‘A Place Called Home’ Review: Red Scare Down Under The fourth season of the addictive drama about an upper-class Australian family. Dorothy Rabinowitz
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-place-called-home-review-red-scare-down-under-1479422897
The many devotees of “A Place Called Home,” a series set in the early ’50s about the upper-class Bligh family—Australian royalty of sorts—can look forward to Thanksgiving, which brings the two-episode premiere of Season 4. The brilliantly inventive drama now takes up the politics of the period—Australia is having its own Red Scare, and it figures strongly in the Bligh family’s conflicts, as do most of the world’s hot-button issues.
Family head George Bligh (Brett Climo) is now running for political office. His malignantly vengeful wife, Regina (Jenni Baird), whom he married for reasons of political convenience, is devising vicious plots against the show’s heroine, Sarah (Marta Dusseldorp), the woman George actually loves—among other ways by spreading whispers that Sarah is a Communist. Meanwhile, James (David Berry), George’s son and the family’s most exquisite-looking male, is now free to pursue his gay love interest, though not so free that he feels comfortable being very gay in public, something he refuses to do at the beach party his lover insisted on dragging him to. It’s one of the more interesting developments, a kind characteristic of the writing.
It’s rare that a series increasingly packed, as this one is, with intricate new plot twists and themes, succeeds in sustaining its tension and polish. “A Place Called Home” nonetheless manages to do just that, as its Season Four—possibly the best so far—is about to demonstrate.
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