It was supposed to be the ‘biggest show on television’. What went wrong?

Gallipoli ★★★★

When this seven-part TV series was released in 2015 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli Campaign, it was launched with great fanfare, with Channel Nine predicting it would be “the biggest show on television”.

Gallipoli had a lot going for it: it was based on the best-selling book of the same name by Les Carlyon; it was stacked with a top-notch cast – Kodi Smit-McPhee, Harry Greenwood, Nicholas Hope, Anthony Hayes and Justine Clarke; and it dealt with an event we have long been told was the defining moment of Australia as a young nation.

Kodi Smit-McPhee as wide-eyed teen soldier Tolly in Gallipoli.Credit: Channel Nine

But you know what? It tanked in the ratings. After an audience of 1 million-plus for the opening episode, its slide was as perilous as the botched landings by the British Forces on Gaba Tepe, now known as Anzac Cove. The audience halved for the second episode, Nine then crunched the remaining episodes together, and it was labelled by then Nine Entertainment chief David Gyngell as the network’s “biggest disappointment”.

So what went wrong with Gallipoli the TV series (as opposed to Gallipoli the failed military campaign, which was beset by poor planning, inexperienced troops and a British command intent on maintaining face and not saving lives)?

To watch it now, it’s hard to say. The show is beautifully filmed and doesn’t buy into the jingoistic carry-on many war series tend to. As our critic Craig Mathieson wrote in 2015, there’s not even a mention of the word “cobber” until the 50-minute mark.

As young, wide-eyed teen soldier Tolly, Smit-McPhee gives another striking performance, his fear almost reverberating off the screen. He signed up to join his brother Bevan (Greenwood) in World War I and as they sit together in the dark, waiting to charge the beach, you can feel his terror. As he says in the lyrical voiceover: “What did I know about war?”

What did any of them know about war? And maybe that’s where Gallipoli tripped up. Maybe we know too much about war to want to watch another dramatisation about it. Maybe the story of sending young men to invade a country they know nothing about doesn’t sit well with viewers now they have seen and heard the same stories – Afghanistan, ring any bells? – in real life over and over again.

But does that mean you shouldn’t watch Gallipoli? Certainly not. On a TV level, it’s a handsome production in the vein of BIG DRAMAS we rarely get on the commercial channels anymore. Smit-McPhee is ably supported by a mustachioed Matt Nable, who looks as if he were born to play an Australian soldier. As his Harry Perceval runs up and down the steep, rocky terrain, relaying messages between soldiers and command, you feel the hopelessness, the exhaustion and the confusion. Yalin Ozucelik as Turkish field marshal Ataturk conveys the determination on their side, too.

My only complaint with the first episode would be the moustache-twirling villains of the piece. We all know the British generals were callous and incompetent, but Welsh actor John Bach perhaps goes a little OTT as chief bad guy Sir Ian Hamilton, who commanded the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force from aboard his luxury ship off the Turkish coast. We get it: anyone who studied Gallipoli in high school knows Hamilton and his ilk were not equipped for the task at hand. It could just have been handled with a little more nuance.

Gallipoli is now streaming on 9Now. Nine is the owner of this masthead.

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