Picnic at Hanging Rock

Tedious 6-hour series based on the classic 1975 Australian film about a group of female students and a teacher who disappear at Hanging Rock on Valentine's Day in 1900. Everything in this series is wrong: the casting of Mrs. Appleyard, the behavior and attitudes of the girls, and the hideous and anachronistic music.

The added backstories to the various characters is obvious padding and distracts from the central mystery that gets sidelined by a bunch of soap opera hogwash about runaway wives, separated siblings, and vaguely gay and lesbian leanings. None of this claptrap has anything to do with the disappearances.

Natalie Dormer is miscast in the central role of of headmistress (Rachel Roberts starred in the original), and she plays the part much too broadly. We don't need to know all the particulars; all we need to know is that she is stern and mysterious. The only acting standout in the cast is James Hoare as Albert, and he is only tangentially connected to the mystery.

Then there's the modern PC casting of the half-black student enrolled in a white girls' finishing school in the Victorian Australian Outback in 1900. Ya right! A total of 3 directors worked on the 6 episodes, with at least two writers working on separate episodes. That's just a clue as to why this mess is so disjointed and lacking in any unified vision whatsoever.