An Accidental Soldier: sneak peek

Who says Australia never produces anything outside of suburban dramas?

Next month ABC1 screens the World War I telemovie An Accidental Solider, directed by Rachel Ward.

The cast includes Dan Spielman, Bryan Brown, French actor Marie Bunel, and Julia Zemiro.

Filmed in Western Australia, and produced by Goalpost Pictures and Taylor Media, this is based on the book Silent Parts written by John Charalambous.

It’s World War One, and while the horrors of war ravage Europe, Harry Lambert (Dan Spielman) is a shy and gentle baker, living and working in a rural Australian town. But with the armed forces desperate for more troops to send to the front line, and feeling the growing hostility and shame from within his own community, Harry signs up to do what he can.

He joins the Service Corps as a baker and finds himself working behind the lines on the Western Front in France, amongst men who even the army brass can see are unfit for fighting. When the bakers are thrown into the front line, Harry is shocked, it’s not what he signed up for – he’s no fighter. Watching his mates die around him, Harry can’t bear the thought of dying before he has known love and walks from the battlefield.

Wounded and wretched, Harry finds himself in an unfamiliar countryside that’s swarming with gendarmes on the look-out for deserters. Harry barely avoids capture when a local, Colombe Jacotot (Marie Bunel), shelters him from the authorities. In doing so, she puts her own safety and freedom on the line.

Colombe is a stoic farm-wife, bowed by hard work and tragedy. Her husband is missing and her only child, her son, is a casualty of the war.

Working in the munitions factory and breeding geese on her farm, Colombe is just surviving, one day at a time. Harry’s arrival changes everything.

Within her bare cottage, Harry and Colombe discover a love that is as powerful as it is unexpected. Through Colombe, Harry learns true courage. Through Harry, Colombe discovers beauty in a life that she believed was barren.

Colombe’s grieving neighbour Isabelle (Julia Zemiro), and Captain Foster (Bryan Brown), the advocate at Harry’s court martial, underestimate the transformation wrought when two people find passion, in all its joy and hurt when they thought love had passed them by.

Risking prison or worse for their individual actions, will their unlikely love survive?

Sunday 15 September, 8.30pm on ABC1.