What To Watch TV Reviews: The Last Of Us, The Narrow Road To The Deep North, Behind The Curtain

The Narrow Road To The Deep North Friday, streaming on Prime Video Bringing a piece of work like Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-winning novel to the small screen was always going to be a tricky undertaking. The book, which charts the life of a man named Dorrigo Evans, is an intimate character story, poetically crafted and a thing of real beauty. It feels an impossible undertaking to capture all that for television. But this stunningly beautiful and equally devastating five-part series manages it beautifully. Jacob Elordi stars as Dorrigo as a young man, with esteemed Irish actor Ciaran Hinds playing him in his older years. They both give mesmeric performances. The story spans decades, slipping in and out of three different time periods in Dorrigo’s life, weaving a complex story. It moves in and out of Dorrigo’s passionate love affair with Amy Mulvaney (Odessa Young), looks at his time spent in a POW camp building the Thailand-Burma railway, and then skips forward to the 1980s, where we find Hinds’ Dorrigo living as a celebrated war hero alongside his long-suffering wife (played by Heather Mitchell). The stories slip in and out of one another, giving the whole thing a beautiful, eerie, dreamlike feeling, and it’s hard not to be emotionally affected by the scenes set in the POW camp. Writer Shaun Grant and director Justin Kurzel, the creative double act behind award-winning films Nitram and Snowtown, have pulled off the seemingly impossible, crafting a brutally affecting television experience. The top-notch cast, which includes Olivia DeJonge, Simon Baker and Thomas Weatherall, give stunning performances that will stay with you long after the series wraps. This is must-see television. Last One Laughing Now streaming on Prime Video This series has a simple premise: trap a heap of very funny people in a house for six hours and tell them they’re not allowed to laugh. If they do, they’re eliminiated from the game. Sounds dull as dishwater — and real talk: the Aussie version of this show was just that — but this UK incarnation is terrific fun, mostly because the comedians they’ve roped in are some of the funniest people on TV right now. Richard Ayoade, Daisy May Cooper, Bob Mortimer — need we say more? Stick with it — it gets better and better. The Last Of Us Monday, streaming on Max It was always going to be a big ask, topping the near-perfect first season of this huge streaming hit. Even harder when you consider half the audience have already played the game it’s based on, and know exactly what will unfold. Fans still have plenty of reasons to tune in, and the performances from Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, who play two survivors living in a post apocalyptic world, are exceptional. There are big moments ahead. Behind The Curtain: Stranger Things: The First Shadow Tuesday, streaming on Netflix Stranger Things: The First Shadow is a new West End and Broadway stage production that no doubt will make its way here at some point. It’s a prequel to the TV series, and there’s lots of buzz building ahead of the show’s final season, which drops later this year. This follows the cast of the production as they prepare to launch the stage show in London. One for Stranger Things fans. The Secret DNA Of Us Thursday, 7.30pm, SBS What if you and all your friends and neighbours gathered and took a DNA test together? What would you find? Would any of you be related? That’s what this SBS series is asking, as it gives four Australian towns the chance to partake in mass DNA tests. There are some great individual stories and what it says about us as a collective is pretty fascinating. It’s basically Who Do You Think You Are? with normal people instead of celebs — there for it.

What To Watch TV Reviews: The Last Of Us, The Narrow Road To The Deep North, Behind The Curtain

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