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Show:		5.0
Picture:		7.0
Sound:		5.0
Extras:		6.0
Score:		5.0

Director(s):	Michael Offer
Writer(s):	Ro Hume
Starring:	Jack Thompson • Kym Wilson • Simone Kessell • Tammy MacIntosh
Genre:	Children & Family • Drama
Website:	http://www.southernstargroup.com/ProductDetails.aspx?productid=20584
Release Date:	December 08, 2009

List Price:	DVD - $10.99
Amazon:

A long-running, picturesque television series centered on an all-female workforce who come together in fellowship to revive the fortunes of the flagging Drover's Run cattle ranch, McLeod's Daughters is considered something of a national treasure in it's native Australia. After eight successful seasons culminated earlier this year with the show's 224th and final episode (how many U.S. shows make it that far?), we are treated to this DVD re-release of the 1996 television movie where the journey first began.

A good old fashioned melodrama set against the gorgeous backdrop of big sky country, McLeod's Daughters is a wildly uneven affair where some solid performances by the female leads are consistently undermined by poor scripting, an overblown soundtrack, and the sadly all too frequent intrusion by moments of appalling technical incompetence. The story begins with city-girl Tess (Kym Wilson) making the long journey into the heartland to deliver news to her estranged father, Jack McLeod (Jack Thompson) that his ex-wife, Tess' mother, has died of cancer. Welcomed with open arms by her father, Tess is greeted with suspicion and resentment by her half sister Claire (Tammy MacIntosh) who blames Tess' mother for driving Jack into the bottle when they left all those years ago. After Jack dies in a riding accident (quite possibly the single worst stunt sequence of all time) Tess and Claire must put aside their differences and work together to save the ranch from financial ruin.

Following Jack's death, somewhere around the midway point, the picture shifts away from the story of a regretful woman struggling to reconcile with a family she doesn't know and connect with a way of life she freely abandoned and moves instead towards the exploration of some frankly Draconian sexual politics, which are so laughably outdated they make Mad Men seem positively progressive. Upon learning of Tess and Claire's intentions of running the ranch themselves their entire male workforce just ups and quits because they "ain't working for no Shelias." Suddenly the bank is no longer willing to renegotiate the terms of their loan because, for all intents and purposes, there is no longer a man in charge. The shipping agent that handles the transportation of the cattle to market suddenly wants cash on the barrel because, well, you get the idea.

Accurate for Southern Australia cattle country though they may be, the men on display here are just such knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, such whooping, hollering, drunken meatheads that its impossible to give their point of view any kind of credence. The idea that a bunch of country boys might be staunch in the belief that ranch work is man's work is fine, but they are just written as such riotously over-the-top, sexist cartoons that the ensuing drama has no balance. Worse still you can't help but get the impression that director Michael Offer sympathizes with them and thinks that this is all incredibly forward thinking and subversive, presenting the idea that women can master such complicated feats as riding a horse, and *gasp* driving a truck as something that is not so much empowering as it is downright miraculous.

DVD Extras

Included with the television movie are the first two episodes of the subsequent spin-off series, which at a glance appears to embrace the funny side and presents itself, at least at first, as something closer to a fish out of water comedy than a melodrama.