Television: New Australian drama fails to live up to hype

The cast of new Aussie drama A Place To Call Home. PIC/FILE

A lengthy, inspired and glamorous advertising campaign extolling the wonder and excellence of new Australian drama series A Place To Call Home was quite something to see. Especially the three pithily-worded glossy one-page ads in a Sunday paper's magazine.

Touted as the Aussie answer to Downton Abbey and screening on Sundays at 9pm on TV One, these advertising gurus did a magnificent job of convincing me to watch.

But after the first episode, I question whether they had watched even just one episode of the series. I very much doubt it.

And I'm pretty confident that after the first 15 minutes of episode one, many viewers sloped off to bed or - if they were in bed already - had snored off.

I admit I bought the publicity wholesale and was quite keen on a spicy new drama, fraught with secrets and intrigue. But it just didn't go there.

Somehow the acting - possibly with exception of central character Sarah Adams (Marta Dusseldorp) - didn't gel.

I don't know whether it was a script pared down to the minimum or actors who really don't have that indefinable something we see in British dramas.

I'm not trying to pit Brit against Aussie but maybe ... just maybe ... the fact that Britain's professional acting fraternity spans hundreds of years really does give it an inbuilt edge.

This new series was developed after Australian director Bevan Lee completed his "domestic trilogy" (Always Greener, Packed to the Rafters and Winners & Losers).

His inspiration, we're told, came from film director Douglas Sirk's 1950s films such as Written On The Wind (1956) and All That Heaven Allows (1955).

Lee apparently told a Melbourne newspaper he wanted to create a romance-driven melodrama based in the 1950s because people's lives in the present were "relatively bland".

He'd said: "At the end of the day, conflict is drama and we live in relatively conflict-free society. I had to go to a place where there was pain and damage and hurt; after the war there was."

Unfortunately for Lee, his scriptwriters and actors have not delivered an authentic 1950s drama. It is not compelling because, honestly, it's silly.

The scenes are either short and frenetic or are a drawn-out groan.

In fact, in one scene the young beautiful daughter Olivia of the "Bligh family" tells her super-handsome hot and sweaty farmhand secret boyfriend that he looks "cute" when he's angry.

In 1953 Australia ... whoa, a bit of a gaffe there.

And wealthy matriarch Elizabeth Bligh (Noni Hazlehurst) doesn't quite do the dowager thing. Her performance has a whiff of the amateur dramatics.

However, the filming of beautiful sunsets, great 1950s frocks, cars and landscapes was all gorgeous.

And a drama about a mysterious woman hanging between the harsh legacy of World War II and the hope of a new life in Australia does sound like a grand plot.

For my money, I'll leave it with that first episode.But then ... it could take off and win abundant glittering prizes and much adulation. We'll see.