We knew Baz Luhrman's Faraway Downs, which has just arrived on Hulu, was going to be divisive: the show is an edited version of Lurhman's least popular film, Australia, recut into a series of six episodes with stacks of new footage. The movie attracted its fair share of critical brickbats, and now the show is doing the same.
Let's start with the positives, though. RogerEbert.com praised the way the movie's style, saying it "simply looks better than most modern TV", while the San Francisco Chronicle offered a nuanced take: "This is old-fashioned storytelling, with all the strengths and weaknesses that term implies. Luhrmann is a showman who revels in his own extravagance. Sometimes you’re in the mood for that." But such voices are far from the being dominant.
