Did you have to be there or what?

No, you definitely do not have to have grown up there. I'm Swedish, and I love it. However, I did see it on TV as a child, so of course there is a bit of nostalgia involved, but I'll use my freedom of speech and answer anyway. I bought the DVD when it was finally released, and I was prepared to be disappointed since I had read many reviews saying that it wasn't as good as they remembered it, but I was positively surprised. I really loved it, and so did my husband. I guess the thing is that the narration is much slower than what we are used to today. Skipping episodes sounds like a really bad idea, since the episodes actually form a story - they are not stand alone episodes like in The Simpsons. You have to let the story grow on you, and not be too hasty. The love story is really romantic, and I cried floods.

I heard about it when I was young, I love Jon English so I could be bias. But I loved it already, I am australian but that is not why I loved. I watched when I was about 9 or 10 when it was broadcast during the day and my grandma taped it. I too find the first two episodes a bit...well I wouldn't say boring but I tend to skip them but I know what happens in them because I have watched the series so many times so its alright, I start watching once Mary comes to Sydney.

But if there has been a substantial gap between when you last watched it and the present then I would recommend watching it from the beginning right through.



The only Abnormality is the incapacity to love

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I'm American and first came across the series when it was repeated in the early 1990s on TV in Fiji. I suppose having spent 13 years in Australia and learning about its history and people has helped me to understand the way the classes were portrayed. The Australians I knew deal deeply (to this day) with the after-effects of the rejection and abandonment that was perpetrated on them by the British. Most of Australia was not free-settled, rather British folks were forcibly transported - some for crimes as small as a child stealing a loaf of bread to stave off hunger - because the prisons were too full to accommodate one more person. Abuses did happen aboard ships, the children resulting from repeated rape were often forsaken on arrival by their mothers and taken in by the indigenous peoples, thereby growing up quite different from their British forebears. So all that impacts on a nation's identity and worldview, doesn't it? I found the series very enlightening, and from what I've learned from my friends, plausible.

I'd love to get a hold of a copy of it and watch it again. There's one for sale in the Marketplace at the moment, but I simply cannot spare the asking price right now. But I'll keep checking back to see if a more affordable copy pops up.