NETFLIX – ON DEMAND – SERIES
Let’s put ourselves for a moment in the shoes of the archetypal series viewer: exhausted by a hard day’s work, incapable of any intellectual effort, he or she prefers to collapse on his or her convertible rather than open a book, take a musical instrument to make a pigeon pastilla. The archetype is prey to two contradictory needs: we must reassure him while disorienting him – to change his mind without him having to think too hard.
These days, Netflix is offering an ideal product, six spectacular episodes nourished by adventures already seen a thousand times, rejuvenated by an almost new setting and distribution.
With its stubborn patriarch ruling over thousands of square kilometers covered by tens of thousands of cattle, its rebellious natives and its unscrupulous mining magnates, Territory could pass for a decal of YellowstoneTaylor Sheridan’s contemporary western that made Kevin Costner a star again. Except that this family and pastoral drama sheds the blood of the righteous and the wicked in the antipodes.
Familiar figures
The series takes its title from the Northern Territory, this immense Australian expanse far from the cities. This move operates as a rejuvenation (for spectators in the Northern hemisphere, in any case) on the proven (or hackneyed) dramaturgy of a melodramatic scenario. The light, the landscapes, the wildlife, the accents (it’s a safe bet that British and American audiences will need subtitles to understand Australian cowboys and their accent), the customs, everything is different, and it’s enough to let us get caught.
Colin Lawson (Robert Taylor) rules over Marianne Station, a ranch “big like Belgium”. The old man is attacked from all sides. His rivals want his ruin, the mining companies his subsoil, the natives recover their rights to their land. But nothing threatens Marianne Station more than the clashes between the descendants of Colin Lawson. We will find familiar figures like the unloved youngest son (Michael Dorman) and his wife devoured by ambition (Anna Torv, magnificent actress seen in Mindhunter et Profession : reporter), or the prodigal grandson taken out of the gutter to be given the keys to the kingdom.
Classical dramaturgy
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