One of 2025’s best TV series is about to land on the BBC.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a beautifully shot and emotionally devastating story of love, war and memory. It boasts a starry cast with Saltburn’s Jacob Elordi, Belfast’s Ciarán Hinds and The Babadook’s Essie Davis, and has an A-list director in Justin Kurzel (True History of the Kelly Gang, The Order) calling the shots.
Adapted by Kurzel’s long-time screenwriter Shaun Grant from Aussie novelist Richard Flanagan’s 2014 Booker Prize winner – based on his own dad’s experiences – it spans three timelines to offer an achingly romantic, if sometimes bleak vision of life and love in, and after, war.
What is The Narrow Road to the Deep North about?
The story’s protagonist is Tasmanian Dorrigo Evans, played as a young medical student heading to war by Elordi and as an older surgeon stewing on past regrets by Hinds.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North follows Dorrigo en route to combat in World War II, first as he proposes to his girlfriend Ella (Olivia DeJonge), and then secretly falling in love with his uncle’s wife Amy (The Stand’s Odessa Young). He’s later captured by the Japanese and sent to a jungle POW camp to work on the notorious Burma ‘Death Railway’.
The final timeline is set in the 1980s and sees the older Dorrigo, now married and a respected surgeon living in Sydney, reflecting on his time during the war and his life after returning to Australia.
Where was Narrow Road To The Deep North Filmed?
Despite being set in three dramatically different environments – Syria, the jungles of the Thai-Burma border, and ’80s Australia – the production team found all its locations in and around Sydney.
‘At first I was daunted because of the ambition of creating the scenes that play out in quite large landscapes, whether it be the POW camps in Burma or war scenes in Syria,’ notes Kurzel of the challenge. ‘But I went back to what Richard [Flanagan] had said – that we had to look at it through the lens of that very particular point of view of Dorrigo; what he sees and what he experiences. It’s not in the wide, it’s in the close. Richard kept on saying: “It’s a love story, it’s not a war story.” That became our mantra.’
Sydney and its suburbs were used to recreate 1940s and ’80s Australia
Sydney and its surrounding suburbs, including The Rocks, Glebe, Lilyfield’s Callan Park and the beaches at Kurnell, were used for a variety of Australian locations – and also gave the show its brief interlude in Syria, 1941.
Dorrigo meets in Amy in the Captains Flat Hotel, New South Wales
This historic pub, an hour outside of Canberra, is re-dressed in the series as the 1940s-era King of Cornwall in Adelaide. Here, Dorrigo visits his uncle, pub landlord Keith Mulvaney (Simon Baker), and sparks a connection with his young wife Amy. The production filmed in the town of Captains Flat in late 2023, using some of the town’s 491 locals as extras.
The Royal National Park in Sydney doubles as the Thai-Burma jungle
Otford Farm on the edge of New South Wales’ Royal National Park may be only a few dozen miles from Sydney, but in The Narrow Road to the Deep North it’s transformed into the jungles of Burma. It was an easy choice for the director, remembers location manager Chris Reynolds. ‘The big starting point for [the series] is the forest and the railway,’ he says. ‘As soon as [Justin] went to [Otford Farm] he said: “Yep, that’s it.”’
In a similar vein to The Bridge on the River Kwai and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, the series explores the brutal experience of Allied POWs at the hands of Japanese captors. Violence, hard labour, disease and death were constants for the Aussie prisoners and the show depicts them in unsparing detail.
The cast put its heart and soul into the recreation, remembers author Richard Flanagan, with leeches and some extreme weather just two of the challenges that came with filming outdoors in NSW. ‘There was a commitment such as I’d never seen on any other film or TV project,’ he says of a visit to the set. ‘They believed this story really mattered.’
When is Narrow Road to the Deep North on TV?
The five-part series starts on BBC1 on Sunday, July 20 at 9.15pm. All the episodes will be streaming on iPlayer on the same day. It’s available now on Prime Video in Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Is there a trailer?
There is – check it out below.
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