Gallipoli Review: Episode One – “The First Day”

The episode title of the opening salvo of Nine’s much-hyped Gallipoli drama was entirely appropriate. We are introduced to the main character, Tolly (Kodi Smit-McPhee), when he and many others are on final approach to a strip of sand in Turkey, a part of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and about to make Australia’s first meaningful contribution to the First World War.

Despite the popular notion, the landing was mostly unopposed – unlike, say, the D-Day landings so expertly captured in Spielberg’s World War Two epic Saving Private Ryan – with the first wave of Australian soldiers able to get up the sheer cliffs and into what Tolly aptly describes as “bastard country” fairly quickly. The landscape is indeed foreboding.

Instead of machines guns flaying the landing soldiers, there are just a few scattered scouts on the landing beach, which, fairly early on, is identified as being the wrong one. 

Also very early on, what is supposed to be an ordered landing descends into confusion. There is not enough water, ammunition or men to take the required objectives. Platoons lose track of their comrades in deep valleys that lead to the heights of Gallipoli. It’s a disaster almost from the outset, and this is before the Turkish reinforcements arrive.

One of the complaints on social media was the lack of large-scale battles. Some suggested it was due to the production values, but it’s also to do with history. Indeed, on the very first day, there was so much confused fighting. Remember, this was before the elaborate trench system had been dug, and with the lay of the land so confusing, the Australians, who achieved more in terms of territory on the first day than at any other time in the entire campaign, often came upon small pockets of the enemy and fought them off as best they could.

In terms of large-scale battles like what were taking place concurrently on the Western Front, there were none on April 25 – but later, during the August offensive, there were more large-scale actions. That first day was a very confusing one for the mostly-novice soldiers: landed on the wrong beach, into unimaginable country, with only limited supplies of water and ammunition and facing a determined enemy. 

It could not have been a worse situation, yet men like the fictional soldiers, Tolly and his brother amongst them, did manful work in trying to seize what were obviously incredibly unrealistic goals. The despair and uncertainty on the faces of the young soldiers was brilliant. Tolly looks completely out of his depth as men around him are shot dead or horribly wounded.

Sound was another issue, people on Twitter saying that the battlefield didn’t seem very loud. It’s worth noting that neither the Australians or Turks had their big artillery in action on that first day. I would expect to hear the cacophony of the battlefield increase over the coming episodes, as machine guns, artillery and even the famous ‘jam tin bombs’ are introduced.

The narrative switches from the soldiers on the front lines, confronting Turks just about everywhere they look, to the upper echelons of command. Sir Ian Hamilton dines in his full mess uniform, blithely unaware of what is taking place at the beach soon to be known as Anzac Cove. He doesn’t seem to want to hurry up General Hunter-Weston at Cape Helles, either, believing that it is bad form to overrule a general on the ground. Except that Hunter-Weston, whose reputation for butchering men is well cemented during this campaign, hasn’t even gone ashore.

Hamilton’s subordinates on the beach – Generals Birdwood and Godley amongst them – realise how bad the situation is, and begin to wonder if evacuation isn’t the best course of action. They are getting scattered reports from men running back to the beach, especially from one rugged sergeant played by the versatile Matt Nable. Australia’s official correspondent Charles Bean, the man who began the ANZAC legend, comes ashore, and his flamboyant British opposite, Ellis Ashmead Bartlett does, too.

Australians are dying in their dozens as they push for the high ground, involved in bloody back-and-forth battles for every square inch. It’s brutal stuff: in the first few minutes, Tolly bayonets a Turk to death. Men are killed, and their deaths are depicted in gruesome manner. There are no punches pulled when it comes to the battle sequences. No clean and quick deaths here.

We even get a few glimpses of the Turks opposite, though they are sparing. And although it isn’t quite the actual famous quote, an officer tells his men that he doesn’t command them to attack, he commands them to die. The quote is slightly altered from the famous one, “I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die,” which is attributed to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who made something of a name for himself on the battlefield.

One thing that did annoy me were the flashbacks to Tolly before he joined the Army. If you choose to start a series about Gallipoli with the landing, I don’t know that there’s much point in going back. Establish the characters and their reasons for being a part of the Australian Imperial Force via dialogue on the battlefield. For mine, in a show that often struggled for flow, the flashbacks hurt. Especially when you had Tolly voicing over various stages. If the creators had wanted to show the men in their pre-war years, they should have gone down the route of Peter Weir's masterpiece Gallipoli and opened the series a few months earlier.

So did the advertisements. There were many, and if there is one reason for the stunted storytelling and the lack of narrative throw, the number of ads (and the frequency) was appalling.  That was the chief complaint on social media, and I agree. You just get into the show again, and suddenly you’re watching an ad for Holden or the new online streaming service Stan, where you can watch every episode with a 30-day free trial. Interesting strategy. Won’t that be snatching viewers from the network broadcast?

If the first episode of Gallipoli was designed to move people towards Stan, then it was a cunning strategy by Channel Nine to cram the premiere with ads, but the frequent commercial interruption has obviously disenchanted people. I’ll watch next week, for sure, but I’ll record it and skip through the ads. 

Despite the frequency of the ads, the opening episode of Gallipoli was impressive. There are certainly things to work on, but some scenes were impressive. Anyway, there are multiple episodes left. How many TV shows grab you first up? It usually takes a while for me to get really hooked – usually once you learn more of the characters.

A small qualifier: If we’re comparing it to the classic miniseries The Anzacs, starring Andrew Clarke and Paul Hogan…well, Gallipoli didn’t grab me like that show did, years ago, but there’s room for improvement, and I expect to see it in Episode Two next week…or sooner, if I succumb to the lure of Stan!