Picnic at Hanging Rock

Tedious 6-hour series based on the classic 1975 Australian film about a group of female students and a teacher who disappear at Hanging Rock on Valentine's Day in 1900. Everything in this series is wrong: the casting of Mrs. Appleyard, the behavior and attitudes of the girls, and the hideous and anachronistic music.

The added backstories to the various characters is obvious padding and distracts from the central mystery that gets sidelined by a bunch of soap opera hogwash about runaway wives, separated siblings, and vaguely gay and lesbian leanings. None of this claptrap has anything to do with the disappearances.

Natalie Dormer is miscast in the central role of of headmistress (Rachel Roberts starred in the original), and she plays the part much too broadly. We don't need to know all the particulars; all we need to know is that she is stern and mysterious. The only acting standout in the cast is James Hoare as Albert, and he is only tangentially connected to the mystery.

Then there's the modern PC casting of the half-black student enrolled in a white girls' finishing school in the Victorian Australian Outback in 1900. Ya right! A total of 3 directors worked on the 6 episodes, with at least two writers working on separate episodes. That's just a clue as to why this mess is so disjointed and lacking in any unified vision whatsoever.

The original film still holds up really well, so not totally sure why they needed to remake this. Seems like they spent more time worrying about making it look beautiful then thinking about why it needed a remake.

My only real qualms with this were the ending (which I can blame the original author for, rather than the series writers), the weird decision to make many of the characters bisexual, and the excessive dreamy scenes others mentioned with birds or blurry imagery meant to take up extra time. Aboriginal descendants were in the film (though that may not be historically accurate) and brought up frequently enough in regards to Hanging Rock that I thought they did a decent enough job to avoid complaints about that.

Other than that, without having seen the original version or reading the novel, I can say that this is a show worth watching, and I didn't regret it. I really liked nearly all of the female central characters, and thought they did superb acting jobs. I also thought the character development was pretty good, although it could have been a little better in regards to Sara, whose character was one of the best.

I really liked the theme of the show in regards to true freedom, and the idea that some birds just weren't meant to be caged.

On a side note, it's sad but interesting that Amazon won't allow anyone to review the show on their website as of 6/9/2018 due to negative reviews. What a shame.

It's the turn of the century Australia. Mrs Hester Appleyard (Natalie Dormer) purchases a remote mansion turning it into a girls' school. Miranda Reid (Lily Sullivan) is a self-possessed student expected to learn refinement. She stabs a handsy soldier with a pitchfork. It's St. Valentine's Day 1900. The girls are off to picnic at Hanging Rock. As most nap, Miranda leads Irma Leopold, Marion Quade, and Edith Horton up the Rock. The girls and their teacher Miss McCraw go missing. Only Edith returns in a shocked state.

The 1975 film was a critical hit and is a real sign post in Australian cinema. It's a psycho-sexual drama in hormonal madness. The lack of a revelation only added to its unique dreamlike quality. This TV series does have some of that. The teen sexual drama is in full bloom. Dormer, Sullivan, and the girls are all great. The revelation is little Inez Currõ who delivers a dark innocent performance and fully owns her episode as the protagonist. One of the reasons why the film's confused nature works is that it made it into a dream. The TV series tries to have it both ways by diving into the characters' individual stories while keeping some of the dreamlike qualities. It doesn't work as well and revealing an ending may be its major flaw. It's confused without the enjoyment of the dream. It's analyzing the dream without making sense of it. This material may not be able to translate into something longer than a movie.

See Peter Weir's masterpiece or read the book! They're magical, haunting and classic. This on the other hand, isn't. Did filmmakers really forget how to make that dreamy look? It looks too crisp and clean for a dreamy, surreal tale of mystery...just sayin'. I love Dormer but I don't think she fit the character. I loved the costumes!