When a TV show on a real-life story covers big ideas, do small glitches matter?

WATCH / PAST IMPERFECT?

Anna Próchniak and Jonah Hauer-King in the TV adaptation of Heather Morris’s novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

What’s truth, what’s fiction and how much liberty can be taken with a real-life story are the things worth thinking about when watching the evocative new TV series The Tattooist of Auschwitz (showing now on Stan). Based on the bestselling 2018 novel by New Zealand author Heather Morris, it’s the story of real-life Melbourne man Lali Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew who worked as a tattooist in Poland’s Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp. It was here he met Gita Furman, a fellow Slovakian prisoner, and while their love story is not in dispute, some of the events in the book have been questioned by The New York Times and the Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre. Both concluded the story contained events that were exaggerated, didn’t happen or were historically impossible. For example, Furman’s camp number – the one tattooed by Sokolov on her arm – was incorrect. The centre concluded Morris’s book is “an impression about Auschwitz inspired by authentic events, [but] almost without any value as a document”. Does that matter? Starring Harvey Keitel, Melanie Lynskey, Jonah Hauer-King and Anna Próchniak, the six-part series is a haunting reminder of the inhumanity of war and that love can flourish in the darkest of places.

Louise Rugendyke

READ / A PLACE IN THE COUNTRY

Celebrating life in rural Australia: Galah’s new anthology.

If you’ve ever been tempted to trade in your urban existence for a quieter life, Annabelle Hickson’s Galah: Stories Of Life Outside The City (Murdoch Books; $70) – a collection of the best yarns from Galah magazine (which she founded in 2020 to showcase rural Australia) – is the book for you. Brimming with tales of creative fulfilment, be it gardening, quilting, cooking, painting or carving bird sculptures, it paints an idyllic picture of life in regional NSW and Victoria and outback Queensland. Some of Hickson’s subjects are well-known – artist Lucy Culliton, chef Sean Moran (of Sydney’s Sean’s), Uncle Jack Charles – but many are ordinary people who are simply carving out their own slice of rural heaven. Stunning photography, too.

Nicole Abadee

LISTEN / MEETS CUTE

Midlife surprises: ABC Radio’s Hilary Harper discovers the dating scene has changed a lot since she was last single in the 2000s.

When Radio National Life Matters presenter Hilary Harper launched herself into the confronting world of online dating at 50, she was blunt about her situation: two kids, impending divorce, low energy, little time, a perimenopausal body and a battered heart. “For a while I stopped believing two people could find each other and just connect in a way that’s healthy and simple and makes them both happy,” she says in a five-part series on the Life Matters podcast. Harper experiences some low moments with some eccentric first dates, but there’s joy, too. Delivered with surprisingly raw vulnerability, humour and charm, Dated: Love Online After 50 is a beautifully scripted and candid meditation on love and hope in midlife.

Melissa Fyfe

GROOVE / SIBLING REVELRY

Taking it back to the ’60s: New York sibling duo The Lemon Twigs.Credit: Stephanie Pia

Despite proof to the contrary – the Davies brothers in the Kinks; the Gallaghers in Oasis – occasionally, siblings can make great music together without trying to kill each other. Enter The Lemon Twigs – multi-instrumentalist New York siblings Michael and Brian D’Addario (pictured above, from left), who started out as stage-show brats before revealing themselves as a killer songwriting machine. Their fifth album, A Dream Is All We Know, was recorded on vintage analogue equipment and is packed with songs they define as Mersey Beach: a cross between early Beatles and ’60s California pop. Everyone from Elton John to Iggy Pop has sung their praises. Just check out their retro video for the infectious single, They Don’t Know How To Fall in Place – which channels The Monkees’ 1960s TV show – and try not to smile.

Barry Divola

SEE / KILLING ME SOFTLY

Mixing images of horror with traditional, feminine motifs: eX De Medici’s “Mowing the Grass, 2024”. Credit: eX de medici, Mowing The Grass, 2024 watercolour and tempera on paper, 115 x 115 cm. Image courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf.

Artist eX De Medici not only has a fabulous name, she also produces fabulous watercolours in which she juxtaposes guns and other items of horror against flowers, wallpaper and other traditionally feminine motifs. Fresh from a 2023 survey show at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art, she’s showing a new suite of works at Sydney’s Sullivan + Strumpf gallery (free entry, until June 1). One of the themes she explores is anxiety in all its forms: “global and exponential: sex vs. gender, corporate vs. the world, ecosystem collapse, mass extinctions, population explosion, war slaughter, testosterone rage, the 1 percent vs. the 99 per cent, pandemic aftermath, everything triggered inside social networks, Techno Feudalism, emotion overload and medicating it all”. Could that be any more apt for the times?

Katrina Strickland

PLAY / LICENCE TO KILL

Carnage, the latest release from Mark Dapin, who will host a true-crime writing workshop at Melbourne Writers Festival.

Crime stories have long been among the most popular of all storytelling genres. So it’s no surprise that the Melbourne Writers Festival has included a true-crime workshop in this year’s line-up. The how-to-do-it (write, not kill) session will be hosted by journalist, author and sometime Good Weekend contributor Mark Dapin, who’s penned several such books, including 2023’s deliciously titled Carnage: A Succulent Chinese Meal, Mr Rent-a-Kill and the Australian Manson Murders. This year’s festival (May 6-12) will also feature a roll call of international literary stars, including Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Lauren Groff and The Bee Sting’s Paul Murray – who features in today’s Dicey Topics.

Katrina Strickland

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