“The Narrow Road To The Deep North” is an upcoming Australian miniseries from director Justin Kurzel (“Macbeth”) focusing on Dorrigo Evans, a haunted man from Tasmania who reconciles with his time captured in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during WWII where Allied soldiers were forced to build a railroad in the perilous jungles of Burma.
Today, Amazon Prime Video has dropped a first-look trailer for “Narrow Road” which highlights the amazing story based on Richard Flanagan’s 2014 novel and adapted by Shaun Grant. Assembled actors for the series feature Jacob Elordi (playing young Evans), Ciaran Hinds (as the older version of Evans), Odessa Young, Olivia DeJonge, Heather Mitchell, Show Kasamatsu, Thomas Weatherall, and Simon Baker.
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If you weren’t aware the conditions endured by Allied forces by the Japanese officers and guards were extremely brutal toward captured prisoners and life expectancy was low as the forced labor camps (many operating in harsh undeveloped islands) were used as a way to kill off former combatants. Supplies from the mainland, food, and medicine, were scarce (even for Japanese forces to use for themselves) and Japanese culture saw those defeated in war, that don’t commit ritual suicide, as cowards without honor (adding to the reason behind their habitual mistreatment and hostility).
An official logline from Amazon Prime Video reads:
“The Narrow Road to the Deep North” is a savagely beautiful five-part series charting the life of Dorrigo Evans (played by Elordi as a young man, with Hinds as the older Dorrigo), through his passionate love affair with Amy Mulvaney (Young), his time held captive in a POW camp, and his later years spent as a revered surgeon and reluctant war hero.
The series had a two-episode premiere earlier in the year at the Berlin Film Festival, which The Playlist reviewed, where we had some mixed feelings on it.
Kurzel directs all five episodes and is coming off last year’s intense Neo-Nazi crime thriller “The Order” starring Nicholas Hoult and Jude Law. After his breakout roles in “Euphoria” and “Saltburn,” Elordi was most recently seen playing Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” and part of the cast of Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada.”
Amazon Prime Video Australia is behind the April 18 launch of “Narrow Road” with BBC overseeing it in the United Kingdom, Sky in Germany, and NBCUniversal has the Latin America rights. We’re still waiting for news on where the series will land domestically as the U.S. rights have yet to be announced.
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You can watch that fresh trailer for “Narrow Road” below.