Ep 59 – The Narrow Road to the Deep North – Australian POWs and the Burma Railway

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we unpack The Narrow Road to the Deep North, the harrowing new WWII series starring Jacob Elordi as Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans. Based on Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-winning novel, the show follows Dorrigo’s life before, during, and after his time as a POW forced to build the Burma Railway. We talk symbolism, adaptation choices, and why every character in this show feels trapped—by war, by love, by legacy. Plus, we ask, once again, why is it so f*cking dark?

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosie, the reviewer.
This week we are talking about The Narrow Road to the Deep N,
which is a show that came out in2025 S this year.

(00:25):
And it's also a book of the samename by Richard Flanagan, which
came out in 2013. And it was the winner of the Man
Booker Prize in 2014. But the show's written by Sean
Grant and directed by Justin Grotzo.
You can watch this show on Amazon Prime if you're lucky.

(00:46):
It's a fictional story about thelife of Australian surgeon
Doriga Evans before, during and after his time as a POW in a
Japanese internment camp in a giant jungle where they were
first to build the Burma Railway, also known as the Death
Railway. And you can also check out their
episode about Virgin River Kwai,which features the very similar

(01:10):
way. The title comes from an early
18th century truffle diary written in a style that combines
poetry and prose called Haiban. The poet Matsuo Basho wrote
about an epic and dangerous roadtrip he had taken that spanned
1500 miles. 2 Japanese officers in the book discussed Bashers

(01:30):
work and at one point in the show Dori Goes gifted an English
translation by a Japanese delegation.
It's an apology for his time in the period of your camp.
What did you think of the show? Well, I read the book 1st and I
sort of stalled out around 1/3 of the way through and then I, I
came back to it and I did end upfinishing it and I did end up

(01:53):
enjoying the remainder of the book.
It kind of picked up for me. And then the things that I did
start to enjoy about the book, there's quite a lot of
supporting characters that we get a lot of insight into, but
only based on the perception of the main character for the most
part. And there's also quite a lot of
symbolism and stuff. And I feel like they tried to

(02:15):
carry that over into the show, But it's pretty difficult, I
think, to do some of those things to give us kind of like
an in depth character study and to completely convey what the
characters are thinking and feeling when you are making a
television show or a movie basedon a book.
That's pretty like introspective.
So the show wasn't my favorite. I probably won't watch it again.

(02:39):
I thought that the acting was pretty decent and there were
definitely parts of it that wereemotionally impactful, but
overall it was a little grim. It was really dark, and I mean
that in a literal sense. It was hard to see what was
going on a lot of the time. And yeah, there's lots of little
character moments from the book that didn't necessarily get
picked up in the show. I just not my favorite, I think.

(03:02):
What about you? Have trouble saying this, but I
love this show. I thought it was really good and
it is really dark, both literally and figuratively.
I can't say that I enjoyed it, like it wasn't the joyful thing
to watch at all, but I thought it was really good.
And I have not read the book, sothat's probably also something

(03:23):
that's influenced my like of it.But everybody in the show seems
kind of trapped in their circumstances and everybody's
miserable, and I don't know why I would like this show.
It doesn't seem like a show thatI would like normally, but I
did. I thought the acting was great.
Maybe I was just in the mood forsomething really fucking grun,

(03:45):
because it's really fucking grun.
Some parts of it were hard to watch from an emotional point of
view, were hard to watch, And others, like you said, you can't
fucking see what's going on. So many hard to watch scenes.
But yeah, I just kind of really,really, really enjoyed it in a
kind of morbid way. I don't know.
I think I will watch it again because I feel like there's more

(04:08):
to be discovered from it in the second watch.
Maybe. I wonder if I would feel
differently after reading the book because we've talked about
the show a lot and the book after we both seen the show and
a lot of things are quite different from the book.
So that's what's gotten me really interested in reading it.
I feel like if I enjoyed the show without reading the book,

(04:32):
then I'm definitely going to enjoy reading the book if
there's a lot more character stuff going on in there, So
looking forward to that. Yeah, I definitely think it'll
give you a greater depth of understanding maybe and you'll
probably still like the show, you'll just have different
thoughts and opinions on it. As you said, we talked about
some of it offline. And as always, I think when they

(04:53):
make changes from books to TV shows or movies, some of them
make sense to me. And I get it, it's for
streamlining the narrative, etcetera.
And then some of the changes they made I was like, but I feel
like that changes the meaning and I'm not 100% sure why they
did it. Perhaps that was part of my
ambivalence about the show. Yeah.
And I guess from a movie making perspective, I really liked some

(05:15):
of the narrative choices in a way that the show flips forward
and backward between before the World during the war and after
the war. And they made some interesting
parallels in the storytelling, which I thought were quite nice
to see, and things that I appreciate a lot.
And then on the other end of that, there's just scenes that

(05:35):
are so brutal, but you can barely look at the screen.
And it's a brave choice I think should be so blatant about the
violence that's going on in the story.
I can't say I really enjoyed it,but I do think it's a brave
choice. Yeah, and I'm we'll certainly
talk about arguably the worst scene in both the book and the

(05:56):
movie a little later on. I need to know, did you cry?
No, I did not. I did.
Yeah, that's valid. It was a pretty rough, I don't
even know how long it was, but it felt long.
It felt long. I'm sure it felt longer than it
was. All right, let's get into the
plot. All right, so there's five

(06:23):
episodes. In Episode 1, we start off in
Syria in 1941 and we get our group introduction to our main
character, Dorago Evans, played by Jacob O Lordy, as well as a
lot of the soldiers that he served with who will be spending
a lot of time with him in the POW camp later.
And so they are in no particularorder.

(06:43):
Frank Gardner played by Thomas Weatherall, Rooster McNeese
played by Sam Parsonson, Tiny played by David Howell, Jimmy
Bigelow played by Edward Chum, Fahey played by Kaylin McCarthy
and Sheep had Morton played by Fabian Maccallum.
And the reason why they're in Syria is because Australian
troops as well as Free French and Indian troops were engaged

(07:04):
in the Allied campaign in the summer of 1941 to overthrow the
Vichy French government in Syriaand Lebanon.
They thought there would only betoken resistance, but the
fighting ended up being really bloody and intense, and the
allies were ultimately victorious and an Armistice was
signed on July 14th. So that's why we're starting off
right in the middle of a war zone.
I thought the opening was quite confusing because it kind of

(07:27):
opens with them just bantering in very Australian voices and it
seems kind of all chummy and allgood.
And then someone takes a kid somewhere and they stop on a
landmine and you're like, oh, wait a second, this is not a
chummy movie. And honestly, again, with the
literal darkness, if I hadn't known that that's what was

(07:49):
happening from the scene in the book, I would have probably had
to rewind and watch again because I was like, wait, what
is happening? It is so dark.
I think I watched the first episode and like the half of the
second episode and I was like wait a second, I'm not going to
enjoy myself if I keep watching this during the day in the
sunlight so let's wait for a nightfall.
Yeah, I love on a movie set whenthey turn, you know, a single

(08:11):
light on, you know, it's like wecan still, I understand that
it's meant to be night time or it's meant to be dark.
If you light it in the way they traditionally like movies at
night, like it doesn't have to be so dark we can't see
anything. I'd like to refer all movie
making people to Banner Brothers.
That's where they still knew howto do it.
Thank you very much. Yeah. 12 months later, we get a

(08:35):
little skip forward. We are introduced to Dorigo's
fiance, Ella, played by Olivia the Younger, which is an
Australian name that I think must have been touched at one
point. But we meet Ella because she's
speaking on the phone to Dorigo's uncle's wife, Amy
Mulvelly, played by Odessa Young, after Dorigo is Mia.

(08:59):
And the scene and it's so weird because you don't know yet
what's going on. Amy's like, I'm sure he'll call
you soon. It's such an awkward scene.
He's like, what's going on? Why aren't they?
What's what's happening? There, yeah.
And it's the first of kind of quite a lot of flipping around
in time you do during the show and the book as well.

(09:20):
I think one of the things the show did well is that I found it
pretty easy to follow, like where you are, where are in the
timeline and that kind of stuff.I wasn't confused about this at
all. Like I've seen other people on
the Internet being confused about it.
I'm like, why? It's pretty clear to me, but I
will say in a slight variation of our usual saying, all these
white girls look the same. Really, I was able to tell them

(09:44):
apart because one of them had red hair and one of them was
blonde. Except in one scene where you
thought they were smashing and it was definitely the other
person. Yeah, but I think I was confused
because in the book that's what happened, so.
I do like that we get not one, but two female characters that
are a major part of the plot. I thought that was good.

(10:05):
Even though they're they're they're for the main character,
which is annoying, but at least they got lots of dialogue and
they got to carry all the emotional weight of this show, I
think. Yeah, for sure.
Dorago was taken prisoner at theBattle of Java, which was a
naval battle in the Pacific thatculminated in the Japanese

(10:25):
invading the Dutch held island of Java, which was part of
Indonesia on February 28th, 1942.
It was a terrible defeat for theAllies, resulted living in
Japanese supremacy in the Pacific for quite a while.
Over 82,000 Allied PO WS were taken, including almost 5000
Australians. It's another one of those
stories that I don't really knowfrom any schooling I've had,

(10:46):
even though you would think, right that it's a Dutch held
island. I would I should know about
this, but I've never been taughtthis part of history.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I generally speaking,
reading up on what the Australians were up to in World
War 2 for this episode, I learned a lot because I didn't
know very much. It's nice.

(11:07):
Love that. Yeah, many years later, we get
introduced to older versions of our main characters.
So you meet older Ella, played by Heather Mitchell, and older
Dorago, played by Kieran Hines, and Dorago's being interviewed
about his time as a POW. And we start to get a sense of
the way other people's perception of him as a war hero
has shaped his life. And that's kind of a factor in

(11:29):
what you were saying earlier about all the characters feeling
trapped. He very much is trapped in this
idea that other people have of him.
And he's working on a book abouthis experiences with his fellow
POW, Rabbit Hendricks, played byWilliam Water, while Rabbit
Hendricks's drawings, because Rabbit Hendricks did not survive
the war. So he's working on this book and

(11:51):
it's kind of dragged his military career back into the
limelight. And he doesn't seem to be
enjoying himself very much. I really enjoy these two actors,
especially the man playing Dorigo, because he's great in
the show and he's very unlikable, but in a very good
way. You can tell that they too, like
even Ella, although Ella feels trapped, trapped in loyalty to

(12:14):
Dorigo or something. She's very loyal to him and
wants him to succeed for whatever reason.
I don't know, this whole show, it is a character piece that
going really end up it's quite strange.
And I just wanted to briefly talk about the drawings in the
book and the character that you just talked about, Rabbit.

(12:36):
He's obviously dead by the end of it, but we see him with
Dorigo in the POW camp and he reminded me a little bit of
David Ruppster and brothers. Except David Ruppster is a
different personality. But he's there to observe and to
make sure that people know what's going on in the war.
But he does it through absolutely haunting drawings.

(13:01):
I do wonder who made these drawings for the show and I'd be
really interested to know, but it doesn't say any more,
unfortunately. That even making these drawings
would have been punishable by death because the Japanese did
not want it to get out. What things were like in the POW
camps. And there's a passage in the

(13:21):
book where Rabbit dies of cholera, I want to say, and they
have to burn his body and all ofhis belongings because it can be
contagious. And in the book, Dorago tries to
throw his sketchbook onto the fire.
It's almost symbolic of wanting to get rid of the memories and
the evidence of what had happened to everyone as a way to

(13:43):
leave it in the past. At the end of the fire, he
realizes that the sketchbook haskind of fallen out and it's like
a bit singed, but it has survived.
And so he ends up carrying it around with him for the rest of
the war. So like, again, kind of this
whole thing where it's like, as much as you might want to let
things go and leave them in the past, they'll come back for you.
You're. Right, that's our interest.
That that just makes me want to read the book.

(14:05):
Yeah, there's little bits and pieces where I was like, ah, I
wonder why they didn't include that in the show.
But I mean, I guess other peopleread it and thought different
things were important than I thought, which is fine.
We all have our different perceptions.
Right before the war, again, we get to see where younger we go
and Ella kind of meet her parents and he does this really

(14:27):
lackluster proposal to her whilethey're in bed.
Like, do you want to get married?
I don't care if you say yes or no, but do you want to?
It's a little bit of a setup, I think, for what their
relationship is going to be. It doesn't necessarily seem
loveless to me at this point yet, but you can also feel that

(14:47):
it's not super loving either. Different, very different people
too. She's from a rich family and her
family has all the connections. And her grandfather, didn't he
write the Declaration of Independence OR something, or
the Constitution or something like that?
So she's very well connected andhe's just this, I don't want to
say he's a Hick, but he's not the son.

(15:09):
They're from very different backgrounds.
Yeah, I think to their relationship is really, I feel
like you don't see it as often these days where at the time if
you were of a certain age and you were going steady with
someone, you were probably goingto marry them.
Pretty much everyone got marriedback then.
And so they kind of end up in a situation where she has these

(15:32):
connections and because of her family, he's kind of benefiting
from that. And the current of their life is
pulling them into this marriage,even if necessarily they're not
perfectly suited for each other.And Dorago in the book seems
fine with that, with being sweptalong on this current until he
meets his uncle's wife, Amy, andthat's when it kind of hits him

(15:54):
that he could be really happy orreally in love, and he's not.
And that's when he kind of realizes what the difference is.
Yeah. And another thing that kind of
pushes them in this direction isis the war, right, The impending
war. And they have a little
conversation where she, Ella, admits to being kind of scared
for him. And he says very stupidly,

(16:16):
because you know, when he says that that it's not going to be
true. He says, I'm going to be a
doctor. I won't be in danger.
You're like, all right, you've said it now.
Yeah, yeah. Unwise.
We also got young Dorago meetingAmy, who's his uncle's young
wife. So his uncle Keith is, as you

(16:39):
might expect, maybe a couple decades older than him, and Amy
is about his age. And they hit it off and we get
introduced to this recurring motif.
Amy's wearing a red flower in her hair and we kind of see it
throughout the rest of the show.And we also meet the Uncle
Keith, played by Simon Baker, and he very foreshadowingly says
the phrase to him, what's mine is yours, Dorago.

(17:02):
And you know these doesn't know yet what's going to happen
between Dorago and Amy, but. We do.
At this point, you can just tellalready.
And they've made a change here from the book, right?
Because when Dorago meets Amy inthe book, he doesn't know that
she is his uncle's wife. Yeah, when I meet.
But when I meet in the show, he doesn't know because he meets

(17:22):
her at the pub and thing that they have and he's like I'm
looking for my uncle and she's like he's act.
But they do meet and you can instantly tell them there's
going to be tension. But to be fair, I think Amy's
stupid because Keith, the actor who plays Keith, is quite
charming and good looking. And why would you not want to be

(17:45):
with Keith? Well, we discussed this, but in
the book we get the background of the characters later.
And then it turns out that Amy was working for Keith in this
pub that he owns and he sort of was always flirting with her and
she was always kind of like, no,I'm good.
And then one day he sort of initiates sex and she doesn't

(18:07):
super want it, but she does thatthing that sometimes women do
where we're just like, it's not really worth it given her job
and all that stuff to fight him off.
So I'll just let it happen. And so then she gets pregnant
and then she gets an abortion and then her and Keith get
married anyway. But their marriage is very on

(18:30):
the surface from the outside. They have all these friends that
they hang out with, like couple friends, and obviously they own
the pub together and XYZ and allthat stuff.
But at night she doesn't let himtouch her or she tries not to.
And so their marriage is not this super stable, loving
relationship from which she is deviating when she meets Dorago.

(18:52):
So I think in a way, like she's also trapped.
And when she meets this young, handsome army surgeon, he's kind
of her way out. Or at least being in a
relationship with him for a brief time gives her this
feeling of being young and aliveand not stuck in her situation.
I always wish that they kept that in the show a little bit

(19:15):
more because they've softened keep character quite a bit on
the show. He's actually quite a nice guy.
He's not, at least as far as we,the audience get to see.
He's not a meanie or an asshole or doing anything inappropriate.
I feel like I would have believed her love story with
Dorica a little bit more if thatgets it done.

(19:37):
Yeah, I mean, I think people still grow apart from each other
and fall out of love with each other or they're looking for
something else, like they maybe got married too young or
whatever. Like I still, I don't think it
necessarily makes the relationship less believable,
but it's definitely more understandable in the book why
she would stray. Yeah.
And it's, I think it's got something to do with the

(19:58):
direction as well. I feel like their relationships
to me doesn't feel, I mean, withtheir, I mean, Amys and Doritos
doesn't feel very loving. It feels kind of like escapism a
little bit, which would if you go with a caged.
It would still work, but it's just not as compelling.

(20:19):
Then the book is like that too. Like I never got the sense that
if they had ended up together, they would have lived happily
ever after. Like I didn't get that sense at
all from the book. And even the way that they meet
in the book, they meet at a bookstore, and they have this
little conversation. And in his mind, he is super
attracted to her, but he almost kind of resents her for being

(20:42):
this young, vibrant force that is not within the plan for his
life. And then he thinks that he'll
never see her again. So he's like, well, as long as I
never see her again, I can go back to Ella and I can still
convince myself that I'll be happy.
But then, of course, he does meet her again when he goes to
the inn to see his uncle, who hehasn't seen in many years.
And that's when he immediately knows that he's going to make

(21:04):
this decision. That train wrecks his life.
So I don't know. I think you're right that they
are both trying to get away fromsomething and not necessarily,
you know, a deep love for the ages.
No, right? Interesting.
Again, I really want to read thebook and just I wonder how many
times I'm going to say it this this episode.

(21:26):
But anyway, we skipped forward to time in the war.
We skipped to Thailand in 1943, going on the other Australian
DRWS begin the back breaking work of building the Burma
Railway and this railway, man itlooks brutal.
Yeah, it was a 415 kilometer stretch of railway line from

(21:47):
Thailand to Burma, which is now Myanmar, through some of the
toughest terrain in the world. And they did not have machinery,
they were working by hand, They were not adequately fed, they
didn't have enough water, they didn't have any medicine.
So it ended up costing 90,000 civilian lives.
So these would be from countriesnearby that Japan had taken

(22:09):
over, as well as the lives of 12,000 Allied soldiers, and it
was built to facilitate the Japanese invasion of India, but
it ended up being mostly dismantled after the war.
I wonder if it was a budgetary choice or like a narrative
choice. But you don't see any of the
other locals, many of whom were also forced to work on the

(22:29):
railway. If there was something like
60,000 total PO WS, but there was over 200,000 locals, people
from Thailand and surrounding area.
So yeah, I know it is, you know,interesting that we don't see
any of those. I wonder though, they keep it
quite tight in the camera work. You don't really see beyond our

(22:49):
main characters very often. Like you see them work, but you
don't see like the long stretch of railroad or anything.
So they kind of get away with ita little, but it's so when they
kind of scratch my heart. Yeah, definitely feels like a
choice. Yeah, and I also was a little
bit confused for a second because remind me and correct me

(23:11):
if I'm wrong, but we don't see them become the nurse of war,
right? No.
So on my mind struggle to catch up a little bit, even though,
like you said, the time periods are quite, they don't even do
anything specific to the the visuals or anything, but it's
pretty clear when we're swappingbetween timelines.

(23:33):
And one thing I quite like is when they switch between old
Dorigo and Dorigo in the PRW camp between us, since you
always hear the signs of the jungle bleed into the older
Dorga's life and then it switches back.
It's quite smart. Yeah, yeah, effective for sure.

(23:54):
Episode 2 Old Dorago is having an affair with Lynette Mason,
who's played by Essie Davis. It's kind of the latest in a
long series of decisions Dorago has made to kind of self
sabotage his life because Lynette is the wife of his
surgical colleague Rick. And Rick, who's played by Dan
Wiley, goes to Dorago's house totell his wife Ella about the

(24:17):
affair. He kind of suggests to Ella that
they should sleep together to get revenge on their respective
spouses, but she's not into it. I just say how both of them are
so like luster about it. They're just like they're having
an affair. And then he asked her if she
knew it. She was like, I suspected.
And they're just, you can tell that it's definitely not the

(24:39):
first time for Dorico at least. But there's something about
older again that makes me, even though it's a Dick move and he's
kind of a Dick in general, I almost can't really be mad at
him for some reason, and I can'ttell what it is.
It's something about the acting.You kind of just feel sad for

(25:00):
him instead of angry with him. Yeah.
I don't know, there's something tragic about him.
Even as an older man I want to be angry about him cheating, but
he's so blase about it, it clearly doesn't mean anything to
him. And she doesn't particularly
seem to care either. Lynette.
It makes me feel stuff and I can't really decide whether I'm

(25:22):
angry or just pity him. Yeah, this affair comes up early
in the book, and one of the things that kind of made me
stall out around the 30% point was that Dorago's thoughts about
Lynette and his, even his initial thoughts about Amy made
me think that. I mean, I don't want to put this
on the author, but sometimes youget a vibe that the person whose

(25:45):
perspective we're getting doesn't like women very much.
And that is not something that Itend to appreciate because it
means that I don't really trust you with the female characters
going forward. And so I took a little break
because I was like, I don't know.
And then I went back to it, and it did end up getting better.
But yeah, definitely. You get the sense that Dorago

(26:05):
thinks. I mean, to be fair, he thinks
little of himself, but you can tell that he also thinks little
of the people around him. Yeah, he seems to be the kind of
character who's never satisfied,not with himself without also
not with anyone else. He said this invisible, really
high bar, and he doesn't know what it is, the bar where the

(26:27):
bar is. But he also kind of for it kind
of feels like that. Yeah.
Young Durigon Amy's flirtation continues and they start to have
an affair. Keith is so of catching on, but
also doesn't really want to admit to himself that he's
catching on to it. Because Keith in the show really
fucking laughs on me. He thinks he's really fucking

(26:49):
lucky. Keeps telling Dory though, like
man, I'm so lucky and I'm like, dude, how blind are you?
But I think he's not blind, he'sjust trying not to see.
Yeah, the scene where they're Dorago and Amy's flirtation
crosses over into the physical is she cuts her thigh.
And then him being a surgeon is like, oh, let me look at it.

(27:13):
And it's bleeding and he leans over and he's kissing the blood.
I don't know, some people might be into that.
There's this whole thing about the ocean in their particular
younger self storyline, and I'vebeen trying to figure out what
the ocean means, but I don't think there's any.
It doesn't necessarily have to be a deeper meaning, but they're

(27:36):
constantly swimming and they're seeing there's beautiful skies.
And then maybe it's his life theway he wants it to be.
It feels a little bit like almost I did it to me.
Also in the book, there's quite a lot of symbolism and imagery
around clocks in the passage of time and stuff like that.
And I think that the ebb and flow of the ocean kind of plays

(27:57):
into that, where when he's in this affair and having these
moments with Amy, he feels like he's sort of frozen out of time
and then he has to go back to his regular life again.
Tough man, again, I'd feel sad for him but I just kind of pity
him. Come on dude, you have choices.
Like make your choices and you won't be as miserable.

(28:19):
That's the thing. When characters continually make
terrible choices and trap themselves in a prison of their
own terrible choices, and then they use their unhappiness to
make everyone around them unhappy, I'm like, get it
together. It makes me wonder if the
author, like he said, if he really doesn't like women or if
he did it just on purpose. If he just tried to write a

(28:42):
super miserable man, like have fun, would that be?
But also how difficult? Because don't you want your main
characters to have a semblance of happiness?
Because I don't think he has anyhad any friends in.
Life, no, I mean, he's definitely his life just
certainly did not go the way that he planned.
For sure. At the POW camp, the situation

(29:05):
has rapidly deteriorated. So in episode 1, they are doing
really intense back breaking work, but also they're putting
on these little performances foreach other at night like these
little plays. And it's they're having a tough
time, but they're relying on their camaraderie with each
other. And then the second episode,
this is where things have started to really fall apart.

(29:26):
So men are starving and dying ofvitamin deficiencies and jungle
diseases. One of the Japanese officers,
Major Nakamura, is played by Show Kasamatsu, and he has no
mercy when Dorago tries to prevent sick men from being
worked to death. He's like, yeah, I need this
many guys to go on this work crew.
And Dorago's like, well, I don'thave that many guys who are
well. And the majors, like, I don't

(29:47):
care, figure it out. And there's a conversation
between the major and Colonel Koda, played by Taki Abe, which
makes it clear that the Australians are not about to get
any relief from the abuse. The Colonel says this is a
battlefield and men die on a battlefield.
This relationship between and the major reminds me a little

(30:07):
bit of is it pretend a river cry?
I think it is where they also have these kind of talks.
And the major, compared to the Colonel, is quite soft, but he's
not soft. You can see him also struggle
with orders and honor and all that because he does sometimes
try to that medicine. But then it's like the Colonel

(30:28):
saying no, no, they're not getting any.
Do you figure it out? Because I think in Japanese
military and just in life, if you don't get your shit
together, you're dishonorable and you get punished for it.
The policy or belief system and the Japanese military was that
if you surrendered and allowed yourself to be taken prisoner,
you were worth less than a dog. And so they thought any

(30:51):
Australians who were prisoners didn't deserve to be treated
like human beings. And also, I mean even the
Japanese army didn't have enoughfood and medicine.
So best believe they were not giving a a portion of what
little they had to these POW's. They were like, well, some of
you may die and that's a risk weare willing to take.
And to prove the point, the Colonel kind of takes the major

(31:13):
outside to teach him something. And they bring over Tiny, who's
very ill. Like he's probably almost in
that store at this point. And he's naked and he's
humiliated already. But he kind of says, look, I'm
only teaching. That's what he says to Tiny.
And he takes out his Cortana andjust be handsome just like that

(31:35):
in front of every. Yeah, it's super violent.
And it's really this articulation of this sense of
helplessness that Dargo has. Like he's a trained Dr. he's a
surgeon. He was put in this unit
initially to help people and to cure people.
And now by virtue of them losingtheir other commanding officers

(31:57):
in the command structure, he is the CEO for all of these guys.
And he doesn't have the medicineor supplies to help anybody.
And so he he runs a little hospital and he's doing his
best, but ultimately his best does not keep people from dying.
And then all of these men standing around and watching
this one guy behead their friendbrings this whole image of that

(32:18):
into clarity. I also thought there's something
strange about the whole happening because we know that
time he's dying like he's he canbarely stand and he's like Drew
and he can't really any. You say your prayer like he
knows he's going to die by the hand of this Colonel.
But it almost feels, even thoughI know it's not because I know

(32:41):
it's not, but it almost feels like a mercy, even though it
shouldn't be. But it feels a little bit like a
mercy because he is dying a violent, really horrible death
from disease, but it's not meantto be a mercy.
So it's not a mercy, but it still feels like 1.
Yeah, and they talk about this abit in the show, but they go
into a lot more detail in the book.
Where Tiny, when he first came to the camp was this big, strong

(33:05):
strapping dude. And he was all about they would
have work quotas and he would try and do like double his quota
or whatever. And so every time Tiny hit this
insane quota, the Japanese wouldraise the quota for everybody.
And men who couldn't meet the quota would die.
And so all of Tiny's friends were like, dude, stop working so
hard. You're making it harder for

(33:25):
everybody else. And he was like, no, I got to
show these Japanese guys what Australians can do, blah, blah,
blah. And for a long time, his body
doesn't seem to be surrendering to the torments of malnutrition
and and illness and all that kind of stuff.
And he seems to be just this guywho's completely untouchable.
And then overtime, his body juststarts to deteriorate.

(33:48):
And so he is this character thathas caused the deaths of other
people. And then when this killing
happens, you kind of wonder what's going through the heads
of of the other guys around him.Yeah, I just realized now that
they do show a little bit of himshowing off to the Japanese in
the beginning of the show. And it's sometimes, again, it's

(34:09):
all these white guys like the term.
So it's sometimes hard to figureout who's who, especially in the
dark scenes, but there are a fewcharacter moments spread out
over the episodes where you get to see a little bit more of the
camaraderie and the characters, and there are some silly moments
as well. I don't know if it's in another
episode or if we just didn't talk about it.

(34:30):
It's one of those things where even though they're in a POW
camp, there's these moments of levity that they need to be able
to survive. And it's so hard to understand
if you're just watching it from a lifetime perspective.
But the show tries to include it.
But I think in the book it'll bemore clear and more in depth.

(34:52):
For sure, Episode 3, where in the POW camp, young Dorago
unsuccessfully attempts to save fellow POW Jack Rainbow, played
by Christian Byers, by amputating his leg in less than
ideal conditions. As you can imagine, they're in
the jungle. He doesn't have a sterile room,
he doesn't have sterile tools. And every time he amputates a
little bit of this guy's leg, gangrene and infection set in

(35:15):
because they don't have the supplies to make that not
happen. So he keeps having to cut off
more and more. It's pretty grim.
And he's continually meeting with the major to ask for
resources and continually not getting those resources.
So he's doing his best with is what he has.
But there's a scene that immediately follows this where
some of the other men managed topilfer a steak from somewhere

(35:38):
and they bring it to Dorago. And they're like, yeah, we got
this for you, you know, as sort of a as a recognition of all the
hard work that he's doing to tryand save lives.
And you maybe didn't get this impression from the show, but in
the book, Dorago is resentful because all the men have placed
him on this pedestal where he feels like he has to turn the

(36:01):
steak down because he's like, well, I shouldn't eat it because
if I eat it, they'll they'll have this perception of me as
not this perfect, you know, amazing savior person that they
thought. And he's furious about it
because he really wants to eat the steak, as you can imagine.
And then they they take it away and they spread it among the

(36:22):
people in the hospital. And he's so fucking mad that
they have made him be this guy who makes decisions like that to
come across a certain way when he doesn't feel that way in his
heart. Like in the shower.
Obviously, I've not read the books.
In the show, you just think thathe really cares about his men,

(36:44):
but obviously he does not care about the man as much as he
cares about himself and their, like, perception of him.
So it's interesting. In the show, it just makes him
seem humble and likable. It's a strange reaction though.
He gets really upset. But yeah, I was like, why is he
so mad? Yeah, I also think it's kind of

(37:06):
an interesting thing because in the book he is so mad at himself
for a lot of the things that happen, and he feels guilt and
shame and he doesn't take much of himself.
But I mean, if you think about it, the end result of him
turning that stake down is that a bunch of the sick people who
needed it got food. And the end result of him doing

(37:26):
a lot of the things that he did,even though he didn't want to do
them and he he was doing them because it was making him look
good. Well, the motivation doesn't
really matter because the end result was that people were
helped. So I think it's kind of this
thing where it's like we all hold ourselves to this higher
standard in our own minds, but what really matters is your
actions towards other people. I do think in the show, I don't

(37:49):
think you can make a show where the main character is really,
really unlikeable the whole time.
So I think it's quite good that in the show you got this
perception that at least when he's in prison, he's a good guy.
I mean, I won't say that he's not a good guy.
He's just a he's got some strange thoughts about himself

(38:11):
and other people. Well, and I mean, and I mean, I
don't know, like I think when you're reading the book, you're
supposed to have an understanding that like, part of
the reason why he is so unlikeable is because he thinks
he's unlikeable. And he's our unreliable
narrator, so we're relying on his feelings on the matter.
Right. I sometimes forget that happens
in birth. Odorigo faces an inquiry about

(38:33):
one of his patients because of acomplaint by Rick, which seems
to be motivated at least in part, by the fact that Odorigo
is sleeping with his wife. It's interesting because they do
these parallels between PLW, Dorigo and Odorigo.
Now again, with this surgery thing that's going on, it's so

(38:55):
funny, it's so good. I think the thing too, that's
more articulated in the book is that Dorago is kind of a
reckless surgeon and so much like his these affairs that he
has cheating on his wife, where he's kind of sabotaging his
marriage. He's also kind of, I wouldn't
say maybe consciously trying to sabotage his surgical career,
but part of him is so mad that other people have put him on

(39:16):
this pedestal that he wants to like, ruin that perception of
him. It's wild but you can also
wonder is he so reckless becauseas a POW that's all he could be?
Like it was all or nothing. Yeah, I mean, possible.
We go back to pre deployment. Dargo and Amy, there's a little
bit of trouble in paradise initially.

(39:37):
Their affair is and it's super, super early days and she thinks
he's being way too chummy with Keith.
And then we get a shower sex scene that you might have seen
around the Internet. I feel like I've seen it around.
People have been sharing it. Really.
I've not. I haven't seen that.
People want to see naked Jacob Allordy I think so that is
probably why. I mean fair, I just the

(40:00):
relationship he has with Keith. I wanted him to have that
relationship but also he can't be fucking at me at the same
time. Yeah, it's kind of messy.
We switched back to old Dora Gorgon, and he's gifted a copy
of The Narrow Road to the Deep North by a Japanese delegation.

(40:22):
And this scene, man, he says this woman in this delegation
says, I'm sorry for what happened.
And he says it's in the past just like that.
And like, do you really? Do you really believe that?
Do we go? Because I don't think you're
doing. Yeah.
And we see this circle in the book that's part of this circle
symbolism that was also in the original book too.

(40:45):
There's quite a lot of it. And I guess that's sort of maybe
what part of the ocean symbolismis part of this, Like ebb and
flow, this idea of you keep coming back and your life keeps
echoing in on itself and patterns keep repeating
themselves and like, everything is circular.
Yeah, I guess it works slightly better even in the book, which
is another reason why I want to read that.
That's my fifth time I've said that.

(41:07):
Yeah, Rabbit also dies, and there's this big burning pyre
outside of the hospital tent where they're burning all these
bodies. I'm going to read a quote from
the book, actually, because I thought it was pertinent.
So in the book, they're having this burning pyre.
This is where Dorago tries to burn the Hendricks sketchbook,
and it doesn't burn. And so with all these bodies

(41:28):
heaped up that all the men turned to him to sort of give
the eulogy or deliver the funeral service.
And he does not feel qualified to do that.
But he kind of just says some stuff and he tries to inject
religion into it because he thinks that that's what you're
supposed to do. And he talks about God, and then
he's talking to his buddy after and he says I've got no argument

(41:51):
with God, Dorago Evans said to Bonex Baker as they pushed and
poked the pyre to keep the flames wrapping around the
corpses. Can't be bothered arguing with
others about his existence or otherwise.
It's not him I'm shitty with, it's me finishing that way.
What way? The God way, talking about God
this and God that. Fuck God, he had actually wanted
to say. Fuck God for having made this

(42:12):
world fucked be his name now andfor fucking ever.
Fuck God for our lives. Fuck God for not saving us.
Fuck God for not fucking being here and for not fucking saving
the men burning on the fucking bamboo.
But because he was a man, and because as a man he was the most
conventional of unconventional men, he had instead gabbled God,
God, God during his funeral service whenever he had nothing

(42:33):
else to say. And about untimely, pointless
death, he had found that there was very little that he had to
say. God, yeah, yeah.
The dying of Rabbit made me sad because shortly before he dies,
he says to Doricar as he's rasping on the hospital bed.
He's like, you go take care of the more important ones, which,
Oh my God, imagine. Yeah, yeah, everyone does.

(42:57):
In episode 4, a lot of things happen.
We first hear these words. You burn me because it's Amy's
favorite poem, and she says it to Dorigo in the bookstore.
It's this little flirtatious moment where like, oh, wait a
second. That's a flirtatious thing to
say, but it's also just actuallya poem, so it comes back three

(43:20):
or four times. We see Dorigo write it in his
speech about his book about a million times.
And Sam and I couldn't read whatit said, so I had to go back and
watch it in slow motion to see what it says.
But it just says you burn me over and over and over.
Yeah, this is where we hear about Amy's abortion story.

(43:41):
She tells it to Dorago. And we also get some more of
Keith basically figuring out that he's on to them and from
his behavior, like they all know, but it's and it's like a
matter of time before it comes to a head.
But they're all kind of pretending that that's not going
to happen and the romance is doomed anyway because Dorago is
going to be shipping out in three days, so it was never

(44:02):
meant to last, and it's clearly not going to.
Last no. And Keith finally confronts Amy
about the affair, but she deniesit point blank.
She says there's nothing going on, which she knows he knows
that there is. But she phones Dorico, I'm
guessing where he's stationed, and she tells him that you don't

(44:23):
belong to me, you belong to Ella.
Go back to So that's different from the book of Don, right?
Well, that does happen in the book, but he hasn't shipped out
yet. So he gets that phone call from
Amy and he's like, wow, she's just upset.
Like I'll go talk to her. And so he's going to try and go
talk to her. And then someone comes to find
him and they're like, actually, I know we said we were shipping

(44:44):
out in three days, but we're shipping out tonight.
And he's like, oh shit. He's like, I wanted to go and
like hash this out and like, youknow, but it doesn't end up
happening. He has to leave.
And yeah, you, I think you get more of a sense of like, it's
not a full stop on the relationship, or at least Dorago
would prefer for it not to be. So he wants to fight for it a
little bit more in the book thanhe does in the show.

(45:05):
I feel like in the show he seemsnot just in his relationship,
but in lots of things, he seems kind of almost despondent to the
entire situation. It happens to him and he's like
miserable, but he doesn't reallykick into action to do anything
about anything. I don't have to is the right
word because despondent is just kind of like you're really like

(45:28):
sad and upset. But I think you mean more.
He's like he's, you know, not taking part in the action.
He's kind of like paralyzed in in just letting the events
happen to him. Right, I, I know there's a word
that I'm looking for. I just can't it's not coming to
my head, guys. It's not my native language.
All right, I'm going to use thisonce as the next year.

(45:49):
So that's tonight. Yeah, so in a parallel, old Ella
brings up Dorago's current affair with him and it's just
sort of muted. It's not a knock down Drago
fight or anything. She obviously knows that he's
cheated on her before and she's just kind of resigned to the
fact, you know? That's the word.
That's the word I was looking for.

(46:10):
Just resigned because that's what Dorago is all the time too.
Like stuff happens and he likes,he looks really miserable and
then he's like, I guess, I guessit's happening.
Can't do anything about it. These people are all victims of
their own decisions. They're doing stuff and then
they're like, oh, who could haveimagined these consequences
about which I can do nothing? Like all of them, like even

(46:33):
Ella, Ella stayed with him for all this time.
And you can tell that she knows that that's a decision she made.
And she of course had a reasons like they have kids and all
that, they have family and I think she really wanted it to
work and all that sort of stuff.But still, she's also attracting
this relationship. All of them are just trapped.

(46:53):
And perception too, like she's no different from Dorago and
that the way other people perceive their relationship,
them as like a power couple, heras the power behind the throne,
like she's all, she's all wrapped up in that too, right?
Yeah, true. That's her personality as much
as it is his podcast. Yeah, to other people, at least
in the Fear W camp, Frank is starting to fall apart.

(47:16):
Frank is kind of, I want to say Dorago's closest mate within the
group. He's also so my favorite
character in the show, so I hatethis.
He's physically starting to fallapart.
What happens is he kind of stepson a rocky bit of terrain and he
breaks his foot, I think becausethey're all emaciated and weak

(47:39):
at this point. Like there's nothing left of him
and he's been made work leader, but the Japanese tell him to go
back because he's can't work. He's in no position to do any
working. But Rooster and another PRW play
Herky from working on the tracks, and this snowballs
horribly into Frank being beatento death by a notorious guard

(48:04):
called Big Gorana, played by Charles on.
And this is one of those scenes that is impossible to watch.
It's absolutely horrifying. Yeah, it felt really long in the
book, and it sure also felt longin the show.
They literally do not pull any punches.
Like they show you every single beat that he gets and it just

(48:27):
kills him. We watch him die and we hear him
cry and known and it's horrible.Like please don't ever.
I don't want to ever see that scene again.
Yeah, in the book he gets beatenso badly and that he dies by
suicide. Like they find him the next
morning face down in the sewage pit.
Pretty grim. And I think perhaps worth noting

(48:50):
is that Frank is an Indigenous character, and he is played by
an Indigenous actor. And in the book, they reference
this occasionally, like he has kind of a racist nickname and
the Japanese referred to him as like, half cased.
And so it is relevant that he isone of the only characters of

(49:11):
color among the Australian contingent anyway.
Of course, like, excluding the Japanese, But yeah.
And then the fact that his deathis caused by someone who is also
sort of the odd man out in his group.
The Gowana is a Korean soldier who's been conscripted by the
Japanese, and so they are the two racially distinct characters
in each of their groups. I hadn't even noticed about

(49:34):
until you just said it about hisnickname, which they purposely
leave out of the show I think. I don't think they use, it
probably was. It's quite a it's quite a racial
slur. You can look it up if you want
to know what it is. I won't repeat that, but yeah,
he drowns in rainwater. It's really fucking sad.

(49:56):
And also well done to the extra playing this and also to Jacob
Lordy, because the scene is heartbreaking and they're both
excellent in it. You can tell.
Here we go. It's really like he's trying.
He's like begging for them to stop, but he realizes that he
has no power, even though he's got slightly more power than

(50:16):
everybody else who has no power,but it's still no power.
Yeah, it's like, what is even the worst of what little power
that he does have if he can't prevent his men from being
killed? Also relevant because it comes
up later, there's a story that Frank tells as he's dying.
And in the book, in the book, this is Frank's story.
They've all heard this story a million times.

(50:37):
He said it constantly. And so basically, before Frank
went to war, him and his wife used to go to this fish and chip
shop every week. And they would have a little
date and he would always look atthe fish in the aquarium and
think about how they seem trapped and he really wanted to
free them. He told the story all the time.
And so when he's dying in the show, he tells the story.
And then you can tie a little ribbon around it because it'll

(50:58):
come back in episode 5. And Dorago, meanwhile, receives
a letter from Ella with news that Amy and Keith have died in
an explosion or a fire or something at the pub where they
work. And for him, like the show must
go on, but I feel like the way they do it in the book is that
the very, very, very last chapter is Dorago receiving this

(51:20):
letter. This is clearly the moment that,
or for him anyway, the way it feels to him is that like this
is the moment that his life changed into something that he
would never be able to control ever again.
In the show, he receives the letter before Frank dies, but he
doesn't open it. And then Frank dies and he opens

(51:40):
it the next morning, I want to say, because it's like, and it's
like just another blow, just another thing to make him feel
hopeless. In episode 5, we started then in
the PRW camp and things are not looking out for Dorico because
he is forced to choose 100 men for a near certain death March

(52:01):
because the Japanese need men atanother camp because too many of
them have died. Which you wonder, right?
Like how do they how do they think this is going to work?
But he goes after the man and hesays anyone which cheers on can
go, but then he still has to go and tap them on the shoulder if

(52:22):
they're the ones who have to go on this March.
And one of them, a guy called Chum, says to him, We'll meet
for a beer after when me when weget out of this and Chum dies on
the March and all, Dorago keeps having dreams about this guy.
Before these guys walk off to goon the March, they all come and
shake his hand to thank him for his leadership.

(52:45):
And it's just the most heartbreaking thing I've ever
seen because they all know that they're probably going to die.
Yeah, it's super grim. The next thing we get is that
the railway is complete and Dorago dispassionately watches
the major collapse due to a longstanding illness that was never
treated because of his quote UN quote duty to the Empire.

(53:06):
And to me this was just almost like the final nail in the
coffin of like the major was thebane of their existence.
You know, he was the reason for all this weapons grade terrible
shit happening to them in their perception anyway.
But really he was beholden to somany other things including duty
to empire, the orders from his superiors, etcetera, etcetera,
that really what it comes down to is that he was trapped to he

(53:28):
also was. It's not.
The direction of his life is notbased on his personal choices
either. Then that breaks things off with
old Dorigo, but at least all dorigos of the hook in the
inquiry about the surgery and they're like, we can't really
fall to you for what you did on the operating table.
The thing about old Dorigo beingoff the hook, and the inquiry
too, is that it's just more of other people like cutting him

(53:51):
slack that he doesn't feel he deserves.
He almost wants to be punished, right?
In Australia in 1946, we see Dorago and Ella's wedding and we
also get a scene, the one that Isaid to tie a ribbon around,
where Dorago and his fellow surviving Pows break into the
shop from Frank's Fish Story andthey free all the fish into the
ocean. It's very symbolic.

(54:13):
Yeah, I did like the scene, I'm not gonna lie.
You also get to see who survived.
You never see any any of the bigmoments.
Like you don't see the end of the war, you don't see them
being captured in the beginning.Like you skip between all these
moments back into ordinary life.It's nice that they got to have
the little fish moment because it's obviously also symbolic for

(54:36):
their freedom. But are they really free is the
question. I guess they're not.
Also in 1946, we are in Singapore and we see the iguanas
execution. Yeah, Korea was ruled by Japan
from 1910 to 1945, and as a result, about 200,000 Koreans
fought in the Japanese army in World War 2.

(54:57):
Some volunteered, but many were conscripted.
And in the Gowanus case, he was conscripted and forced into the
Japanese army. They were considered second
class compared to the Japanese soldiers because the Japanese
considered Korean culture to be inferior.
And so prior to the Gowanus hanging in the book, he wishes
that he had something real to die for because he's been seeing

(55:18):
people that he worked with Japanese who are, you know,
going out there and are dying for the emperor and and
whatever. And, and, you know, he's like,
oh, and the Australians died forXYZ or for each other for
camaraderie. And he doesn't really feel like
he has anything, like his life doesn't hold that meaning.
And there's kind of these parallels between Dorago being
forced to send men to their deaths and being tortured by it,

(55:41):
and the Gowana dying for an execution he was ordered to
carry out while those who gave the orders get away Scott free.
Yeah, they don't really bring this home in the show.
They should have, I feel. I don't know if I just missed it
or if it's really not in there, but I didn't realize that he was
Korean until you told me. So it's either because I didn't

(56:02):
take close enough attention, because I watch this late at
night, or it just wasn't in there.
I don't think they made it superclear.
I mean, like his name is Korean and stuff, but I don't think
that was like they were very explicit about it.
Yeah. So Japan also 1946.
Nakamura and Koda are two main Japanese officers.
They reunite and they have this kind of conversation about the

(56:26):
idea of the dishonor and being taken prisoner.
The idea of they know all these trials are going on where the
Allies are holding many Japaneseofficers accountable for what
happened in the POW camps. And they talk about the idea of
vengeance versus justice. How oh, the allies say that
they're carrying out justice, but to us it feels like

(56:47):
vengeance. And who knows what they did
during the war and, you know, that kind of stuff.
And so they have this whole conversation.
And then the book, we get quite a lot of depths.
Like, you follow Nakamura throughout the entire rest of
his life, and you find out that he gets married and he has kids,
and he actually ends up working for the company that Coda works
for. And towards the end of his life,

(57:07):
everyone in his community thinksthat he's such a great man.
He was such a good father. He was such a good husband.
He was a volunteer in his community.
He was a pillar of the neighborhood, all this stuff.
So yeah, I just thought, I guess, you know, they ran out of
time in the show or whatever, orthey pick and choose, like, what
they prioritize. But I did think that was an
interesting sort of way to go inthe book.

(57:28):
Yeah, I would have liked to haveseen that because it's such a
contrast right from what he did in the world.
It would have been nice to see him deal with the feeling of
being, but on a better side. That's like Dorigo feels.
Also still after the war, but wesee Dorigo bring Rabbit
Sketchbook back to his wife Maisie, played by Brenna

(57:49):
Harding. And it's probably the softest we
see Dorigo be after Amy. They have a little moment where
they talk about notes and rooms and how in a couple, one person
is the room and the other one isthe note that fills the room.
And it's quite sad. You think they are going to have

(58:10):
an affair, but you see them justfor a second laying back
together, but they're fully clothing.
And then it flashes back to Amy before the war, where Dorigo and
you're talking about this island, I think, with a
lighthouse on it, where Dorigo says there's no one there.
We can escape today, never come back, and it's this Little Dream

(58:32):
of theirs and that's pretty and it's also sad.
Yeah, there's actually a really nice passage in the book where
after this whole conversation about notes in rooms, they tell
you what happened to Rabbit's wife throughout the rest of her
life. And they're like, yeah, she got
remarried, She outlived him too,and she threw rabbits medals in
the fire and they kind of got melted down.

(58:55):
And then it tells you over time,the house burned down and then
the metals got covered in dirt and then, like, flowers grew
over them and etcetera. So it kind of gives you this
idea of, like, the passage of time.
And they talk about how the entire rest of her life, she
never finds that love again thatshe had with Rabbit or finds
that person that she fits with. And towards the end of her life,
she kind of forgets his face. But she never forgets, like,

(59:15):
what that feeling was sad and also pretty.
Yeah. Old Dargo tells Ella that
they're sort of like as much as they both like hurt each other
over the years or really door gojust hurt Ella for the most
part, but they're kind of they understand each other.
So they're having this little conversation.
And he tells Ella that he thought he once saw Amy after

(59:36):
the war. And Ella tells him that that Amy
came to see him once and found his wife and child, and then she
went away and just never came back.
And it's a super interesting choice because in the book he
does see Amy after the war and she also sees him and they don't
speak to one another. And it's this whole thing where

(59:59):
Keith had told Amy that Dorago was dead, that he had died in
the war. And then Keith almost
immediately died in this pub fire.
And initially it was thought that like maybe Amy had also
died because some other people have died in the fire and they
couldn't identify them. And so but then it turned out
that of course, Amy did not die.She survived.
But Ella wrote to Dorago and waslike.

(01:00:20):
Oh, I found out that it definitely was Amy who died so,
so sad. And so he, Dorago, never looked
for Amy because he thought she was dead.
And then she was kind of upset because she was like, well, she
over time found out that he had survived the war because he was
kind of this famous war veteran.And she was like, well, why did
he never look for me? And so when they kind of see

(01:00:41):
each other later and he can't bring himself to speak to her,
and she kind of was like, well, I don't want to talk to him
either. And then Amy, like, goes off
into the rest of her life and they never see each other again.
I quite like that idea from the book where Dorigo in Amy's eyes
becomes what Dorigo thinks he is, wordless and shitty.

(01:01:01):
Yeah, yeah, it's a. It's another circular moment
where it actually becomes true. Yeah, and Dorigo takes his
granddaughter to see this exhibition of rabbit sketches,
and he gives the speech that he's been working on this whole
time about rabbit and his time as a POW, etc.
I was quite emotional at this exhibition as he speeches

(01:01:22):
because in the reflection of theclass of the house or in or the
museum, I guess he sees all the guys or the Pows, even the ones
who died. And then after his speech, we
see Young Dog Go after the war where he thinks he sees only in
a like a crowded, I think they're at like a station or
something that's very busy and he sees her and he keeps looking

(01:01:45):
at her and like she sees him too, I think, but he's not sure
if it's her. And then it kind of flashes back
and forth between that and old Dog Go as he's remembering that.
And then he's in the car with his wife and his kids, I'm
assuming. And then there's a car crash.
No, he's not with his wife. It's just him in the car.

(01:02:09):
It's just him in the car and he's driving back home probably.
And I could tell something was going to happen and it did
because he gets hit by a car andhe gets like swung out of the
through the windshield and he dies on the road.
And that's how he dance. But as he dies, we see him and

(01:02:29):
DRW Dorigo in the jungle together, and there's this peace
there. Like he finally finds peace and
death. I guess maybe I don't know what
they're trying to say with that image, but it's pretty.
Yeah, in the book he doesn't dieright away.
It takes him like 3 days to die in the hospital and so he kind
of gets this prolonged life flashing before his eyes kind of

(01:02:52):
moment where he's dying and he doesn't really know what's going
on. And it's kind of like different
bits and pieces of his life are flashing by in like a kind of
kaleidoscopic way. And then after he dies, that's
when we get the chapter of YoungDorago getting a letter saying
that Amy is dead. And that's kind of how the book
ends. Wow, that's a really different
framing. I think you would have to do it

(01:03:13):
that way because I don't think it would make much sense in the
show if you structured it like that.
Although it would be kind of an interesting oh, here's the
moment where everything changes.I don't know.
Anyway, that's the end of the show, guys.

(01:03:39):
We have some notes. The book is important based on
Flanagan's dad's wartime experiences as a prisoner.
And actually Dorica was based ona real man, on Lieutenant
Colonel Ernest Edward Barry Dunlop, who was well known for
his medical work with the Australian prisoners of the
Japanese and the subsequent welfare work on her behalf after

(01:04:00):
the war. So this man actually did exist.
I think it's a loose facing, butyeah.
Yeah, I do wonder if you want tomention this next will apparent.
Oh my God, There was like, I think Flanagan and doing the
research from the book read somewhere that when people
starve, like basically all of your fat goes away, obviously.

(01:04:21):
And so that includes the fat on your butt.
And if you have like a jungle disease where you're shitting a
lot and you're super, super skinny, your asshole basically
just hangs out. And he describes this several
times in the book. Like, I'm not kidding.
It's not once it gets described like several times that their

(01:04:43):
anuses are protruding or whatever.
And I was like, dude, I get it. They're really skinny.
Like they're I got it. I'm sorry for making you talk
about it. I just wanted our audience for
now. Yeah, well, you know what?
He really doesn't pull any punches on making it clear how
brutal the Australian POW experience was.
So I guess that's what we're meant to glean from that.

(01:05:06):
We're writing the show. Why is it so dark out of thumb?
Because it is so fucking dark. And why is it so fucking dark?
Read that now. Right.
Is it never daytime in the jungle or anywhere else?
It's always not when you're OK or W.
It's always shit. There's never in sunlight.
I'm gonna rate the show. I'm gonna rate in eight.

(01:05:28):
Why is it so dark out of them? Because I really did like this
show and it made me think quite a bit.
I also think I liked it because we talked about it quite a lot
after, which always changes my perspective of it.
I thought the acting was great. It was nice to see Jacob lordy
and something meaty, even thoughhis character was kind of sad

(01:05:51):
and not there sometimes. But the acting was good.
I like the female characters, even if they work on the
victims. The music was really touching
and emotional. We haven't even talked about it,
but it's quite a big part of theshow.
I don't know, I like the structure.
I like the way we have three different timelines and I think

(01:06:13):
I want to watch it again. So that's why that's it.
Yeah, I would say I liked the way they structured the
timelines and the way they kind of wove everything together.
I think I was easy to follow. I think the parallels were
really effective. I will say that I don't know,
I've been finding that after my initial uncertainty about the
book, when I did end up finishing it, I don't know if I

(01:06:35):
would say it's one of my favorite books I've ever read.
But it really did make me think a lot.
And we have talked a lot about it offline after we finished
watching the show and after I finished reading the book.
And I've certainly found myself coming back to it and thinking
more about the characters and about the symbolism and the
meaning and stuff like that. So to me, that means the author
did a really good job of creating this book that hangs on

(01:06:57):
to you and and that you carry with you for a little while.
I don't know if the show did thebook, the amount of justice that
I wanted it to do. And also, man, it was really
fucking dark a lot of the time. So I think I'm going to give
this show maybe like a 6 1/2. Why is it so dark side of 10?
But I would give the book probably like an 8 1/2.

(01:07:19):
Why is it so dark side of 10? I'm really interested to come
back to this after I finished the perk, see if I've changed my
mind. But I will tell you if I do ever
finish the book because I'm reading too many books.
If I do finish it, I will tell you what I think.
Nice. Yeah.
I mean, and I think to like going back to the show after the

(01:07:41):
book, you can really sort of puttogether, you know, what the
themes are. You can be like, oh, cool, like
this foreshadowed this thing that happened later in your
mind. You can draw connections a
little better. Are you reading anything?

(01:08:02):
Am I reading anything new since yesterday when we last recorded?
No, I'm not you. Are you reading anything new?
Yeah, well, I mean, sort of. It's next on my docket.
I'm going to be reading The Devil's Brigade by Robert H
Edelman and Colonel George Walton, and it's about the force
that ended up becoming the GreenBerets after the Second World

(01:08:23):
War. And there's a couple of movies
based on this book I gather thatwe may cover soon on the pod.
Thanks everybody for listening to another episode of Rosie.
You can find us wherever you getyour podcast.
You can follow us on Instagram at Rosie the Reviewer Podcast.
You can rate US five stars if you'd like.
We'd love you very much if you did.

(01:08:45):
You can send this episode 2 takehim for Lordy.
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So please go look at it and readus.
Thank you. See you.
That's right. Bye.