Life
News
18.06.2020
A ‘Mcleod’s Daughters’ movie is in the works and I, for one, am absolutely losing it
WORDS BY CAIT EMMA BURKE
Saddle up, ladies.
Growing up in New Zealand I watched McLeod’s Daughters sporadically, but it was always there in the background, a familiar, comforting on-screen sight.
My 10-year-old self liked to ogle at the ludicrously handsome semi-shirtless men on horseback and was aghast at the endless amount of cliffhangers. But I never stuck around long enough to really keep up with who each character was and why they were so enraged about a bunch of cattle that sold too cheap at the market.
For the uninitiated, McLeod’s Daughters is a television show about two sisters, Claire and Tess, who reunite after 20 years apart when they both inherit Drover’s Run, a cattle station that their father left them.
Various dramas, romances, babies, unexpected deaths (see cliffhangers), people almost drowning in wheat silos, herds of wild horses, conniving sheep shearers and endless fights over cattle ensued – just your standard soap drama meets farm living fare.
But last year, I made a curious decision; I decided to rewatch McLeod’s Daughters in its entirety. Yes, that’s right, I watched all eight seasons, which comes to a grand total of 224 episodes. Sitting at approximately 45 minutes an episode, that’s over 10,000 minutes of my life that I spent deeply immersed in a fictional farm world. I can’t believe it either.
Even more concerningly, I watched this terrifying amount of television – enough time to have probably become very skilled at something useful, like knitting or sheep shearing – in a scarily short amount of time.
My housemates and friends just raise their eyebrows and nod knowingly when that period of my life is brought up because they didn’t really see me for a good few weeks there, and when they did, all I wanted to talk about was the new farming knowledge I’d acquired from the show.
But back to the matter at hand. For many, McLeod’s Daughters has a certain comforting appeal. Its focus on practicality, sisterhood and community was heartwarming, and the show had strong feminist undertones (and sometimes overtones) and grappled with issues like sexual abuse and consent – in short, it was ahead of its time.
It’s the first television show I can recall seeing that was centred around a group of women – their lives and ambitions and desires and heartbreaks and victories. It felt important at the time, and I’m sure it paved the way for more female-centric stories making their way to Australian screens. Oh, and it definitely passed the Bechdel test.
So you can imagine my reaction when I read the news today – and I can scarcely believe it as I type this – that the show is apparently going to be made into a movie.
A whole feature-length film deep-dive back into the world of unbridled sexual tension (see what I did there, bridles are for horses, something else I learnt from the show), and ladies doing things for themselves and running a big old farm far better than any of the men in the show ever could.
The news comes straight from the horse’s mouth, courtesy of Posie Graeme-Evans, the series creator. She announced via an Instagram post that a film is finally in the works thanks to a government grant and that the story is already being written.
“We’re developing a feature film. It’s called ‘The McLeods of Drovers Run’ and I started writing the story a couple of months ago. TODAY we heard that we’ve got backing from Screen Tasmania and the Tasmanian Government to write the very first stage of the movie. This is such a vote of confidence in McLeods,” she wrote in the caption, finishing with the aptest hashtag I’ve seen in some time, #backinthesaddle.
I’m looking forward to seeing how they insert McLeod’s Daughters into the chaotic 2020 narrative (if they do choose to do that). Maybe Tess will get herself cancelled by saying something a bit iffy on social media, or perhaps there’ll be an episode where Stevie convinces the others that defunding the police is an essential step forward for our society. The options are endless!
One thing though; Posie, if you happen to read this, I want you to know that I spent literal hours of my life wrapped up in Nick and Tess’s on-again-off-again romance, and for how much sexual tension there was, all I got was a brief makeout session and then a doona cover being pulled up over the two of them. In 2020, this simply won’t fly. Have you seen Normal People??
I implore you, cut the PG rating and throw this farm dog a bone by including a long-overdue sex scene or two. That’s all. Oh, and keep the cliffhangers to a minimum please, we’re still not over what you did to poor Claire.
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