A trigger warning at the start of the series precedes a TV show that challenges Australia to confront its national trauma.
If the scourge of covid hadn’t sucked the air out of everything from March 2020, how would we still be talking about the devastating Black Summer bushfires that only weeks earlier had entranced the country and the world?
The ferocious fires burnt through 18 million hectares, destroyed thousands of homes, killed a billion animals and 33 people while hundreds more died from smoke-related impacts.
The statistics are damning, but numbers are only part of the story. What we remember are the human stories, of the lives ruined, homes lost and the stories of courage and grief.
Maybe it seems like the ABC drama Fires, which premiered this past weekend, is coming too soon, the wounds are too fresh.
But with the all-consuming covid pandemic taking over our lives on an unprecedented scale, the national climate reckoning we were on the verge of having, needs another push.
And better it be a dramatised TV series to restart the conversation of the effects of climate change on worsening conditions than the loss of more lives, although that too feels inevitable.
Fires has the potential to do spark that conversation. It is a visceral and emotionally effective series that challenges us to never forget the destruction wrought by nature’s fury – and the sacrifices of Australians caught in the maelstrom.
Co-creators Tony Ayres and Belinda Chayko are veteran hands in Australian TV, and they gathered the stories of real people’s experiences throughout the bushfire season to craft this anthology drama.
It has a stunning cast, including Eliza Scanlen, Hunter Page-Lochard, Anna Torv, Richard Roxburgh, Kate Box, Miranda Otto and Dan Spielman.
Over six episodes, the series travels from location to location, from September 2019 in Queensland and down the coast, through different communities.
The thread that ties them together, besides the firelines, are two young volunteer firefighters, played by Scanlen and Page-Lochard.
The audience meets them in the first episode as they train for the upcoming season. It’s not long before they’re called up to the defend the community and the pair are caught in a raging burn after their truck stalls in the path of the blaze.
It’s an unflinching sequence, the tinge of the orange across the screen earning the trigger warning the series has at the start of the hour.
Fires grounds the story with Tash and Mott, contextualising them as two of a throng of volunteers who risked everything. Most significantly, Fires takes care to show them as people with families and communities. They come from somewhere, as did everyone who was directly and indirectly affected.
As the series moves around to stories of grieving dairy farmers (Roxburgh and Otto) or a woman determined to stay and defend her home (Torv), a lump will form in your throat.
The stories in these small communities make up our national community, and each story is part of the tapestry of our national story.
It’s deeply upsetting but it almost needs to be. Fires is the kind of art that doesn’t just help process national trauma but it confronts it so that we never forget.
Fires is on ABC iview and on ABC on Sunday nights at 8.30pm
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https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMimQFodHRwczovL3d3dy5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L3R2L3R2LXNob3dzL2ZpcmVzLXR2LXNob3ctb24tYWJjLWFydC10aGF0LWNvbmZyb250cy1vdXItbmF0aW9uYWwtdHJhdW1hL25ld3Mtc3RvcnkvY2NlNWI3NDk0MzI1NGE1YzEzYTAxNzhkM2RiMGQ3NDLSAZ0BaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubmV3cy5jb20uYXUvZW50ZXJ0YWlubWVudC90di90di1zaG93cy9maXJlcy10di1zaG93LW9uLWFiYy1hcnQtdGhhdC1jb25mcm9udHMtb3VyLW5hdGlvbmFsLXRyYXVtYS9uZXdzLXN0b3J5L2NjZTViNzQ5NDMyNTRhNWMxM2EwMTc4ZDNkYjBkNzQyP2FtcA?oc=5
2021-09-27 08:56:30Z
CBMimQFodHRwczovL3d3dy5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L3R2L3R2LXNob3dzL2ZpcmVzLXR2LXNob3ctb24tYWJjLWFydC10aGF0LWNvbmZyb250cy1vdXItbmF0aW9uYWwtdHJhdW1hL25ld3Mtc3RvcnkvY2NlNWI3NDk0MzI1NGE1YzEzYTAxNzhkM2RiMGQ3NDLSAZ0BaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubmV3cy5jb20uYXUvZW50ZXJ0YWlubWVudC90di90di1zaG93cy9maXJlcy10di1zaG93LW9uLWFiYy1hcnQtdGhhdC1jb25mcm9udHMtb3VyLW5hdGlvbmFsLXRyYXVtYS9uZXdzLXN0b3J5L2NjZTViNzQ5NDMyNTRhNWMxM2EwMTc4ZDNkYjBkNzQyP2FtcA
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