‘Tomorrow When The War Began’ has been described as ‘Red Dawn Down Under’. Mike Leeder completes his look at the recent television adaptation of as John Marsden’s book…
Where were we? A group of Australian teenager’s return from a camping trip to find the world they knew no longer exists. In a surprise attack, Australia has been attacked and invaded by an unknown enemy. The friends find themselves forced to fight for their family, their country and for themselves…
The first two episodes of Tomorrow When the War Began set up the premise and introduced the characters and the rest of the story plays out over the following four episodes. I think the mini-series format serves the story well – I liked the original film but it condensed the time and events and so much info and here the additional running time allows the characters and story telling to really be fleshed out. We get to learn a lot more about the relationship between the main characters and even see how the dynamic has changed since before the war began through the events of the series. Some friendships evolve into something stronger, some are strained and some are shown to be unbreakable. Its also nice to see flashbacks to the way they were at school and how their lives were in normality.
One thing I really like about the way the mini-series works is the kids don’t simply pick up machine guns and become expert marksmen overnight and start raging full scale war without any question of conscience. There’s a great little throwaway moment where the character of Lee is hidden away and has an enemy soldier in his sights and is struggling to pull the trigger and snuff out another human life: when the masked soldier removes his helmet he is no longer a faceless ‘enemy’ and Lee is unable to pull the trigger. Even Elle has issues about the consequences of her first fight against the enemy and there’s a moment where she too has to shoot an enemy soldier and seems as much in shock for shooting them, as she is when one of her friends gets shot. One of her friends tries to take revenge for the shooting of one of their own, finds its to hard to finish the enemy off. It might sound stupid – and I’m a huge fan of the original Red Dawn – but I like the way the struggle is played out. Its also nice to see that none of the main characters becomes an incredible stunt driver once they jump on a motorbike. There’s a subtle, almost documentary feel to the series at times – we witness events but they don’t over-extend the action beats. This is not a Michael Bay’s take on the subject: there are action sequences but that’s not the focus of the series.
The mini-series also explores the relationships between the imprisoned parents as some struggle to deal with the situation, some accept the consequences, some think they can take some advantage, and in the case of Elle’s mother, they find themselves getting a strange insight into the enemy (as the menacing Commander Lee enlists her, to be his housemaid in her former house which he now uses as his residence). She must consider what she does to protect her daughter, her imprisoned family and friends or herself with her actions. We also get to see a different side of the ‘Enemy’, when one of the heroes encounters a young deserter who seems just as out of place and confused by the events that are happening.
The series builds to a finale that perhaps could have done with being given a little more budget and presented as a bigger action beat to end the mini-series… and really show the transition of our heroes into becoming freedom fighters as opposed to just being something of an annoyance to the enemy. But it is still a somewhat satisfying pay-off and hints at what’s to come if the subsequent books are hopefully given the small screen treatment. As the final minutes of the last episode, see a number of plot points come to a head including some family members escaping, some being wounded and one slice of revenge being served cold that could have consequences for the characters and the whole town.
Hopefully Tomorrow When The War Began will turn up in the UK on some format (be it on television, or shiny DVD disc… and it’ll be interesting to see how UK audiences respond to it. It also has me wondering what a UK set version could be… no, please don’t imagine a ‘let’s make a cool show for the kids‘ version – we’ll speak no more of SPOOKS: CODE 9 styled shenanigans and that wisely forgotten spin-off series), but imagine it as an almost serious take on Attack the Block (but without the aliens!) How would a streetwise group of UK teenagers deal with an armed invasion? Happy Slap them to death?
The original series of books encompasses seven titles starting with Tomorrow, followed by The Dead of Night, The Third Day The Frost, Darkness Be My Friend, Burning for Revenge, The Night is for Hunting and The Other Side of Dawn which closed the original series. But Marsden revisited the Tomorrow world, with a sequel trilogy which focuses on Elle’s struggles following the war, The Ellie Chronicles, While I Live, Incurable and Circle of Flight, which explore how she tries to rebuild her life as Australia itself struggles to rebuild. Maybe we’ll see if those come to life as well.