Banished: Jimmy McGovern’s first settlers encounter no Aborigines

Writer Jimmy McGovern takes a narrow view of the first two weeks of the British colony in Australia in his series Banished.

David Wenham as Governor Arthur Phillip in Banished.

Banished is a big production that is strangely small. The BBC Two drama series about the establishment of the British penal colony in Australia in 1788 is not short of ambition, money, time or talent, but Jimmy McGovern brings the focus down to individuals in his seven-hour drama.

DVD Letterbox has always wondered what modern digital effects could do to reimagine Sydney Harbour before white settlement: what did it look like before all the apartments and mansions craning for a water view?

McGovern, the creator of Cracker and co-creator and mentor on Redfern Now, shows that isn’t really important. There was nothing here but gum trees and native fauna; not even blackfellas. And First Fleet settlement at Botany Bay in 1788 was about personal drama rather than vistas.

Banished (MA15+, Roadshow, 345min, $39.95) asks to be treated seriously as a historical document yet reminds viewers that it is a dramatisation, not a reconstruction, of events. Consequently, McGovern has to make some interesting choices about how to portray the first two weeks of white life in Australia. The most striking one is the complete absence of Aborigines — and he has been mightily defensive of it, saying at different times: he couldn’t feasibly address the indigenous experience or concerns in this format; he anticipated flipping the focus to Aborigines in a follow-up series; the story was written by a British man for a British audience portraying the British experience; and that the job of dramatising the indigenous view of 1788 was the job of the ABC, not the BBC.

Everyone will have their own view on this matter. The “British view” could have been worse; there are only shades of Eliza Doolittle in the occasional sex scenes that are now de rigueur for any “quality” drama. Whichever way you cut it, the absence of black faces is a stark creative choice that chips away at an otherwise competent drama.

David Wenham does a good job of portraying governor Arthur Phillip in what becomes an increasingly smaller prison drama as the series progresses. But one of Phillip’s defining traits was his relationship with the indigenous people. McGovern focuses on the micro, not the macro, as the feuds, politicking and romances of the colony funnel into a dramatic finale. He does a good job of reflecting the dilemmas of the colony’s establishment, from food and sex to crime and punishment.

The co-directors, Aussie Jeffrey Walker and Brit Daniel Percival, and their fine cast, from Aussie Ryan Corr to a raft of Brits and Irish including Ewen Bremner, MyAnna Buring, Geneveive O’Reilly, David Dawson, Rory McCann and Russell Tovey, deliver it well, only occasionally having to conquer a clumsy line. But the focus on the convict experience does swing towards melodrama and feels slightly limited. Maybe we did need those sweeping digital shots of Sydney Harbour as it might have looked in 1788.

OUT THIS WEEK

Get Hard (MA15+)

Roadshow (100min, $39.95)

House of Cards, season 3 (M)

UniversalSony (691min, $49.95)

Dig (MA15+)

SBS (600min, $34.95)

The Brian Cox Collection (M)

BBC (617min, $49.95)