Watchlist: Bruce Pascoe confronts his critics in The Dark Emu Story
In his latest documentary, director Allan Clarke takes a close reading of the firestorm of criticism that engulfed Dark Emu.
The Dark Emu Story
Premiering on ABC TV and iview on Tuesday, 18 July 2023 at 8.30pm.
Director Allan Clarke (The Bowraville Murders) takes a close reading of the firestorm of criticism that engulfed Bruce Pascoe’s 2014 bestseller, Dark Emu. In his book, Pascoe argues that the true history of pre-colonial Australia was hidden away for over 150 years, and that Aboriginal people were not “mere hunter-gatherers” but sophisticated farmers in “the early stages of an agricultural society”. It was a literary phenomenon, selling more than a quarter of a million copies and winning Book of the Year at the
NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. One that sparked a heated national debate, and faced fierce opposition from academics — anthropologist Peter Sutton (who Pascoe confronts in the film) and field archaeologist Keryn Walsh co-authored a rebuff titled Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?— as well as conservative pundits who questioned Pascoe’s Aboriginal identity.
Too Close
SBS on Demand
Everything about Clara Salaman’s (who you may recognise as DS Claire Stanton from The Bill) three-part drama is so gobsmackingly good that it’s hard to know where to start. It’s an elegant, small-scale drama (most of it unravels in one room), complete with a beautifully observed script, which Salaman adapted from her own novel published under the pseudonym Natalie Daniels, and, of course, Emily Watson and Olivier-winner Denise Gough. Watson plays Dr Emma Robertson, a long-suffering forensic psychiatrist who has been sent to investigate Gough’s Connie — a “yummy mummy monster” who has been accused of driving a car with two little girls in the back seat off a bridge and into a river. Connie claims not to remember a thing, asserting that she’s suffering from dissociative amnesia. Emma’s job is to figure out whether she is lying. It’s a tight, fraught story that ties up neatly. But the real pleasure is in watching these two astonishing actors pick each other apart for three hours. All the best television is driven by character, and not only does Too Close have two compelling leads, but a handful of rich, tricky supporting characters.
Silo
Apple TV+
Science-fiction devotees will find a lot to love in Silo, Apple TV+’s fascinating adaptation of Hugh Howey’s best-selling Wool trilogy. The show is set in a bleak, unspecified future, where just 10,000 people remain. The survivors live almost entirely underground, in a self-sustaining brutalist bunker known as The Silo. This subterranean panopticon is under the tight grip of a totalitarian judicial department, as the residents wait for Earth to heal itself after a toxic catastrophe rendered it uninhabitable. The history books have been purged, leaving the denizens of the silo clueless about their origins and the cataclysm that ravaged the world. All they know of the outside is what is shown to them on screens from a live stream broadcast, captured by a camera outside the bunker. The “cleaning” of said camera is done by people who opt out of society: under the silo law, once someone utters their desire to go outside, their words are irrevocable, and they must leave. Come for the amazing sets, stay for the drama.
Bloodlands
SBS on Demand, Amazon Prime
Bloodlands, from the team of hitmakers behind Line of Duty and Bodyguard, begins so promisingly. It’s a police procedural, set in gloomy, luscious Northern Ireland, 20 years after the Good Friday truce. It kicks off when a car belonging to a former IRA commander, who now makes his crust from haulage and organised crime, is fished out of Strangford Lough. Tacked to the vehicle is what appears to be a suicide note scrawled onto a postcard. A crumpled-faced James Nesbitt plays the maverick copper DCI Tom Brannick, who links the note to an unsolved case dating back to The Troubles, involving a professional assassin codenamed Goliath who killed several people, including Tom’s wife. The first two episodes will have you hooked, which is a shame because the final two go to the dogs. There are too many labyrinthine storylines and implausible plot twists that by the finale, you don’t care what happens to anybody in this show, you’re just trying to figure out what is going on.
Cold Feet
Amazon Prime
If Bloodlands left you bloodless, snuggle up with Cold Feet, which also stars (a cheerier) James Nesbitt. This unassuming comedy-drama took British audiences by storm when it originally aired between 1998 and 2003 and was revived in 2017 for three seasons (two good, one excellent). In terms of the plot, there‘s not much to say — it’s a lot of milling about with three extremely ordinary, middle-class Manchurian couples who are all navigating the same peaks and valleys as the rest of us. There’s hopeless romantic Adam (Nesbitt) and his love interest Rachel (Helen Baxendale), Pete (John Thomson) and Jen (Fay Ripley), and David (Robert Bathurst) and Karen (Hermione Norris). In its day, the 30-something characters were tackling new motherhood, testicular cancer, abortion, and alcoholism. In the redux, with the characters now in their 50s, cancer is still present, but its sharing the stage with midlife crises, online sugar daddies, and depression. It all sounds a bit doom and gloom, but it isn’t — it’s a silly, sweet show with dialogue that crackles with wit and emotional honesty.