A Place to Call Home is a better-than average TV series, with a relative minimum of soap-opera-itis. Elizabeth, the rich, meddling mother, has a squinty-eyed, tight-lipped smile that flashes on and off with unsettling frequency. Veteran actress Noni Hazelhurst gives a performance in the role that flirts with stereotype, but then that's the writing, not the actress.
It's a compelling drama, touching on various issues ripe for change in the social landscape following WWII: the then lamentably puritanical and punishing view of homosexuality and the then lamentably rigid class structure. The series moves from one crisis to the next--what else can a long series do?--and invites thoughtful contemplation of lingering Victorian attitudes.
The only criticism I have, given that this is a TV series and not a work of enduring art, is that beginning about the 16th episode, the main female characters suffer an attack of the Whispering Disease, that annoying and thoroughly bizarre condition in which the actresses are instructed to utter all of their lines in a whisper. Even when only the actress and the person to whom she's talking are in the room, they're apparently unable to talk in anything but a secretive, breathy whisper, as if every action were susceptible to public exposure.
The Whisper, combined with extreme close-ups, has been around for decades, but has gained popularity with directors of TV series in the past 10 years. It's an affectation that purports to add to the dramatic value of a scene, but which results instead in simplistic artificiality.
If you can get past that absurdity, A Place to Call Home is indeed entertaining and absorbing.
It's a compelling drama, touching on various issues ripe for change in the social landscape following WWII: the then lamentably puritanical and punishing view of homosexuality and the then lamentably rigid class structure. The series moves from one crisis to the next--what else can a long series do?--and invites thoughtful contemplation of lingering Victorian attitudes.
The only criticism I have, given that this is a TV series and not a work of enduring art, is that beginning about the 16th episode, the main female characters suffer an attack of the Whispering Disease, that annoying and thoroughly bizarre condition in which the actresses are instructed to utter all of their lines in a whisper. Even when only the actress and the person to whom she's talking are in the room, they're apparently unable to talk in anything but a secretive, breathy whisper, as if every action were susceptible to public exposure.
The Whisper, combined with extreme close-ups, has been around for decades, but has gained popularity with directors of TV series in the past 10 years. It's an affectation that purports to add to the dramatic value of a scene, but which results instead in simplistic artificiality.
If you can get past that absurdity, A Place to Call Home is indeed entertaining and absorbing.
