UK viewers will have to wait to be able to tune into an ‘utterly immersive’ wartime drama starring Jacob Elordi.
Released in Australia today, The Narrow Road to the Deep North has already been praised by critics.
Based on the 2014 Booker Prize winning novel of the same name by Richard Flanagan, the novel follows Australian doctor Dorrigo Evans who is haunted by memories of an affair with his uncle’s wife and his experiences as a Far East prisoner of war during the construction of the Burma Railway.
Decades after the harrowing experience, he finds ‘his growing celebrity at odds with his feelings of failure and guilt’.
At the time the book was released, one critic wrote it was ‘both harrowing and deeply humanist’.
When it was announced as the winner of the Booker Prize, chair judge A.C. Grayling described the novel as a ‘remarkable love story as well as a story about human suffering and comradeship’.
In 2018 it was announced that the book was being turned into a TV series, which was released this week.
It stars Jacob Elordi (Saltburn, Euphoria) as a young Dorrigo, while Ciaran Hinds (Harry Potter, Belfast) plays him as an older man.
Other cast members include Odessa Young, Olivia DeJonge, Heather Mitchell, Thomas Weatherall and Simon Baker.
Ahead of its release, critic reviews of the 5-part series were glowing.
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‘Visceral and brutal, it is a fully corporal experience that transforms the soul, both individually and collectively,’ PopMatters wrote in its review.
‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a tough watch, but one that doesn’t hold back from displaying the cruelty of war and the dangers of blind ambition,’ Collider shared.
‘The series is bound to hit ever harder, and it would take superhuman stamina to consider bingeing it: instead, it’ll be one to space out between deep breaths,’ The Daily Telegraph added.
Others said it was ‘utterly immersive’ while Elordi’s performance was ‘intensely moving’.
Although the series was rolled out in Australia this week, UK viewers will have to wait a little longer.
While the BBC has the rights to air it here, all we know so far is that it is ‘coming soon on BBC1 and BBC iPlayer in the UK’.
However, BBC’s head of programme acquisition Sue Deeks comments about the series made it clear it would be worth the wait.
‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a complex, beautiful, and heart-wrenching series which sensitively interweaves several stages in the life of surgeon Dorrigo Evans, from the passion of first love, to the unflinching depiction of life as a prisoner of war in occupied Burma. We are so very pleased to bring this truly exceptional adaptation to BBC viewers,’ she said.
Speaking to The Guardian recently, Elordi detailed the gruelling preparation that was required for the actors playing emaciated PoW’s.
Taking a medically supervised six-week boot camp, the actor said the on-screen camaraderie mirrored the close relationships the actors formed while losing weight during that time.
‘We were all in it together, so there was this great overwhelming amount of love in the whole process,’ he said.
‘It was incredibly challenging but deeply necessary, of course … because nobody wanted to phone that in or make a mockery of it.’
While viewers wait to tune into this series, other period dramas ready to binge include SAS: Rogue Heroes, A Thousand Blows and Number 24.
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