When does My Brilliant Career take place? The novel behind it was written by a teenager
A period drama arrived on Netflix on August 13 with no dukes, no ballrooms, and a lead who says "I'd rather be a writer than a wife" like she means it. I watched all six episodes in one sitting and then had to explain to a friend why everyone's hem is filthy.
The answer to both questions is the same: this is 1901 in rural Australia, and nobody is having a clean, easy time.
The when
The series is set in 1901, the year Australia federated and, not coincidentally, the year Miles Franklin's novel was published. Sybylla Melvyn (Philippa Northeast) is a poor farm girl in the bush who gets summoned by her wealthy grandmother (Anna Chancellor) to make her society debut and, ideally, land a husband with money.
Sybylla has other plans, mostly involving a pen. The show's stakes are: does she marry Harry Beecham (Christopher Chung, of Slow Horses) or the foreman Frank Hawden (Jake Dunn), or does she skip both and go be a novelist?
Showrunner Liz Doran describes the thesis with admirable bluntness. "Love versus career is the umbrella under which all our stories are told," she told Netflix's Tudum. She also cheerfully admits the love triangle is invented: "In the book, Harry Beecham is the main love interest and Frank Hawden is, frankly, a bit of a tosser."
Doran's two guiding aesthetic principles for the show were "unbuttoned and dirty-hemmed." Costume departments everywhere: take notes.
The where
Filmed entirely in South Australia, including Adelaide Studios, the series stands in for turn-of-the-century New South Wales. Sybylla moves from her family's drought-hit farm to her grandmother's estate, Caddagat, and the nearby town of Gool Gool. The look is deliberately painterly; the production team pulled visual references from the Heidelberg School, the Australian impressionists who painted the bush in ochre and soft blue.
A few things the show adds that the book doesn't have:
- Augusta Beecham (Kate Mulvany), Harry's suffragette aunt, is a brand-new character.
- First Nations characters, including Nell and Betty Kirby (Sherry-Lee Watson and Miah Madden), which Doran calls "fundamental" to the adaptation.
- Two of the novel's aunts merged into one, because six episodes is not a lot of episodes.
The who: a teenager with a pen name
Now the part that made me sit up. My Brilliant Career was written by Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, who started it at 16 on her family's farm in New South Wales and published it in 1901 at 21, under the name Miles Franklin, hoping people would assume a man wrote it. They did not. For long.
The novel is semi-autobiographical to a degree that caused problems. Franklin's neighbors and relatives recognized themselves, were displeased, and she eventually pulled the book from print. It didn't come back out until after her death in 1954. She did, however, leave her estate to fund what is now Australia's most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, so the last laugh was extremely hers.
Franklin also wrote a sequel almost immediately, My Career Goes Bung, which is the best title in Australian literature and also a hint about how she felt about the whole thing.
The other adaptation you've probably heard of
Yes, there's a 1979 film with Judy Davis and Sam Neill, directed by Gillian Armstrong, and yes, it's a classic. Doran's take is that the movie had to narrow the story to a love plot because of running time, while six hours of television lets everyone else in the book breathe.
Netflix has labeled the show a limited series. But there's that sequel sitting right there, and Sybylla Melvyn is not a character who takes "limited" well.
