The fact that Amy is married to his uncle would be clunky in other hands, but is utterly convincing here. The affair is somehow permissible because "the war pressed, the war deranged, the war undid, the war excused". He is elevated to medicine as a scholarship boy, and, in a splendid set piece in an Adelaide bookshop, Dorrigo, now a military surgeon, meets a small-framed, gleaming-eyed and galvanising woman named Amy. Innocent of electricity, his family "slept under skins of possums they snared". Dorrigo's boyhood took place far from the grief and benefits of the big world, however. By his middle years he is a national figure – his own face staring back at him "from charity letterheads to memorial coins". His Australian protagonist is a surgeon, Dorrigo Evans, who to his own amazement becomes legendary in postwar Australia for his wartime courage in the face of Japanese captors. Let me say, though, that his book ranges far in time and human fascination beyond that central and barbarous piece of engineering. His father was an Australian prisoner of war on the infamous "narrow road", and the railway ran through his childhood, too. It feels very right to me and I have a suspicion that the resulting series may just be astonishing.R ichard Flanagan, the Tasmanian writer acclaimed for such novels as Death of a River Guide and Gould's Book of Fish, has a right to focus on the so-called Burma railway, built with forced labour by the Japanese in the second world war. “Justin Kurzel is rightly considered to be one of the most exciting directors in world cinema today, and Shaun Grant is a marvelous writer of equivalent talent who brings to the project a deep, personal connection. My grandfather was a prisoner of war, who worked the Thai-Burma Railway, hence this project is very dear to my heart.”įlanagan said he was “genuinely delighted” by the project. Grant added: “Having read Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North several years ago, and being moved beyond words, I am excited to adapt his sublime novel for the screen. I am so excited to be collaborating again with Shaun Grant and can’t wait to work with the Fremantle team in creating such an epic and incredibly powerful story.” Kurzel said he was ”extremely honored to be trusted by Richard Flanagan to bring to life this complete masterpiece of a novel. Grant’s writing credits include Berlin Syndrome and Jasper Jones, Netflix series Mindhunter and upcoming feature Penguin Bloom, starring Naomi Watts. Kurzel also directed Palme D’or nominated feature Macbeth.
Kurzel and Grant have previously collaborated on their breakout feature, Snowtown, and True History of the Kelly Gang, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. He is currently in production on Shantaram for Paramount Television.
The series will be Kurzel’s second TV drama.
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