'This Isn't Costume Drama As You Know It'

Natalie Dormer on playing a strict headmistress in a new adaptation of a classic Australian novel…

 

- Judy Ewens

The spellbinding 1975 Peter Weir film, Picnic at Hanging Rock, stayed in the imagination of audiences long after they had seen it.

Now the BBC is hoping that a new six-part adaptation of the iconic Australian novel will have the same engaging effect.

Made by Australian TV, it tells the story of three adolescent girls and their female mathematics teacher, who mysteriously vanish during a picnic in the outback on St Valentine’s Day in 1900.

The girls are all pupils at Appleyard College, an upmarket boarding school for young ladies established by Hester Appleyard, who is played by Natalie Dormer (The Scandalous Lady W, Game of Thrones, Silk).

The enigmatic headmistress rules with an iron fist, determined that her girls are all disciplined, well-turned out and suitable marriage material.

But the widowed Mrs Appleyard’s background is shrouded in mystery. She has come to Australia from England in order to reinvent herself, but as everyone becomes obsessed with the fate of the missing girls, her carefully constructed life begins to unravel, and she can’t keep the ghosts from her past at bay.

TV Times met up with Natalie, 36, to find out more…

Why do you think so many people still believe that Picnic  At Hanging Rock is based on something that really happened?