Territory

Territory is as big as Texas -but can it really be as big as Dallas?

Netflix’s ambitious new 6 part outback drama is loaded with big ticket items: a vast, captivating landscape, aerial photography, marquee stars, crocodiles, wild dogs, guns, brawls, melodrama and a helluva succession battle.

Life in the top end is fraught with danger.

“Everything up here is trying to kill you the climate, the land, the animals. You learn to live with it,” says Emily (Anna Torv), wife of Graham Lawson (Michael Dorman) whose father Colin (Robert Taylor) must decide who will steer Marianne, the largest cattle station in the world when he retires.

But Colin is left with a dilemma when favourite son Daniel (Jake Ryan) dies suddenly at the top of the series. Alas Graham lacks character, and buries his woes in booze, setting him further apart from his estranged father.

While Anna is convinced she can manage the station, her own family history, from the rival Hodge clan, leaves her at odds with her bully father-in-law. Meanwhile her daughter Susie (Philippa Northeast) has returned home with her own ambitions to succeed, while stepson Marshall (Sam Corlett) turns up unexpectedly.

But Marshall is also busy being a bad boy with pal Rich (Sam Delich) and has designs on Sharnie (Kylah Day) in a triangle that can only end in tears.

But wait there’s more.

There’s also Emily’s swaggering brother Hank (Dan Wyllie) who is but one of Colin’s adversaries on a neighbouring cattle station. There’s rising indigenous cattle boss Nolan (Clarence Ryan) trying to build a business the white fella’s way but finding himself rejected by his own elders. There’s mining magnate Sandra (Sara Wiseman) who wants to get her hands on Marianne’s land and her handsome, city-raised son Lachie (Joe Klocek) who is pursuing Susie.

Lastly (?) there’s also Jay Ryan as a local cattleman Campbell who yearns for Emily to rekindle their faded romance.

It’s a lot.

Colloquially described as ‘Dallas with Dingoes’ or ‘Succession in the Outback’ it surely aspires to the sprawling, family legacy melodramas of the ’80s but it does so with an Aussie eye. There are bad guys, shootings, helicopters, trucks, big toys, and high stakes.

Robert Taylor as the patriarch is perfectly detestable, spitting out misogyny and hatred without consquence. Anna Torv on the side of justice and good has plenty to rail against. Alas Michael Dorman’s character is fittingly insipid -I suppose everybody has a role to play in the scheme of things.

Graham: “I’m not who you think I am Dad. I just need a chance.”
Colin: “You don’t have the backbone.”

Despite the dialogue sometimes being mechanical it all hangs together fairly well, aided by a plot that keeps moving forward and the gravitas of performers like Torv and Taylor.

Territory is unmistakeably a man’s domain which Emily tries to crack but the younger females in particular are often ornamental. Thankfully the landscape is magnificent and director Greg McLean offers plenty of aerial shots of rugged gorges, diving crocs, bird flocks. Just the shots of thousands of wild cattle on the run in muster is pure Australiana and there’s even a Mad Max-inspired convoy of trucks burning down the highway.

Territory isn’t without fault but it has broad appeal with its sights set firmly on an international audience. On that front it deserves to do well.

Territory is now screening on Netflix.