Curio Pictures’ Jo Porter and Rachel Gardner talk ’feeling the weight’ of responsibility of novel adaptation
The execs behind forthcoming sweeping period drama The Narrow Road to the Deep North have admitted they have “felt the weight” of adapting Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-winning epic.
Curio Pictures’ five-part series is due to land on Amazon Prime Video in Australia, New Zealand and North America tomorrow (18 April) and exec producers Jo Porter and Rachel Gardner tell Broadcast they set out to make “the definitive Australian drama”.
Set across two timelines in the 20th century, Narrow Road is the story of lieutenant-colonel Dorrigo Evans, played by Saltburn and Euphoria star Jacob Elordi.
Evans is a celebrated World War II hero who is haunted in equal measure by the memories of an affair he had with his uncle’s wife and the torment of experiencing a Japanese prisoner of war camp, during which the memories of the affair helped sustain him.
Decades later, the older Dorrigo (Belfast’s Ciaran Hinds) battles with feelings of failure and guilt amid growing celebrity.
Mindhunter writer Shaun Grant and Justin Kurzel, director of Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth feature, are attached on the series, which has been in the works since 2019 when Porter was at Fremantle Australia.
When she moved to Sony Pictures Television-owned Playmaker in 2020 and later took up the leadership reins as the label rebranded to Curio, Porter, supported by creative director Gardner, took on the project to cement the indie as a presence in Australian scripted.
“We really believed Australia hadn’t yet really cut through and found that distinctly big Australian TV show - that was going to define what we, specifically what we, could do at Curio,” Porter tells Broadcast International.
“We want this to be the definitive Australian series, just as the book is [the definitive Australian novel]. It deserves it. We felt the weight of the mantle of adapting such an important book, and we’ve been so careful throughout because of that. We hope that we’re doing it justice, we believe we are.”
Grant and, in particular, Kurzel’s attachment have helped “attract those casts” and created an all-round high-end package of creative talent, according to Gardner.
The series has been picked up in numerous territories ahead of its launch after becoming one of SPT’s hot properties at last year’s LA Screenings, with Amazon in the US and Canada joining most recently alongside a high-profile acquisition by the BBC in the UK towards the end of 2024.
“Limited period, let alone 1940s and ’80s limited period, is really fucking hard,” Gardner adds. “It’s sort of the project you’re telling yourself you’re definitely not going to do, because they’re so hard to finance. You have to have the package. You need a director of the quality of Justin and you need scripts to be exceptional. Justin and Sean have a strong voice together, from the outset.”
Gardner believes the series is a love story, “love in all its forms, from enduring lifetime love to limerence”, although it talks about the human condition, guilt and tough choices.
Porter adds that the “lightning rod of the project” has helped to draw in buyers. In his director’s statement as part of the selling material, Kurzel asks: ‘What does a Justin Kurzel love story look like’?
“That’s what he’s delivered, and it’s beautiful,” she adds. “We believe it is possible for Australian content to be made locally but travel the world.
“We’ve got so many brilliant practitioners who work overseas but with the right stories we want be able to find the opportunities to work at home.”
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is exec produced by Porter, Gardner, Flanagan, Grant and Kurzel. Alex Taussig is producer. Principal production funding was provided by Screen Australia, with assistance from the NSW Government through Screen NSW’s Made in NSW and PDV Funds.
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