--- title: "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" year: 2025 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north" fi1m_id: "the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north" imdb_id: "tt11389652" tmdb_id: 238339 wikidata_id: "Q123677299" fi1m_score: 83 critics_score: 86 critics_reviews: 5 published: "2026-10-01T00:44:27.955045+00:00" updated: "2026-10-01T00:45:09.049916+00:00" region: "KR" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2025) Created by Shaun Grant, Justin Kurzel · KMRB 19 · Drama, War & Politics ## Identity The Narrow Road to the Deep North - **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north - **Type:** Series - **Fi1m ID:** the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north - **IMDb ID:** tt11389652 - **TMDB ID:** 238339 - **Wikidata ID:** Q123677299 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11389652/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/238339, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q123677299 **Fi1m score: 83** · Critics 86 (early) from 5 reviews *In a sentence:* The war takes his men, the jungle takes his years, and still it’s the uncle’s wife he can’t get past > Justin Kurzel’s five-part adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s novel is the harshest account of the Burma Railway we have seen on television, and the most tender about the affair before it. The 1980s strand is thin, but we recommend it, with the lights on. ## Synopsis Dorrigo Evans (Jacob Elordi) is a young Australian army surgeon in the early 1940s, engaged to Ella (Olivia DeJonge) and waiting to ship out. Before he does, he visits his uncle Keith Mulvaney (Simon Baker), who keeps a hotel on the coast near Adelaide, and meets Keith’s much younger wife, Amy (Odessa Young). The series makes no secret of where that goes. In a second strand Dorrigo is a prisoner in a jungle camp in Thailand, the senior officer among men being worked to death on the Japanese railway to Burma, bargaining each morning with Major Nakamura (Shō Kasamatsu) over how many of the sick must go out to the line. In a third, forty years on, he is Ciarán Hinds: a famous surgeon who gives speeches about the war and avoids his wife. Five episodes, one director. ## Review Dorrigo Evans is a surgeon, and *The Narrow Road to the Deep North* follows him across forty years in three strands. In the 1940s, played by Jacob Elordi, he is engaged to Ella (Olivia DeJonge) and visiting his uncle Keith (Simon Baker), who keeps a coastal hotel with a young wife, Amy (Odessa Young). In a jungle camp in Thailand he is the senior officer among starving prisoners building a railway for Major Nakamura (Shō Kasamatsu). In the 1980s, played by Ciarán Hinds, he is a famous man who gives speeches about the war and goes home to a wife (Heather Mitchell) he does not look at. Justin Kurzel directs all five episodes from Shaun Grant’s adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s novel, and they have made the harshest thing about the Burma Railway we have seen on television. Sam Chiplin shoots the camp in near darkness, brown and green, so that faces arrive out of the murk and a lantern is an event. Alice Babidge, who designed both sets and costumes, has built the place out of bamboo, mud and tarpaulin and dressed the men in what is left of their uniforms, which by the third episode is a loincloth and a hat. Kurzel does not look away, and we were horrified, properly horrified, by a scene in which Dorrigo cuts a rotting leg off a man with a saw while four others hold him down. We have seen amputations in war films; not one where the camera stayed on the surgeon’s face rather than the leg, and where what was on the face was arithmetic. Elordi is tall, and Kurzel uses it. He plays Dorrigo as a man who speaks when he has to, upright when the guards are watching and folding when they are not. He bargains daily with Nakamura for fewer men on the line, and Kasamatsu plays the Major as a tired, courteous man who believes in the railway and is sorry about the rest. Those two across a table are the best scenes in the camp. Thomas Weatherall as Darky Gardiner, William Lodder as Rabbit Hendricks and Christian Byers as Jack Rainbow give the prisoners faces and jokes, and the series takes its time with them. Then it cuts to the coast before the war, and the light changes. Chiplin shoots the hotel in late-afternoon sun through net curtains, and Odessa Young’s Amy stands in that light looking at a man she should not be looking at. The affair is played straight: no soft focus, a good deal of sweat, and two actors who seem to find each other funny, which is rarer on screen than desire. Simon Baker gives Keith a decency that makes it worse. Jed Kurzel’s score, low strings and a drone that sometimes settles into something like a hymn, is the same in both strands, so the bedroom and the camp are scored as one memory. Alexandre de Franceschi cuts between them on a gesture or a colour rather than a beat. The 1980s strand is where it thins. Hinds is as good as he always is, and the series gives him a lectern and a hotel bed with a colleague’s wife (Essie Davis as Lynette Maison), and asks him to make a man out of them. He nearly does. Heather Mitchell’s older Ella has less to work with. The three timelines are sometimes cut together so insistently that the point, that he never left the camp and never left the hotel either, is made twice more after we have taken it. The fourth episode piles cruelty on cruelty until we were numb rather than moved, and we do not think numb was the intention. Kurzel and Grant have worked together before, on *Snowtown* and *Nitram*, both about Australian men and violence, neither willing to explain it away. This is the first time they have had a love story to go with it, and the tenderness gives the brutality somewhere to land. Watch it over more than one night, and with someone, so there is a reason to pause. And do not go in expecting the war to be the thing that undoes him. *Fi1m score 83, published 1 October 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is The Narrow Road to the Deep North worth watching?** *The Narrow Road to the Deep North* is worth watching for anyone who can bear the harshest account of the Burma Railway we have seen on television, and we scored it 83. The camp scenes are brutal and the affair before the war is played with unusual tenderness; the 1980s strand is thinner, and the fourth episode numbs rather than moves. Watch it over more than one night, and with company. **How long is The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and what is it rated?** *The Narrow Road to the Deep North* is rated 19 by the KMRB in South Korea. It is a drama and war & politics series. **Where can I watch The Narrow Road to the Deep North in South Korea?** *The Narrow Road to the Deep North* is not on any streaming or rental service in South Korea at the moment. It is available in 20 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How does The Narrow Road to the Deep North compare to The English Patient?** *The Narrow Road to the Deep North* is the harsher and tighter of the two, a five-part series about a wartime affair remembered across forty years, where [*The English Patient*](https://film.one/film/the-english-patient) is a slower, gentler film that shares the sickbed and the memory but swaps the jungle for the desert. Choose Kurzel's series if you can take the camp's cruelty; choose Minghella's film if you want the romance with the war kept further off. **Is The Narrow Road to the Deep North based on a true story or a book?** *The Narrow Road to the Deep North* is based on Richard Flanagan's novel of the same name, adapted for television by Shaun Grant and directed by Justin Kurzel across all five episodes. You need not have read the book; the series tells the three strands of Dorrigo Evans's life plainly enough on its own, and makes no secret of where the affair is heading. ### Reviews we read (5) - **IndieWire**, Ryan Lattanzio (A-): Lattanzio praises the miniseries as a sensuous, atmospheric, and brutally violent adaptation, recommending that viewers continue its journey. He singles out Jacob Elordi’s riveting performance and the vivid visual contrast between eroticism and wartime brutality. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/shows/jacob-elordi-the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north-review-1235096546/) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney (90/100, inferred): Rooney praises the series as a riveting, haunting and deeply moving depiction of war and survival. He singles out Jacob Elordi’s sensitive lead performance as especially powerful. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north-review-jacob-elordi-ciaran-hinds-odessa-young-justin-kurzel-1236137801/) - **The Guardian** (4 out of 5 stars.): The review finds the series fervent, bold and deeply pleasurable. It praises the combination of complicated love affairs and poignant Second World War scenes. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/series/tv-review/2025/feb/15/all) - **Evening Standard**, Vicky Jessop (4/5): Jessop praises the series as a thoughtful, unromantic examination of war and its lasting psychological damage. She singles out the strong performances, while criticizing the unflinching depiction of atrocities for being difficult to watch. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/tvfilm/the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north-bbc-one-review-jacob-elordi-b1239101.html) - **Collider**, Isabella Soares (8/10): Soares finds the series a tough but gripping watch that powerfully conveys the brutality and lasting trauma of war. She especially praises the visceral detail of the POWs’ suffering and the chemistry between Jacob Elordi and Odessa Young. [Read](https://collider.com/the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north-prime-video-review/) ## Details - **Created by:** Shaun Grant, Justin Kurzel - **Creator:** Shaun Grant, Justin Kurzel - **Director:** Justin Kurzel - **Writer:** Shaun Grant - **Novel:** Richard Flanagan - **Cinematography:** Sam Chiplin - **Editor:** Alexandre de Franceschi - **Music:** Jed Kurzel - **Production design:** Alice Babidge - **Costume design:** Alice Babidge - **Producer:** Alexandra Taussig - **Cast:** Jacob Elordi as Dorrigo Evans; Ciarán Hinds as Dorrigo Evans 1980s; Odessa Young as Amy Mulvaney; Olivia DeJonge as Ella Evans; Heather Mitchell as Ella Evans 1980s; Shō Kasamatsu as Major Nakamura; Simon Baker as Keith Mulvaney; Daniel Wyllie as Rick Maison - **Certificate (KMRB):** 19 - **Release (South Korea):** 18 April 2025 - **Genres:** Drama, War & Politics - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgmHbkTZVRg ## Where to watch in South Korea Not streaming, renting or buying in South Korea at the last check. Also available in: AR, AU, BG, BR, CA, CL, CO, CZ, FR, GB, HR, HU, IN, MX, NZ, PL, RO, RS, SI, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence* (1983): Oshima’s Japanese POW camp, where the real war is between two men who cannot speak. - *The Railway Man* (2013): Colin Firth as a Burma Railway survivor; quieter, and about what happens after. - *The English Patient* (1996), Fi1m 78: Another wartime affair remembered from a sickbed, with the desert instead of the jungle. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-english-patient.md) - *Nitram* (2021): Kurzel and Grant’s previous collaboration; no love story, same refusal to look away. - *Tenko* (1981): The BBC’s women’s internment camp drama, slower and made on nothing, and still hard to shake. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north