The Northern Territory is the real star of the show in Faraway Downs, as it was in it's filmic predecessor, Australia. And Baz Luhrmann, master filmmaker that he is, knows how to make most of the landscape. Sweeping aerial shots of the vast nothingness, spectacular sunsets, and many scenes at or around dusk, when the land seems to glow orange, are the norm in Chapter Two, and the production is all the better for it. The NT really is a treasure.
The thirty-minute episode is not without drama. Lady Sarah seems to be loosening up a little, and shows the Drover a thing or two about riding a horse. A visit by the NT police brings about tragedy, in riveting, desperate scenes - you can feel the tension and the urgency. And there are cattle to be driven.
Nicole Kidman plays an aristocratic Britisher very well indeed and Hugh Jackman seems to be having the time of his life playing that irascible and so-far-nameless character. So far, acting across the board has been brilliant.
(As a side note, it is a horrible thing how Aboriginals were treated then (and, inarguably, even now), and half-caste children even more so. As a person whose father came from England, it is deeply shameful to look back on this period of our history.)
The thirty-minute episode is not without drama. Lady Sarah seems to be loosening up a little, and shows the Drover a thing or two about riding a horse. A visit by the NT police brings about tragedy, in riveting, desperate scenes - you can feel the tension and the urgency. And there are cattle to be driven.
Nicole Kidman plays an aristocratic Britisher very well indeed and Hugh Jackman seems to be having the time of his life playing that irascible and so-far-nameless character. So far, acting across the board has been brilliant.
(As a side note, it is a horrible thing how Aboriginals were treated then (and, inarguably, even now), and half-caste children even more so. As a person whose father came from England, it is deeply shameful to look back on this period of our history.)
