‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ was a hit with critics but has not become a cultural phenomenon
Ingvar Kenne/Curio/Sony Pictures Television
In the era of social media it is tough for critically-acclaimed shows to fly under the radar. No sooner do they debut on streaming platforms than viewers post about them online. Memes of scenes quickly go viral and posts start trending which brings shows to the attention of legacy media outlets. In turn, their coverage sparks further online chatter and the cycle begins again. Not always though.
Critical acclaim doesn’t necessarily guarantee buzz as the team behind Amazon’s recent show The Narrow Road to the Deep North found out. Based on Australian author Richard Flanagan’s 2014 Man Booker Prize-winning war novel, the five-part show follows the harrowing experiences of fictional World War II surgeon Dorrigo Evans.
It explores themes of trauma, memory and mental stability as Evans deals with PTSD from his captivity as a POW who built the Thai-Burma Railway and had an affair with his uncle’s young wife Amy. The show keeps viewers gripped as it is set before, during and after the war with each period revealing different aspects of his affair.
Evans is played by different actors at each stage of his life and thanks to the subtle similarities between them, the entire show flows smoothly. Veteran Irish actor Ciarán Hinds stars as the older Evans whilst his younger self is played by Jacob Elordi, one of Australia’s hottest talents.
Elordi rose to fame in the role of Noah Flynn, the bad boy love interest in Netflix’s The Kissing Booth which premiered in 2018. He went on to play Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s biographical film Priscilla as well as a wealthy university student in 2023’s Saltburn, which earned him a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. He has already been tipped for an Oscar for his portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster in Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of the Mary Shelley horror classic which debuts on Netflix next month.
British multinational production company Fremantle bought the television production rights to The Narrow Road to the Deep North in 2018 and soon signed up Aussie director Justin Kurzel. He was behind 2016 videogame adaptation Assassin’s Creed as well as The Order, an acclaimed crime thriller starring Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult. Leadership changes at Fremantle and production shut downs caused by the pandemic led to The Narrow Road to the Deep North getting stuck in limbo and the rights reverted to Flanagan.
He approached former Fremantle executive Jo Porter, who had established a new production company called Curio Pictures which managed to get the show on the road.
Amazon Prime Video distributed the series in Australia, the United States, Canada and New Zealand, whilst Sony Pictures Television snapped up the international distribution rights. Kurzel remained on-board and the show became his first work for TV. He couldn’t have wanted a better start.
‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ failed to match the media attention gained by ‘Reacher’
Jasper Savage/Prime
Released on Amazon Prime in April, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is part of an exclusive group of shows which is rated 100% by critics on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. The website’s critics consensus describes the show as “a difficult watch made riveting by director Justin Kurzel and star Jacob Elordi’s sterling work, The Narrow Road to the Deep North chronicles the inhumanity of war with fierce intelligence.”
The Guardian rated the show four out of five stars, noting that it has a “deeply layered central character and a heavy, morose tone of contemplation. There’s very little battlefield action, the war elements mostly taking place in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, where many soldiers, including Australian medical student protagonist Dorrigo Evans (Jacob Elordi), are forced to work on the Burma railway. There’s nothing remotely glamorous here.”
It also praised the direction, saying that “you never doubt the show’s realism, or the compassion underpinning it”. However, just because a show is well made doesn’t guarantee popularity, especially if it’s not an easy watch. Testimony to this, audiences only gave The Narrow Road to the Deep North a rating of 72% on Rotten Tomatoes. This came with consequences.
As the show didn’t capture the imagination of the public, media outlets failed to give it the attention that critics said it deserved. This is revealed in data from Factiva, a search engine owned by Dow Jones which includes content from 33,000 news, data and information sources in 32 languages.
How The Media Covered Amazon’s Best Shows
Caroline Reid using Flourish
The data shows that over the first four months of the year up to the release of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, more articles mentioned Amazon super show The Rings of Power even though it isn’t debuting a new series this year. Likewise, Amazon action series Reacher, which launched its latest season in February, had four times more media coverage than The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
In April, just 618 articles mentioned The Narrow Road to the Deep North and although this was three times more than the number which mentioned The Rings of Power, it was 185 short of Reacher’s tally even though that show debuted two months earlier. When Reacher launched in February 1,772 articles were written about it – almost three times the amount of coverage devoted to The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
With muscle-bound megastar Alan Ritchson in the title role, Reacher is more conducive to coverage than The Narrow Road to the Deep North even though both have similar review ratings. Critics scored Reacher’s latest season a staggering 98% with audiences giving it 74%. Crucially, Reacher is a famous franchise with the wind in its sails as it’s now in its third season. It goes to show that quality and quantity may be what is needed in the battle for streaming supremacy.