Ambition, Australia, and the problem with behaving yourself.
I may be Canadian, but I have long been an absolute sucker for Australian film and television, from its Indigenous storytelling and historical dramas to its comedies and smaller character pieces. There is something about the combination of dry humour, cultural specificity, eccentric personalities and landscapes that seemingly stretch forever that consistently works on me, which meant Netflix's new adaptation of Miles Franklin's MY BRILLIANT CAREER already had an unfair advantage.
That enthusiasm only carries something so far, especially when MY BRILLIANT CAREER occupies particularly sacred territory within Australian culture. Franklin published her semi-autobiographical novel in 1901, while Gillian Armstrong's 1979 adaptation became a landmark of Australian cinema through Judy Davis's performance and its refusal to domesticate Sybylla Melvyn. Any new adaptation consequently inherits both an extraordinary protagonist and the slightly terrifying responsibility of finding something new to say about her.
Liz Doran's six-part reimagining responds by refusing to behave like a museum piece, embracing contemporary music, heightened romance, playful humour and an expanded collection of characters around Sybylla. It is occasionally too enthusiastic about reminding us how modern it intends to be, but there is an infectious confidence to the approach, especially when the woman at its centre was already challenging expectations more than a century before anyone decided she needed updating.
Philippa Northeast is the reason nearly all of it works, delivering a performance so energetic that Sybylla frequently seems incapable of occupying a room without changing its atmosphere. Northeast does not approach her as an inspirational feminist symbol who conveniently possesses all the correct opinions, but as a funny, impulsive, stubborn and occasionally infuriating young woman whose certainty about what she doesn't want is considerably stronger than her understanding of what comes next.
Sybylla wants to write, although wanting something and possessing the freedom to pursue it are entirely different matters when her family is barely surviving at Possum Gully. Her father's financial failures have transformed everyday existence into an exercise in scarcity, leaving her mother understandably unimpressed by a daughter dreaming about literature while practical responsibilities accumulate around them. The resulting tension gives Sybylla's ambition economic consequences that the series wisely refuses to ignore.
There is something particularly effective about establishing her independence within those circumstances, because rejecting convention becomes considerably harder when convention offers tangible financial security. Sybylla's family cannot afford to treat marriage purely as an emotional question, while she cannot accept the assumption that economic necessity should decide the shape of her adulthood. MY BRILLIANT CAREER finds considerable dramatic energy within that contradiction rather than simply treating everyone questioning Sybylla's ambitions as hopelessly backward.
Her arrival at Caddagat consequently feels like entering another universe, exchanging the hardship of Possum Gully for beautiful clothes, enormous meals, social gatherings and the security afforded by wealth. Yet the freedom is deceptive, because Caddagat simply replaces one collection of restrictions with another. Sybylla suddenly has access to opportunities she could barely imagine at home, provided she eventually accepts the respectable future everyone around her has already decided would suit her.
Anna Chancellor makes Mrs Bossier far more interesting than a straightforward authoritarian grandmother, playing her as a woman whose affection for Sybylla is completely genuine even when their ideas about her future are irreconcilable. She believes marriage, money and social position will protect her granddaughter from precisely the hardships her immediate family has experienced, meaning Sybylla is not rejecting cruelty so much as another woman's sincere definition of security, happiness and adulthood.
Genevieve O'Reilly brings a gentler presence as Aunt Helen, creating another valuable counterweight to the louder personalities surrounding Sybylla. Helen understands more than she initially says, and O'Reilly gives her warmth without turning her into a conveniently enlightened mouthpiece for the audience. The women of Caddagat consequently offer competing versions of womanhood rather than forming one oppressive block, which makes Sybylla's resistance considerably richer than a simple generational conflict.
Christopher Chung's Harry Beecham introduces the complication Sybylla would probably prefer not to encounter, because he is charming enough to make the conventional future suddenly look much less objectionable. Chung possesses wonderful chemistry with Northeast, and the series takes obvious pleasure in letting that attraction simmer through flirtation, arguments and increasingly ridiculous levels of sexual tension. Their relationship is entertaining precisely because Sybylla cannot simply dismiss Harry as another unwanted suitor.
Harry is not a monster, bore or embodiment of patriarchy waiting to trap Sybylla inside a miserable marriage, and making him genuinely appealing is essential to the story. If the choice were between an awful husband and artistic freedom, there would barely be a choice at all. Instead, Sybylla must confront the considerably more difficult realization that somebody can be kind, attractive and worthy of love without necessarily belonging in the future she imagines.
Jake Dunn's Frank Hawdon provides another romantic complication, although the adaptation occasionally becomes so enthusiastic about Sybylla's romantic life that its priorities threaten to drift away from her creative ambitions. Dunn nevertheless gives Frank enough vulnerability and personality to avoid functioning solely as Harry's competition, while his presence allows Sybylla to discover that romantic freedom can become every bit as confusing as romantic restriction when nobody has provided her with a map for navigating either.
The romance is unquestionably more pronounced here than in the material's earlier incarnations, one of several decisions that make the series feel deliberately designed for a contemporary Netflix audience. That approach will inevitably divide viewers, especially anyone expecting the restraint associated with Armstrong's film, but reducing this adaptation to an Australian attempt at BRIDGERTON would undersell what Doran and her collaborators are doing with Sybylla's competing desires for intimacy, independence and creative fulfilment.
Kate Mulvany nearly walks away with every scene she enters as Augusta, whose eccentricity initially makes her seem like another source of comic disruption before her importance to Sybylla becomes clearer. Augusta offers something neither Harry nor Mrs Bossier can provide: living evidence that a woman can build an adulthood outside the narrow template Sybylla has been presented, making her encouragement meaningful because it treats writing as a legitimate vocation rather than an adolescent indulgence.
Mulvany's exuberance also fits beautifully within the adaptation's broader comedic instincts, which are among its greatest strengths whenever the series stops worrying about appearing prestigious. MY BRILLIANT CAREER can be wonderfully silly without undermining its serious ideas, and Northeast possesses the comic instincts necessary to make Sybylla's impulsiveness genuinely funny. The humour prevents her rebelliousness from becoming self-important, allowing the character to make mistakes without every mistake becoming another solemn lesson about female emancipation.
Sherry-Lee Watson's Nell represents one of the adaptation's most substantial expansions, broadening the story's consideration of opportunity beyond Sybylla's individual experience as a white woman confronting gender and class restrictions. Nell's ambitions within the horse-training world create an effective parallel without suggesting their obstacles are identical, since the institutions Sybylla struggles against can still offer her privileges and recognition that an Indigenous woman would have considerably greater difficulty accessing.
That expanded First Nations perspective is worthwhile, particularly because Australian historical drama cannot meaningfully interrogate national identity while treating Indigenous Australians as invisible. The execution is not always equally developed, and some of the series' contemporary additions feel more deliberately inserted than organically discovered, but Watson gives Nell enough intelligence and presence to resist becoming merely an instrument through which somebody else's story acquires greater historical awareness.
The same unevenness occasionally affects the adaptation's treatment of sexuality and other expanded relationships, where six episodes provide substantially more narrative room without always supplying enough depth to justify every addition. Doran, Sarinah Masukor and Rachael Turk are juggling romance, gender, race, colonialism, class, family obligation and artistic identity within a series that still needs to remain entertaining, meaning several interesting threads inevitably receive less attention than their potential initially seems to promise.
Yet the additional space generally works in the adaptation's favour because Sybylla feels embedded within a living community rather than isolated inside a literary character study. Caddagat has relationships and tensions continuing beyond her immediate awareness, while the supporting characters possess desires that do not always exist solely to facilitate her development. That broader social texture distinguishes the series from a feature-length interpretation and gives its six episodes a legitimate reason to exist.
Visually, MY BRILLIANT CAREER makes glorious use of South Australia without allowing every landscape to become an advertisement for Australian tourism. Filming stretched across Adelaide, the Southern Barossa and South-East regions, and the production repeatedly uses physical openness to emphasize Sybylla's social confinement. She can ride across enormous stretches of countryside while everyone around her insists upon an increasingly narrow future, creating a visual contradiction that never requires dialogue to explain itself.
That landscape is particularly effective because Australia is allowed to appear simultaneously beautiful and unforgiving, refusing the easy assumption that magnificent scenery necessarily produces an idyllic existence. Possum Gully can look extraordinary while the Melvyn family struggles financially, whereas Caddagat's elegance conceals another system of expectations. Beauty and freedom are never treated as synonyms, which allows the physical environment to reinforce Sybylla's realization that changing surroundings does not automatically mean escaping restriction.
The production design and costumes contribute enormously to that distinction, particularly during Sybylla's transformation after arriving at Caddagat. There is obvious pleasure in watching her become increasingly polished, although the joke is that elegant clothing cannot do much about the personality underneath it. Northeast retains Sybylla's physical restlessness and irreverence regardless of what she is wearing, making respectability feel like a costume she has temporarily agreed to try on.
The cinematography similarly understands when to embrace the scale of the environment and when to remain close to the characters inhabiting it. The production was a major undertaking for South Australia, but very little of that expense feels wasted on empty spectacle. Instead, the visual richness creates a world attractive enough that Sybylla's desire to leave conventional security behind carries genuine weight rather than appearing like an obvious escape from misery.
The soundtrack is considerably more likely to provoke arguments, with contemporary songs deliberately colliding against a story unfolding around 1900. Sometimes the contrast is enormously entertaining, giving the series the mischievous energy it clearly wants, while other choices feel like somebody nudging the audience and reminding us that this is not our grandparents' period drama. The frustrating part is that Sybylla herself is already sufficiently rebellious without requiring the soundtrack to certify her modern credentials.
That problem extends occasionally to the writing, which can become unnecessarily explicit about ideas the performances and circumstances have already communicated perfectly well. Franklin created a heroine in 1901 whose refusal to subordinate herself to marriage remains striking in 2026, so the adaptation does not need to work particularly hard to make her relevant. Whenever it trusts Sybylla's original contradictions rather than translating them into contemporary language, the series becomes considerably sharper and more confident.
The modernity is nevertheless more feature than flaw because it gives this MY BRILLIANT CAREER an identity distinct from Gillian Armstrong's film rather than attempting to reproduce its achievements. Re-adapting a classic only makes sense when filmmakers possess their own perspective, and Doran's version clearly does. It is brighter, busier, more romantic and occasionally more sentimental, but those differences allow Northeast to create a Sybylla who belongs specifically to this interpretation rather than impersonating Judy Davis.
Most importantly, Northeast never mistakes independence for invulnerability, gradually revealing how much uncertainty exists beneath Sybylla's declarations about becoming a writer. She desperately wants to believe that she possesses something worth giving the world, but confidence cannot guarantee talent, publication or financial survival. Every rejection of a safer future therefore contains genuine risk, because Sybylla could sacrifice security for her brilliant career only to discover that the career never becomes particularly brilliant at all.
That possibility is where the title retains its delicious irony, since Sybylla essentially declares her importance before anybody else has reason to believe her. There is something simultaneously arrogant and courageous about that conviction, particularly for a young woman living within circumstances where ambition itself is treated suspiciously. The series understands that her victory cannot depend upon eventual success, because freedom becomes meaningless if somebody is only entitled to pursue it after proving they will succeed.
Her ultimate conflict therefore becomes less about choosing career over romance than determining who gets authorship over her future. Harry can love her, Mrs Bossier can want to protect her and her family can desperately need stability without any of those realities granting them ownership of her decisions. Sybylla can also love people deeply without accepting the assumption that love requires reshaping herself into whatever version of adulthood makes everyone else most comfortable.
This is also where MY BRILLIANT CAREER avoids becoming an uncomplicated empowerment fantasy, because Sybylla's independence has consequences for people other than herself. She can be selfish, insensitive and spectacularly frustrating, while her refusal to compromise occasionally hurts people who genuinely care about her. Northeast embraces those qualities rather than apologizing for them, understanding that allowing a female protagonist to be difficult is considerably more interesting than manufacturing another perfectly virtuous symbol of resistance.
The six-episode structure does begin to strain as the story approaches its conclusion, particularly when several supporting arcs compete for space alongside Sybylla's central decision. Some developments arrive with greater emotional force than their preparation warrants, while others disappear before receiving satisfying resolution. The result occasionally feels overstuffed rather than expansive, although I would rather watch an adaptation overflowing with curiosity about its world than one treating Franklin's material with excessively cautious reverence.
Alyssa McClelland and Anne Renton maintain enough tonal consistency across their respective episodes that the transition never feels disruptive. Their greatest accomplishment is preserving the series' buoyancy while allowing darker economic and social realities to remain visible underneath it, creating a period drama capable of moving between romantic comedy, family conflict and historical observation without completely losing the personality established during Sybylla's chaotic introduction.
There is also something satisfying about watching a production so unapologetically Australian receive a global platform without sanding away the cultural specificity that makes it interesting. As a Canadian watching from the other side of the world, that specificity is exactly what attracts me to Australian storytelling in the first place. I do not need the landscape, humour or history translated into something generically international, because discovering the texture of another country's storytelling is half the pleasure.
MY BRILLIANT CAREER ultimately works for the same reason Sybylla does, possessing too much personality to remain contained by expectations of what it should politely become. The adaptation can be overly modern, occasionally sentimental and narratively crowded, but it is also funny, gorgeous, romantic and genuinely interested in the complicated relationship between freedom and security. Even its miscalculations generally emerge from enthusiasm rather than creative timidity, which makes them remarkably easy to forgive.
Northeast deserves much of the credit for holding those contradictions together, delivering the kind of performance capable of making a familiar literary heroine feel newly unpredictable. Her Sybylla can be hilarious in one scene and painfully vulnerable in another without either quality cancelling the other, while her chemistry with Chung gives the romance enough emotional credibility that rejecting a conventional happy ending actually means sacrificing something rather than merely escaping something obviously undesirable.
What stays with me most, however, is the idea that Sybylla's brilliant career does not actually need to become brilliant for her choice to matter. She might become an extraordinary writer, struggle for years or discover that the life she imagined looks completely different once she reaches it, but uncertainty is precisely what makes the decision hers. Security would provide an answer, whereas independence provides only the right to discover one for herself.
That idea felt radical when Miles Franklin published her novel in 1901 and remains remarkably potent 125 years later, which is perhaps the strongest argument for adapting MY BRILLIANT CAREER again. Netflix's version occasionally decorates that timelessness more aggressively than necessary, but underneath its contemporary soundtrack, expanded romances and lavish South Australian production remains the same beautifully stubborn conviction that nobody should require permission to determine the shape and meaning of their own life.
For someone who is already a sucker for Australian film and television, MY BRILLIANT CAREER was always going to be difficult for me to resist, but admiration for a national cinema only gets a production through the front door. What kept me there was Sybylla herself, gloriously imperfect and impossible to domesticate, alongside Northeast's understanding that the character's greatest achievement is not becoming brilliant, finding love or proving everyone wrong, but remaining unmistakably herself.
