We found this Aussie series, about a wealthy "grazier" (sheep rancher) and his crisis-prone family back in the 50s, to be just about impossible to resist. It's hard to say too much without spoilers since practically everyone starts out with a secret sorrow, a clandestine romance, a wartime trauma they don't care to talk about, a stigmatized sex pref, an unacknowledged illegitimate child or somebody's else's child they're raising as their own, which can only be revealed in the fullness of time.... Suffice it to say that the first two seasons focus mainly on the efforts of the Bligh family matriarch to prevent any of her brood from marrying beneath them or forming some other unsuitable attachment, despite the abundance of tempting distractions (a hunky Italian farmboy, a gorgeous blond nurse with a murky past) and the deficiencies of the eligible candidates (snobbish, vindictive playboy, deceased wife's treacherous sister).
We're total suckers for the shameless cliffhangers and out-of-left-field plot twists. The first-rate cast plays it straight for the most part; there are a few stock Aussie characters--including a salt-of-the-earth farmer who declaims "bush ballads" about bandicoots and billabongs--but nothing too clichéd or kitschy. (The source novel reflects some odd midcentury attitudes about bi- and homosexuality that might deserve a trigger warning.)
Oldsters and TCM fans may be reminded of Douglas Sirk and vintage primetime soaps like "Peyton Place"; we get a brief glimpse of one of the younger Blighs reading "Giant" at one point, which seems exactly right, and the actress who plays the nurse with a murky past is a dead ringer for Dorothy Malone in "Written on the Wind."
The show survived a cancellation scare at the end of season 2--which seems to have spooked the writers' room, since they turned out a couple of dud episodes right after that--but since then it's all been good....
PS--I was wondering if these fictitious Blighs were meant to be related to the real-life Captain Bligh, of "Mutiny on the Bounty" fame, who was briefly governor of NSW; that would make them one of the first non-convict settler families in Australia and would explain why Mrs Bligh, initially at least, is so terribly snobbish.
