I checked this out of my local library because of my admiration for Cate Blanchett. Her role in this long drama is actually a fairly minor one, and probably the least well-delineated character. I can't believe I made it through all the episodes, disliking it as much as I did. The best aspect of this drama is the outstanding acting 3 individuals: Mitchell Butel in the character of Nino, Linda Cropper as Bev, and Geoff Morrell as H.G. Bates. All three were new names for me, hence their performances were not only outstanding and subtle enough to nearly convince me to believe in the narrative, but also provided the excitement of discovering new (to me) talent! Sadly, the drama has many flaws, the worst of which is the inability to understand clearly much of the speech, especially that of Louisa, who is the voice of the narrator. Her British dialect is so thick that throughout the first few episodes I understood more of the Italian! Had the DVD set I borrowed actually included subtitles, the whole drama would have been clearer and more enjoyable. Does such a version exist, I wonder? I also found the pace to be deadly slow, with a great deal of time spent in various characters mooning and fantasizing about unrequited or dead lovers and in small groups of sad characters drinking themselves into oblivion. As a surprising murder takes place and lovers go back and forth, pregnancies occur, miscarriages are planned and carried out, etc. it seems that the story has devolved into a huge soap opera, spinning way beyond a believable tale. All in all, many characters are just annoying if not outright wicked. Yet, somehow, the writer assumes we will find them lovable or deserving of interest anyway. The relentless self-pity of some of characters is simply tedious. I found it impossible to believe in the Louisa-Nino relationship, ditto the Bev-Joe relationship. At the end, I felt inexpressibly sad for Geoff Morrell's character. Cate Blanchett's character is unpleasant and not really comprehensible. In short, the immigrant camp is a collection of raging drama-queens! Most of the dramatic tension in this series is created by the question of whether different characters will commit suicide or not. None of them have anything on their minds other than their sex lives or alcohol. Surely, such a diverse collection of people would yield something a bit more interesting, but this writer doesn't have the imagination to go there.
Review of Bordertown
