My Brilliant Career: Netflix's Spirited Period Drama Review

Corsets. Class conflict. A heroine who would prefer to write a novel to marrying a gentleman with a farm. Nope, this is definitely not Bridgerton going to regional Australia, this is Netflix’s new period piece My Brilliant Career, and it has come out to remind people that feminist anger has never looked so great in Edwardian lace.

This is a six-episode miniseries inspired by the 1901 novel by Miles Franklin of the same name; this is such a revolutionary book for its time that Franklin wrote the book as a teenager and asked not to reprint the book until ten years after her death since she felt like she painted herself into a corner. With all the legacy it carries from the 1979 film version, which starred Judy Davis and Sam Neill and is still popular among old film fans, the question here isn’t even about whether or not the show is good.

My Brilliant Career Netflix Plot Explained

Located in Australia’s outback in the early 20th century, the television drama concerns Sybylla Melvyn (Philippa Northeast), a witty, fiercely independent young woman whose only true dream is to become a writer a troublesome aspiration in an age when a woman’s career aspirations would not go beyond being a “wife.” Due to her father’s dubious financial dealings that ruin their family’s finances, Sybylla is sent to live with her well-to-do grandmother at her property called Caddagat.

Of course, this works out about as well as putting a cat through obedience training.

Sybylla causes a scandal within polite society almost immediately, manages to find herself an unexpected advocate in the form of her suffragist aunt, and becomes embroiled in a romantic love triangle between Harry (played by Christopher Chung), the handsome but broke heir to a nearby farm, and Frank (played by Jake Dunn), an Englishman looking for a wife to inherit the estate. Warning: Neither of them is quite what it takes for Sybylla to forget her dreams.

My Brilliant Career Cast

But Philippa Northeast has to carry this show on her back, and she does so with an unfair advantage when compared to the rest of the cast. Northeast is brilliant in portraying her Sybylla character – sharp, funny and sometimes quite annoying but definitely very human, such that one cannot help but forgive her for being quite difficult during dinner engagements.

The supporting characters are not slacking either. Anna Chancellor is deliciously starched up as the critical grandmother, and Kate Mulvany takes the scenes in hand as the aunt who realizes that she has found another troublemaker like Sybylla to raise rather than suppress. But where the drama really succeeds is in taking its world beyond what the novel offers by adding the First Nations horse trainer and dreamer of owning the estate herself, Nell Kirby (Sherry-Lee Watson).

My Brilliant Career Review: The Bridgerton-Style Vibes

This movie has been done following the playbook of popular shows such as Bridgerton or The Buccaneers: Anachronistic pop music arranged to suit the era, bright cinematography and a heroine that will not keep quiet and bow down. The movie My Brilliant Career adopts the same strategy and places the same into a rural Australian setting. And the truth is that it works. The set transitions nicely from one location to another including the Possum Gully cottage, Caddagat estate and Five-Bob Downs properties.

However, the needle-drop soundtrack is the biggest point of contention. You will either embrace the rebelliousness it brings or wish the creators had kept their modern music playlist at home. There is nothing in between.

Where the Show Stumbles

But no production is without flaws, and this production has its own weak point. While some elements of the so-called modernization of the show have the obvious purpose of ticking the right representation boxes and seem somewhat forced in the story, these aren’t bad concepts. The problem is that there are a couple of such concepts that just seem to have been bolted onto the show rather than arising naturally out of the characters.

The flaw can be found in the finale itself. Following five episodes of difficult and painfully earned honesty, the end of the season is overly sentimental and includes a montage that seems to have been lifted from a different series altogether. It’s as if the TV professor was passing out participation trophies all of a sudden.

Final Verdict

Yes, but with the caveat that you should be ready for an easy-going, romantic and often cheeky movie rather than literary experience. What the movie is not aiming to do is to make the movie version of the novel of museum quality, and it is not supposed to because the movie of 1979 is there for those who want more of a purist experience. What Netflix did was create a movie that is entertaining, visually stunning and wickedly funny.

Think of it as comfort food with the feminist flavor – familiar, easily binged in one day and sometimes over spiced but delicious until the last mouthful. For a hundred years Sybylla Melvyn has been telling women that they can be both ambitious and happy, and what it does is that it reminds them of it in better cinematography and music.

Rating: 3.5/5 – An energetic and beautiful film, at times over-emotional but saved by Philippa Northeast’s breakout role.