A Place To Call Home Season 1

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

A thoroughly addictive drama brimming with secrets, passion, romance, and intrigue, A Place to Call Home explores the ties that hold families together and the betrayals that can tear them apart.

Absolutely compelling drama. Marta Dusseldorp has the ability to shine like a beauty queen and also portray a range of emotions that are riveting. Kudos to her hair and makeup crew. The actresses playing the roles of Elizabeth & Regina were outstanding; Olivia and Anna were excellent. The actor playing James was fabulous. This series is very educational and portrays life, class privilege and the harsh prejudices of the early fifties. The Australian landscape was beautiful. Can’t wait for season 5.

– Anna D

A Place to Call Home: another great PBS series, reminiscent of Downton Abbey but with more scandal. Focusing on an aristocratic Australian family saga during the early to mid 1950’s.

The acting is phenomenal, and the series is very well written. It addresses a wide range of many social issues that are still relevant today. Shocking secrets, twists and turns and lies to keep you thoroughly involved. Characters to admire and abhor.

Sarah,lead female character is brimming with wisdom. Showing great endurance, determination to keep the faith and poise. The series is a great teacher of history, human pain and modern issues that still remain unresolved in society.

Patriarch George, a good man at heart but narrow-minded. Has difficulty with acceptance, understanding and empathy. Likely attributed to his Matriarch Mother Elizabeth who thrives on running other lives and cannot be described as a lady who wishes everyone well.

FYI I’ve burned through all four seasons and intend to purchase them all…love this series.

-Linny

For those who love period drama, this is a little more on the side of period melodrama but the characters are well created and acted so they are substantial. I admit I was a little skeptical at first. For those who hate family melodrama, it still may not suit your tastes. However, most of the characters are reasonably good people who are trying to do the right thing in their own mind. They are not caricatures fighting over the family fortune as you might expect in a show involving an upper crust family. Their challenges are that of the older Victorian values vs. the evolving youth. It’s nice to see an Australian entry into this genre that gives a slightly different take than American and British audiences might be used to. From the Victorian manor house, the 40’s and 50’s music, the classic cars, the elegance of society, or contrast of pastoral Australian ranch land. The uniqueness of this show is somewhat symbolized by the elegant Jaguar Mark V chauffeured car in contrast to the country roads of their estate.

THE STORY (No spoilers): 1953, less than ten years after WWII, Sarah Adams is traveling home from Europe to Australia after 20 years away from home. She has been called home to see her ailing mother after a long estrangement from the family as a result her conversion to Judaism. Working her passage as ship’s nurse, she meets the wealthy Bligh family while treating the difficult family matriarch Elizabeth Bligh. Sarah also develops a connection to widower George Bligh (Elizabeth’s son and head of the family). Just before arriving in Australia, an incident involving one of the younger Bligh family brings Sarah in on part of a family secret. This causes more conflict between Sarah and the cantankerous matriarch Elizabeth. Sarah also is more than a little mysterious as she keeps secret her activity and whereabouts during WWII. Fate will bring Sarah and the Bligh family together again as Sarah finds herself in difficulty. However, Elizabeth is threatened by both the family secret Sarah is privy to, and the affection George Bligh clearly holds for Sarah. Elizabeth proceeds to dig into Sarah’s past in an effort to exhume war scars that will prevent any relationship between the head of this wealthy family (with ties to both government and aristocracy) and someone she considers wholly unsuitable to their religion and social class. Sarah obtains a job working as a nurse locally and manages to endear herself to both local residents and George’s two grown children Anna and James. This is a family drama so of course siblings Anna and James each have secrets or struggles of their own. The privileged and modern, but very well adjusted, Anna is in love with Gino. He is the son of a local Italian farmer who’s wife also serves in the Bligh household. Anna’s relationship is used to contrast her father’s since she also is seeing someone not from her social class or religion. All the family love each other, but the secrets and struggles they harbor are a regular procession of revelations as time passes. The only seeming true evil is the arrival of Regina Standish who is the sister of George’s deceased wife, killed by a Japanese bomb during the war. Regina is a beautiful and calculated diplomat’s wife who just lost her husband and has always had designs on George since she lost out to her sister when she was young. As Australia lurches out of its colonial and war scarred past, the residents of fictional Inverness, New South Wales, struggle to overcome their losses and demons from the war as well. The upheaval will have Sarah moving from place to place as she tires to find herself again, and… “A Place to Call Home”.

THERE IS A SEASON 3… AND 4! This show was originally cancelled after season two. However, it was since renewed for seasons 3 and 4. Season 3 is already up for pre-order and available on Amazon streaming service. The first two seasons of this series in the US are on DVD, but there are UK Blu Rays marked for regions A,B and C. I see only DVD so far on season 3 time of writing this.

OTHER THOUGHTS: As I said, I was a little skeptical at first and I am not always into family melodramas. The issues here are more socially driven and are problems many families could encounter. The family is upper class, but more relatable than you might think. After I got past the first episode and my skepticism, I ended up blowing through two seasons in a single weekend! I loved the characters I was supposed to love and the acting is top notch. Australian dramas have only trickled into the US market until lately and if you haven’t discovered them yet, this really isn’t a bad place to start.

– MyD — The Viewpoint

DVD Wholesale Main Features :   

Actors: Marta Dusseldorp
Directors: Roger Hodgman, Lynne Maree Danzey, Mark Joffe, Lynn Hegarty, Ian Barry
Format: Multiple Formats, Box set, Color, NTSC, Widescreen
Language: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
Number of discs: 4
Studio: ACORN MEDIA
DVD Release Date: March 3, 2015
Run Time: 591 minutes