“Good evening, Australia, my name is Margaret, and here is the evening news,” the distinctly female voice intones over the radio as a group of people listen on in shock. “It’s a woman,” one cries, followed by another’s wide-eyed disbelief: “On the wireless!”
Margaret is a fleeting, unseen character in the new SBS series While the Men Are Away, but her presence captures the show’s raison d’être: centring characters whose stories are rarely crucial to a traditional war narrative.
