Thursday, November 18, 2021

TV review - "Michael Willesee's Australians Ep 1 - Jack Darcy" (1988) **

 The first ep of this series, written by John Upton and directed by Kevin Dobson. There's been plans to make a Darcy story for years- Richard Franklin, John Howson, etc - but to my knowledge this was the only one actually made.  Actually, no, there was an episode of Behind the Legend in 1972.

Peter Phelps is excellent as Darcy as are Kerry Walker and Michael Caton as his parents. Gia Carides plays his girlfriend, with an irish accent. There's a scene where she introduces him to Nikki Coghill who plays Lily Molloy, star of On Our Selection - not made until 1920. Why do this?

On the nose dialogue throughout - this would plague the series. Too many scenes of reading the newspaper. Excellent boxing scenes. It does at least dramatise the big moments of Darcy's life... his desire to enlist, being pillored by Billy hughes, going to America, and dying.

I think it would've been better off focusing on one thing... Darcy's relationship with O'Sullivan. They could've touched on everything through that.

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