The Idea of Australia review – an ambitious but overstuffed series that will make you shout ‘slow down!’

Presenter Rachel Griffiths talks to a roll-call of Australia’s brightest thinkers in The Idea of Australia. Photograph: Tim Keith/SBS

This four-part documentary series, inspired by Julianne Schultz’s 2022 book, investigates an intriguing if somewhat amorphous question: what is the idea of Australia? This kind of question is problematically vague; no nation can be reduced to a single unifying idea. The real (but still gargantuan) question being asked is: what concepts and values define Australian national identity, and how have they changed over time? It’s certainly a conversation-starter – best brought up at a barbecue where there’s sausages, stubbies, sunscreen, surfboards, tubs of Vegemite, dangerous animals to avoid …

These are the sorts of arguably dated images the show would like us to reassess, given we live in – as presenter/narrator Rachel Griffiths puts it – “a rapidly changing” modern world. When I first read about this series, my mind quickly went to that wonderfully egalitarian turn of phrase “a fair go”, which director Benjamin Jones broaches less than 10 minutes into the first episode (this review encompasses all four). Most intelligent considerations of this concept would first establish whether it actually exists; then, if it does, what it looks like and who it applies to.