''Changi'' is a six-part
Australian
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
miniseries broadcast by
ABC TV in
2001. It originally aired from 14 October 2001 to 18 November 2001.
Overview
The series follows the trials and tribulations of six fictional Australian soldiers interned at the
Changi prisoner of war camp in
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
.
''Changi'' is presented as a
frame story, with six older war veterans reuniting in 1999 to share their experiences and memories of their time as young men at the camp. The series is also notable for featuring scenes of
toilet humour
Toilet humour, or potty or scatological humour (compare scatology), is a type of off-colour humour dealing with defecation, diarrhea, constipation, urination and flatulence, and to a lesser extent vomiting and other bodily functions. It see ...
and
black comedy
Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discu ...
in an otherwise serious production, a deliberate inclusion on the part of writer
John Doyle, better known for his comedic alter-ego
Rampaging Roy Slaven.
Doyle originally envisaged the series as a sitcom with the working title of ''Worn Out & Weary'' and he first pitched the idea to the ABC as such. It was only later in the writing phase that he decided to switch to drama, albeit with elements of humour remaining as a prominent feature.
A total of 53 sets had to be built for the miniseries, standing in for the camp, parts of Singapore and the Malayan jungle. The series was shot in four locations and in studio sets around
Sydney. The ABC invested AUD 6 million (USD ) on the production,
a figure representing one-sixth of the ABC's annual drama budget.
Two cast members portraying the older versions of the main characters previously served in World War II.
Bud Tingwell
Charles William Tingwell AM (3 January 1923 – 15 May 2009), known professionally as Bud Tingwell or Charles 'Bud' Tingwell, was an Australian film, television, theatre and radio actor. One of the veterans of Australian film, he acted in his ...
served as a fighter pilot while
Slim DeGrey was actually imprisoned as a
POW at the Changi camp after the
fall of Singapore
The Fall of Singapore, also known as the Battle of Singapore,; ta, சிங்கப்பூரின் வீழ்ச்சி; ja, シンガポールの戦い took place in the South–East Asian theatre of the Pacific War. The Empire o ...
to the Japanese.
The series was directed by
Kate Woods
Kate Woods is an Australian film and television director who has directed and produced mini series, television shows, pilots and feature films.
Career
Woods made her feature film directorial debut with the film '' Looking for Alibrandi'' ( ...
who, at the time, was best known for directing the successful Australian film
''Looking for Alibrandi'' (2000) and who, in more recent years, has become a successful television director in the United States.
Cast
* Old David-
Charles 'Bud' Tingwell
Charles William Tingwell AM (3 January 1923 – 15 May 2009), known professionally as Bud Tingwell or Charles 'Bud' Tingwell, was an Australian film, television, theatre and radio actor. One of the veterans of Australian film, he acted in his ...
* Young David-
Matthew Newton
Matthew Joseph Newton (born January 22, 1977) is an Australian actor, writer, and director, and son of TV personalities Bert Newton, Bert and Patti Newton. His acting career was interrupted by treatment in a psychiatric unit for bipolar disor ...
* Old Gordon-
Frank Wilson
* Young Gordon-
Anthony Hayes
* Old Bill-
Terry Norris
Terry is a unisex given name, derived from French Thierry and Theodoric. It can also be used as a diminutive nickname for the names Teresa or Theresa (feminine) or Terence or Terrier (masculine).
People
Male
* Terry Albritton (1955–2005), Ame ...
* Young Bill-
Leon Ford
* Old Curley-
Slim DeGrey
* Young Curley-
Mark Priestley
* Old Eddie-
Bill Kerr
William Henry Kerr (10 June 1922 – 28 August 2014) was a British and Australian actor, comedian, and vaudevillian.
Born in South Africa, he started his career as a child actor in Australia, before emigrating to Britain after the Second Wor ...
* Young Eddie-
Stephen Curry
* Old Tom-
Desmond Kelly
* Young Tom-
Matthew Whittet
* Major Dr Rowdy Lawson-
Geoff Morrell
* Lieutenant Aso- Tsushima Gotaro
* Colonel Nakamura- Misawa Shingo
* Old Kate-
Jill Perryman
Jill Perryman AM, MBE (born 30 May 1933) is an Australian former stage and screen actress and singer. Combining both her stage acting and her singing, she featured in numerous musical theatre roles, over eight decades and spanning 70 years of ...
* Young Kate- Mary Docker
* Ken-
John Howard
John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the ...
* Nerida-
Sacha Horler
Sacha Horler (born 1971) is an Australian actress. Her parents were lawyers, but co-founded Sydney's Nimrod Theatre Company in the early 1970s.
Career
Sacha Horler graduated from Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Arts in 1993 and made ...
* Betty & Joanne- Katherine Slattery
* General Tanaka- Ken Senga
* Captain Shindo- Ishihara Tatsumi
* Dr Hurrell-
Peter Carroll
* Old Vi- Marie Armstrong
* Young Vi- Rebecca Murphy
* Todd- Simon Maiden
* Lisa-
Nadine Garner
* Old Joyce-
Judi Farr
Judi Farr (born c.1938/1939), also credited as Judy Farr, is an Australian former actress of theatre, film and television best known for several situation comedy roles on Australian television. Farr has also appeared in Australian films such ...
* Young Joyce- Eliza Logan
* Bertie Jenkins-
Joel McIlroy
Joel McIlroy (born 8 August 1973 in Sydney) is an Australian actor, known for being the second actor to take on the role of Flynn Saunders, a character of the popular soap opera '' Home and Away''. McIlroy took over the role of Flynn in 2003 ...
Episodes
1999. Six ageing former POWs who spent three and a half years in Changi are each preparing for the reunion of 'The Secret 9', the name of the close-knit group of six POWs whose mutual support and friendship sustained them throughout their experiences in the camp.
Since the end of the war, the group have held reunions every nine years and this upcoming one will most likely be their last. As the date of the reunion draws near, each of the veterans find his memories ignited by a sight or sound associated with their traumatic experiences.
Reception
The series ''Changi'' was a ratings success. The final episode, which aired on ABC-TV on Sunday evening on 18 November 2001, was the second-most watched show that night in Australia.
Reviews for the series were mixed. Robin Oliver, writing in ''
The Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
'', declared the series to be "immensely satisfying" and
Robert Fidgeon, in Melbourne's ''
Herald Sun'', wrote that it was "one of the finest pieces of drama ever produced (in Australia)"
Michael Fitzgerald, writing in ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
'', said that the series, despite some flaws, was "the finest, most thoughtful local drama since Australia's miniseries heyday in the 1980s... The series isn't about the history of Changi, it's about the idea of Changi and how it refracts through the years to become something repressed, mythologised and feared.... Most movingly, it's about the transfer of memory to the next generation."
Christopher Bantick, writing in Brisbane's ''
Courier Mail'', was scathing in his review about the series. He said that the series "is a long way from representing fairly or in a balanced way what went on in the notorious camp and is close to being a profligate waste of public money". Bantick referred to ''Changi'' as "sick" and a "bomb" that "deserves to fail."
Stephen Garton, writing in 2002 in the ''Journal of Australian Studies'', believed the series to be a missed opportunity. In his view, Changi portrayed "an enfeebled narrative of the POW experience – narrow, parochial, inward-looking, blind to the complexities of former prisoner's voices but attuned to a nostalgic vision... of the
Anzac Legend
The Anzac spirit or Anzac legend is a concept which suggests that Australian and New Zealand soldiers possess shared characteristics, specifically the qualities those soldiers allegedly exemplified on the battlefields of World War I. These p ...
."
Controversy and criticism
The series ''Changi'' attracted considerable controversy when it first aired in 2001 and drew both praise and criticism from military historians, media commentators and real-life former POWs.
Peter Stanley
Peter Alan Stanley (born 28 October 1956) is an Australian historian and research professor at the University of New South Wales in the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society. He was Head of the Centre for Historical Res ...
, principal historian at the
Australian War Memorial 1987–2007, was highly critical of the series: "It gives viewers a misleading and unrealistic idea of the POW experience and of their captors. The danger is that people either believe what they see on television or don't know what's wrong and right." According to Stanley, the series contained a number of historical inaccuracies.
* The massacre of POWs that occurs in the final episode never happened in the real Changi.
* POWs are depicted as saluting Japanese officers whereas in reality, they were required to bow. Also, the real-life Changi in-mates had to endure frequent roll-calls ('Tenko') which do not occur in the TV version.
* In the series, POWs and Japanese guards mingle frequently but in reality, the prisoners and the Japanese kept apart and rarely saw each other, the POWs having to run the camp themselves.
* In the series, the POWs mock their captors in a camp concert but according to Stanley, that could never have happened as 'Japanese guards were very conscious of preserving their dignity. In real POW camps, prisoners dared not make fun of Japanese guards. It just simply wouldn't have happened.'
* The camp is portrayed in the series as quite small, housing only a few hundred prisoners but the real Changi was much larger, being a permanent or temporary home to many thousands of Allied POWs.
A number of real-life former in-mates of Changi were interviewed for their opinions on the series and the responses varied greatly. Some ex-POWs declared the series to be a moving, accurate portrayal whilst others dismissed it as unrealistic, overly sanitised, inaccurate and guilty of failing to depict the hardships of the real camp.
'Half of its rubbish!', declared one former POW.
Historian Michael Cathcart praised the series, calling it 'a moving series that captured the suffering and comradeship that were at the heart of the prisoner of war experience...and a celebration of the powerful egalitarian spirit that is the Australian story'
John Doyle defended his work. 'It's a series that runs the risk of offending everyone and satisfying no one'.
Doyle argued that the series 'was not history but art – an effort to be honest to the spirit not the facts of Changi. When you try to deal with such a tricky subject, you have to abandon naturalism.' Doyle claimed that he wanted the series to show how 'Australian humour and mateship allowed Australians to survive in greater numbers than other groups of prisoners.'
Awards
The production won the
Logie Award
The Logie Awards (officially the TV Week Logie Awards; colloquially known as The Logies) is an annual gathering to celebrate Australian television, sponsored and organised by the magazine ''TV Week''. The first ceremony was held in 1959 as the ...
for the Most Outstanding Mini Series/Telemovie in
2002. Actors
Geoff Morrell,
Matthew Newton
Matthew Joseph Newton (born January 22, 1977) is an Australian actor, writer, and director, and son of TV personalities Bert Newton, Bert and Patti Newton. His acting career was interrupted by treatment in a psychiatric unit for bipolar disor ...
and Bud Tingwell were also nominated for Most Outstanding Actor Logies, and the mini series also received 3
AFI Award nominations.
See also
*
King Rat (Clavell novel)
''King Rat'' is a 1962 novel by James Clavell and the author's literary debut. Set during World War II, the novel describes the struggle for survival of American, Australian, British, Dutch and New Zealander prisoners of war in a Japanese ca ...
, set in Changi
References
External links
ABC Changi website* {{IMDb title, 0274245, Changi
Changi
Australian Broadcasting Corporation original programming
2000s Australian television miniseries
Australian military television series
World War II television drama series
2001 Australian television series debuts
2001 Australian television series endings