Airdate: Gallipoli

In case you missed it, Gallipoli is confirmed for a premiere Monday February 9th on Nine -avoiding that battle (presumably) with Downton Abbey and Broadchurch.

Nine began screening watermarks with the date yesterday.

No time is confirmed as yet, but presumably it plays “after The Block.” As there will be a lot of viewers who want to watch one show but not the other hopefully Nine locks in a start time and sticks to it. This is a story that should be given due care.

The first episode is a double, thereafter it should continue with one a week.

Gallipoli, a landmark television event, tells the story of 17-year-old Thomas “Tolly” Johnson (rising international star Kodi Smit-McPhee) who lies about his age to join his brother Bevan in the Great War.

Gallipoli is the definitive dramatisation of the bloody Anzac battles against the Turks that did so much to shape the Australian identity 100 years ago.

This seven-part series which covers the entire eight-month campaign is the must-see television event of 2015.

The First Day begins as dawn breaks on April 25, 1915, and Anzac troops go into battle on the beaches of the Gallipoli peninsula. Landing in the dark, Tolly, Bevan and their mates are thrust into the chaos, heartbreak and despair of the doomed campaign that embodied the courage and mateship that forged the Anzac legend.

One month later, in My Friend, The Enemy, we find the young soldiers dug in, struggling to hold their position against unrelenting Turkish attacks. But amidst all the fighting both sides agree to an armistice to bury their dead. They trade gifts, cigarettes and broken conversation, and the Anzacs are confronted with the realisation that the Turkish soldiers are just like them.

Gallipoli also features Harry Greenwood, Lachy Hulme, Matt Nable, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Lincoln Lewis, James Callis, Grant Bowler, Anthony Hayes, Justine Clarke, Damon Gameau, Ashleigh Cummings, Gracie Gilbert, Dan Wyllie, Sam Parsonson, Tom Budge, John Bach, Nicholas Hope and James Stewart, as well as a host of Australia’s most exciting young actors.

Gallipoli is produced for the Nine Network by John Edwards, Imogen Banks and Rob Connolly from Endemol.

Directed by Glendyn Ivin (Beaconsfield, Puberty Blues), with scripts by Christopher Lee (Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War, Paper Giants, Rush, Police Rescue), Gallipoli is inspired by Les Carlyon’s best-selling book of the same name.