Anzac Day is a big deal in Australia. Depending on who you’re talking to, the Gallipoli campaign is either the military event that defines Australia’s nationhood or a bloodbath in which more than 8,000 Australians were killed for no good reason. Either way, having a handle on what happened when the Anzac forces went to battle with the Ottoman Empire in 1915 is essential if you’re interested in understanding the Australian psyche.
While invocations of the Anzac legend usually revolve around soldiers’ experiences, Anzac Girls, a miniseries of six hour-long episodes, retells the story from the perspective of the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS). It will start on May 1 on More4, following the Gallipoli centenary commemorations this week.
Based on a book by journalist Peter Rees, it explores the war efforts of five nurses sent to Egypt, the Dardanelles and Lemnos. Rees’ book incorporates real diary entries from serving members of the AANS, and the young protagonists are dramatised versions of the young diarists.
And they are heavily dramatised. From the pristine modern eyebrow shaping to the unlikely general Australian accents, the Anzac Girls here probably do not bear that much resemblance to their historical counterparts. Nor does the scenery stick too closely to real-world geography: in the first episode, a raging battle at Suez disturbs the girls’ sleep in Alexandria, a quick 350km road trip to the northwest. The show’s speech patterns wouldn’t sound out of place in the Australia of 2015, except for their slightly forced cadence, a result of some newcomer acting performances colliding with a script that could have done with more attention to detail.
For Australians, the fresh faces make a nice change from seeing the same rotating group of local actors in every show on TV, but viewers in the UK might have to cut the rookie cast some slack. TV veteran John Waters gives a good performance as hard-arse Colonel Thomas Fiaschi, and this time a UK audience has the advantage, as they’re unlikely to suffer any cognitive dissonance from the actor’s 20-year stint hosting Aussie children’s programme Play School.
The series is best appreciated as a broad-strokes picture that touches on many of the specific themes that have come to be associated with Anzac history. It’s a sort of Anzac bingo game with soapie elements: you’ve got your brave young larrikin soldiers, your mateship, your horrors of war injury grab bag, and your contrast between the posh officers of the UK and the laidback Aussie troops. Then there is illicit wartime shagging, secret marriages, love triangles and some very well-shot scenes of postcoital bliss inside suspiciously clean tents. These bits aren’t quite in the Neighbours tier, but only because Anzac Girls was made by respected national broadcaster ABC instead of a commercial network.
And despite its shortcomings, it’s always refreshing to see stories of women at war. Depictions of Australian women’s involvement in the first world war have traditionally focused on the home front, despite the involvement of more than 3,000 nurses, as well as those who were involved in political action, including the pacifist and anti-conscription movements.
I don’t know whether this shift in gender perspective prompted Anzac Girls’ light tone, but ultimately the show’s strengths make it worth watching anyway. When you’re finished, there’s still lots more to discover about both the girls’ lives after the war and Anzac history more broadly, and isn’t that really the point of period dramas?
