''Operation Buffalo'' is an Australian television

comedy-drama Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...

series written and directed by Peter Duncan that screened on ABC TV from 31 May 2020.

Synopsis

The series is inspired by true events of British nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s at remote

Maralinga Maralinga, in the remote western areas of South Australia, was the site, measuring about in area, of British nuclear tests in the mid-1950s. In January 1985 native title was granted to the Maralinga Tjarutja, a southern Pitjantjatjara Aborigi ...

, in

outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a n ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

, specifically the four tests codenamed

Operation Buffalo Operation Buffalo may refer to: * Operation Buffalo, 1944 military operation, part of the Battle of Anzio in WW2 * Operation Buffalo (1956), four open-air nuclear tests at Maralinga, South Australia * Operation Buffalo (1967), a Vietnam War opera ...

. It follows Major Leo Carmichael as he deals with various pressures and problems during nuclear weapons testing.

Cast

Episodes

Production

The six-part series was filmed in New South Wales with additional filming for desert locations in South Australia. French distributor and production company APC Studios helped fund the project and provided worldwide distribution.

Critical reception

The series received mixed reviews, attaining a score of 5.0 on IMDb. Luke Buckmaster from ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' gave the series three stars out of five and described the series as, "much more fickle: sometimes funny as a comedy, sometimes effective as a drama, but rarely satisfying as a combination of both". Wenlei Ma from

News.com.au news.com.au is an Australian website owned by News Corp Australia. It had 9.6 million unique readers in April 2019 and covers national and international news, lifestyle, travel, entertainment, technology, finance, and sport. Staff The organiza ...

thought much better of the series, writing: "as much as sombre images of death and destruction can evoke emotional reactions, nothing hits the point as hard as the glaring judgment of satire done well – which is exactly what ''Operation Buffalo'' is".

References

External links

*
"Mushroom clouds, misadventure and murder... ABC drama ''Operation Buffalo'' debuts in May"

Australian Broadcasting Corporation The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the national broadcaster of Australia. It is principally funded by direct grants from the Australian Government and is administered by a government-appointed board. The ABC is a publicly-own ...

, 1 May 2020 {{ABC Television programming 2020 Australian television series debuts Television shows set in South Australia Australian Broadcasting Corporation original programming English-language television shows Television series about nuclear war and weapons