On Valentine’s Day 1900, a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College took a day trip to the nearby Hanging Rock. It’s a mysterious place where watches stop working, visitors experience a strange sleepiness, and time seems to have no rules. When three of the girls and their teacher climbed the Rock that afternoon, all except one of the girls was never seen again. But their disappearance, tragic though it was, set a more sinister chain of events into motion. Hester Appleyard, the owner and headmistress of Appleyard College, has been keeping some nasty secrets buried for a very long time, and the subsequent investigation into her missing students’ fate – coupled with the suspicions of one of her most trusted teachers – is threatening to unravel everything. Sadism, madness and death won’t be far behind.
The new miniseries of Picnic At Hanging Rock had a lot to contend with before it even went in front of the cameras. After all, how do you adapt a book that’s considered one of Australian fiction’s most beloved classics, and which has already been adapted into an equally beloved movie by the director Peter Weir, and still find something fresh to say about it? Although this new version was one of 2018’s most eagerly awaited television highlights – especially when Game of Throne’s Natalie Dormer was cast in the lead role of Hester Appleyard – most critics were expecting it to be an interesting failure and the initial reviews suggested they might have been right. But we don’t think so.
The new Picnic At Hanging Rock not only looked absolutely beautiful upon its initial broadcast, but its cast is pitch-perfect and its screenplay is a masterclass in how to transform a revered classic into something that’s both unique to itself and also deeply reverential towards everything that came before it. But the ingeniousness of this Picnic lies in how well the creative team have ramped up the Victorian gothic. There’s a tremendous Turn Of The Screw atmosphere to this version – Appleyard College may be a haunted house without a ghost, but what festers here is far more malevolent than any spectre.
Some critics have argued that Dormer is too young for the role of the headmistress, but the intensity of her performance is the wheel around which everything turns and there’s a backstory to Hester Appleyard that the actress fits perfectly. And don’t listen to the people who say the direction is too MTV-like and Cezary Skubiszewski’s score doesn’t work either. They’re wrong.
The BBC’s two-disc DVD is a decent presentation that unfortunately isn’t quite hi-def enough to do the visuals justice, and it would have been nice to see more special features. Still, it’s the content that’s important and if you missed Picnic’s TV airing we highly recommend putting your concerns about period drama aside and giving this DVD a look – at least until someone sees sense and gives the series the Blu-ray treatment it truly deserves.
PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK / DIRECTOR: MICHAEL RYMER, LARYSA KONDRACKI, AMANDA BROTCHIE / SCREENPLAY: BEATRIX CHRISTIAN, ALICE ADDISON / STARRING: NATALIE DORMER, LILY SULLIVAN, LOLA BESSIS, HARRISON GILBERTSON / CERT: 15 / RELEASE DATE: 20TH AUGUST 2018
