Changi (miniseries): Difference between revisions

{{Use dmy dates|date=NovemberJuly 20112020}}

A total of 53 sets had to be built for the miniseries, standing in for the camp, parts of Singapore and the Malayan jungle.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.abc.net.au/changi/about/making.htm |title=The Making of ''Changi'' |access-date=26 April 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060813201350/http://www.abc.net.au/changi/about/making.htm |archive-date=13 August 2006 |url-status=dead }}</ref> The series was shot in four locations and in studio sets around [[Sydney]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.abc.net.au/changi/about/building.htm |title=''Changi'': Building the Sets |access-date=26 April 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060813201817/http://www.abc.net.au/changi/about/building.htm |archive-date=13 August 2006 |url-status=dead }}</ref> The ABC invested AUD 6 million (USD {{To USD|6000000|AUS|year=2011|round=yes}}) on the production,<ref name="auto2"/> a figure representing one-sixth of the ABC's annual drama budget.<ref name="auto3">{{cite web|url=http://www.api-network.com/main/index.php?apply%3Dscholars%26webpage%3Ddefault%26flexedit%3D%26flex_password%3D%26menu_label%3D%26menuID%3D62%26menubox%3D%26scholar%3D119 |title=Archived copy |accessdate=2013-05-01 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20071019022910/http://www.api-network.com/main/index.php?apply=scholars |archivedate=19 October 2007 |df=dmy }}</ref>

1999. Six ageing former POWs who spent three and a half years in Changi are each preparing for the reunion of ‘The'The Secret 9’9', the name of the close-knit group of six POWs whose mutual support and friendship sustained them throughout their experiences in the camp.

The senior-ranking Australian in the camp, Dr Rowdy Lawson, gets the POWs to organise a concert. Young Curley and Gordon dress up as campy versions of Nakamura and Aso and sing to the assembled prisoners and guards. Outraged, Aso gets revenge by punishing Curley for theft shortly afterwards and throwing him in ‘the'the hole’hole', a dark, dank pit. Surviving on whatever scraps of food thrown to him, including a dead snake, Curley’s sanity begins to crack. But the Secret 9 restore his spirits by throwing down a piece of paper on which Tom has drawn an obscene comic mocking the camp’s commanders. After six weeks in the hole Curley, half-starved but alive, crawls out into the blinding sunlight.

Reviews for the series were mixed. Robin Oliver, writing in ''[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]'', declared the series to be "immensely satisfying" and [[Robert Fidgeon]], in Melbourne's ''[[Herald Sun]]'', wrote that it was "one of the finest pieces of drama ever produced (in Australia)"<ref name="auto3"/> Michael Fitzgerald, writing in ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', said that the series, despite some flaws, was "the finest, most thoughtful local drama since Australia's miniseries heyday in the 1980s... The series isn't about the history of Changi, it's about the idea of Changi and how it refracts through the years to become something repressed, mythologised and feared.... Most movingly, it's about the transfer of memory to the next generation."<ref name="auto2"/>

[[Peter Stanley]], principal historian at the [[Australian War Memorial]] 1987-20071987–2007, was highly critical of the series: "It gives viewers a misleading and unrealistic idea of the POW experience and of their captors. The danger is that people either believe what they see on television or don't know what's wrong and right." According to Stanley, the series contained a number of historical inaccuracies.

Historian Michael Cathcart praised the series, calling it 'a moving series that captured the suffering and comradeship that were at the heart of the prisoner of war experience...and a celebration of the powerful egalitarian spirit that is the Australian story’story'<ref name="auto3"/>

John Doyle defended his work. 'It's a series that runs the risk of offending everyone and satisfying no one'.<ref name="auto1"/> Doyle argued that the series 'was not history but art —– an effort to be honest to the spirit not the facts of Changi. When you try to deal with such a tricky subject, you have to abandon naturalism.' Doyle claimed that he wanted the series to show how 'Australian humour and mateship allowed Australians to survive in greater numbers than other groups of prisoners.'<ref name="auto3"/>