DVD Review: A Place To Call Home, Season 5

Having spent a good deal of time in Inverness these last few months, catching up on A Place to Call Home, it’s amazing how much the show has evolved in five seasons.
When the series started, Sarah (Marta Dusseldorp) had returned to Australia from Europe. A Holocaust survivor whose husband was killed by the Nazis, the show was her story of finding a home again amidst no small amount of suspicion and anti-Semitism. Having gained respect as a small town nurse and love with a rich widower (Brett Climo’s George Bligh), season 3 saw the show stumble, after needing to undo changes made to the second season’s finale, when it looked as though the series would end.
Since then, the show has bounced back but season five of A Place to Call Home is no longer strictly, or mainly, Sarah’s story. The Blighs have basically accepted her into the fold (if there’s some disagreement over how she should raise her son, David (Elliot Domoney)) and the main drama this year becomes the war Sir Richard Bennett (Mark Lee) raises against the entire Bligh family.

Sir Richard’s crimes will be familiar to all A Place to Call Home fans, but he’s never had to bear the full weight of viewers’ disdain before. That has always been split between him and Regina Bligh (Jenni Baird), George’s (divorce pending) ex-wife, who was last seen in a strait jacket, being driven to an insane asylum. Having taken her past the point of no return numerous times, the show’s intent on giving Regina a redemption arc this season can come across like them having their cake and eating it, too, but while the results may be a tad overwrought, there’s a fairness at work that goes both ways.
This isn’t Australian Downton Abbey. The harshest lines aren’t being quipped by a saucy Maggie Smith but by real people, in some of the most hateful language spoken on TV. The 50’s wasn’t a decade of tolerance and to paint it as such, for the sake of some idealized vision of the past, is to ignore what was really going on.
If Regina can show remorse, the series is similarly unafraid to show its would-be white knights’ prejudices. George is mostly forward thinking but can’t accept that his son, James (David Berry), is gay. Sarah has every reason to hate Regina but should know the treatments she’s being subjected to at the institution are inhumane.
A Place to Call Home is a show with a good memory (it’s why an effort to bring Leah Goldberg (Madeleine Clunies-Ross, recast from Avital Greenberg-Teplitsky) back as David’s babysitter is commendable, if ultimately flat) and when James tried conversion therapy, the show didn’t shy away from the horrors of electric shock therapy. Those horrors don’t change when Regina’s the patient.

Speaking of James, another big change has him and Olivia (Arianwen Parkes-Lockwood) absent for most of the season, making the subsequent promotion of Henry (Tim Draxl), as a doctor at Jack’s hospital, improbable but one of the season’s more successful adjustments. In continuation with A Place to Call Home’s concern for veterans’ issues, Aaron Pedersen joins the cast as Aboriginal serviceman, Frank Gibbs, while a late season storyline where Sarah runs into someone from her past stands out in an alarming way. Where few shows have explored Judaism in great detail, A Place to Call Home’s continued attention to the importance religion holds for Sarah is always a strong point, and Noni Hazlehurst‘s performance as Elizabeth Goddard remains stalwart as she’s dealt some heavy blows.
The series hasn’t lost it capacity for soapiness (there’s always a corrupt staff member around when you need one) but for the many dramatic cliffhangers, the answers are rarely drawn out, and time jumps are freely used to prevent the plot from stalling.
It does feel like there’s some bitterness pervading over this season. Why Carolyn (Sara Wiseman) and Jack (Craig Hall) are still at Ash Park is aggravating and their marital disputes sometimes feel like the show stirring up conflict. Anna’s (Abby Earl) pain after the collapse of her marriage is honest to how she would be affected, but can be hard to watch.
A sixth season is set to air later this year (and I’m still gunning for a Doris Collins (Deborah Kennedy) spinoff). In terms of bonus features, Acorn includes an interview that was done with Baird for their streaming service, Acorn TV. It’s on the last disk, but unfortunately was taken before the finale aired, so Baird isn’t able to address what happens. Ash Park would be a rough place to call home, but its characters make going back irresistable.
A Place to Call Home Season 5 is currently streaming on Acorn TV. A DVD release is on sale now.