The Narrow Road to the Deep North

One of the hardest things I watched yet one of the best things I watched.

Do yourself a favour and press play. Photography is just alluring, poetic and yet so descriptive that you just can't look away. Storytelling is compelling and keeps you constantly engaged, its tragedy and mourning, and romance, and longing and suffering and friendship and companionship. All together, all at once.

Despite being a short series, you get to know every character in such a way that it becomes personal, you suffer with them, you laugh with them and you miss them when they are gone.

It's a shot straight to the heart but oh such a lovely one.

My Spanish grandmother was under house arrest during the Japanese occupation of British North Borneo during the war. She told me stories of the treatment of Australian soldiers held captive. This show is serious television. It is part English Patient, Tree of Life, Thin Red Line, and Bridge over River Kwai. It is haunting, erotic, intimate, brutal, humanistic, and historical. This was a show made to honor the fallen and to preserve memories and experiences and is unflinching. It is the kind of series that will penetrate your dreams, make you feel small, and humble you. These kinds of series are not often made. The showrunners are owed gratitude and respect for having pursued this undertaking. It is unabridgedly effective.

One of the best and the hardest show I have ever watched. I sat watching this with my father next to me telling me of the stories his father would tell him of working the Thai-Burma railway in those very conditions. I watch as he had tears telling me this was like a visualization of those very stories. The story was well written and the characters were all play so well. The cinematography was brilliant despite what other reviewers say, you felt as though you were there in that jungle and the soundtrack was haunting and will stick with you. It left me very shaken but was well worth the watch, would highly recommend but be warned it is very full on and doesn't shy away from brutality.

You can rarely see a good series or movie from the australian perspective. It's a short series but keeps you engaged at almost every scene. The brutality of the japanese or the POW struggling for survival really comes through the screen on an emotional level.

I would say it's a unique World War 2 series, can't put it in a category. It's not really about the war but how we humans sometimes lack the humanity, emphaty or the communication so we could understand each other. When we can't communicate or express ourselves then we just move on instead repairing the thing that brings us the most joy or even who brings us the most love.

A must watch for anyone who enjoys war series with less action and more emphasis on the emotional and personal struggles for both the character and You, the viewer.

I'm not up to scratch on the history of the POW during WW2, but this programme has made me look into it. The actors/actresses are amazing and deliver their characters perfectly. Some of the true stories I have read on the internet are unbelievably horrific, and these are reflected in the programme.

Parts of the programme made me feel sick to my stomach during the torture scenes, and I like to think I am pretty desensitised to TV brutality (long time horror watcher).

If you come away from watching this series without feeling affected in some way, maybe you are a robot, because the emotions it evokes are so strong.