolling across the misty Yorkshire Moors. Filming began in January and it is slated for a release date of February 2026. Margot and Jacob are familiar with each other after recently starring in a short film See You at 5, directed by Call Me by Your Name's Luca Guadagnino, for a Chanel No. 5 campaign. The Aussie star recently gushed about Jacob in an interview with Harper's Bazaar, saying: 'He's wonderful. And as you said, I worked with him on Saltburn in a producer-actor capacity. 'So I haven't shared the screen with him before, but I know I've seen him on set, I've been around him on set, and he's just—he's got an incredible presence. 'He's a movie star—he's got that charisma. He holds a frame. He's also really lovely and from the same state that I'm from in Australia. We're about an hour away from each other, but he's from Brisbane, and I'm from the Gold Coast. 'Even though the whole point of our film is that we cross paths and miss each other, it still felt like we did the campaign together.' Wuthering Heights fans were puzzled by the casting choice when the duo were announced for the new adaptation. They noted that Catherine, who is no older than 19 in the novel, is being played by 34-year-old Margot.
