‘My Brilliant Career’ Season 1 Review: Sybylla Melvyn Gets a Fierce, Funny Reboot for a New Generation

Miles Franklin wrote her semi-autobiographical novel about a headstrong farm girl in the Australian bush back in 1901, and somehow the story has never quite stopped feeling urgent. Nearly a century and a quarter later, Netflix has handed the material to showrunner Liz Doran, who previously worked on shows like Barons and Please Like Me, for a six-episode reimagining titled ‘My Brilliant Career’ that lands on the platform this week.

The premise still centers on Sybylla Melvyn, an aspiring writer living an idyllic if impoverished existence on her family’s farm at Possum Gully, whose parents ship her off to live with her wealthy grandmother in hopes she’ll trade her literary ambitions for a suitable husband.

That basic shape will be familiar to anyone who saw the beloved 1979 film adaptation starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill, or who read the novel in school, but Doran and her writing team have clearly set out to make something that speaks to right now rather than simply restaging the past.

What surprised me most watching this new version is just how much of its energy comes from refusing to treat Sybylla as a period curiosity. She reads less like a woman trapped by 1900s expectations and more like someone who happens to be living in 1900 while thinking entirely in the present tense, sharp-tongued, impatient with nonsense, and allergic to anyone telling her what she should want.

A huge part of why that works comes down to Philippa Northeast in the lead role. She plays Sybylla with a kind of restless, coiled energy that makes even quiet scenes feel like they could tip into something combustible, and she never lets the character curdle into pure defiance for its own sake. There’s real warmth underneath the prickliness, and Northeast finds it in glances and half smiles as much as in the bigger confrontational moments the scripts hand her.

The show smartly gives her two genuinely worthy romantic entanglements rather than one obvious choice and one obvious mistake. Christopher Chung’s Harry starts off standoffish and slowly reveals depths that make his eventual pull toward Sybylla feel earned rather than inevitable, while Jake Dunn’s Frank carries his own quiet complications as a man sent from England expecting to return home with a wife. Neither man is written as a simple romantic obstacle, and that refusal to flatten either of them into a type is one of the season’s smarter choices.

Visually, this is a gorgeous piece of television. The production leans hard into the sun-bleached beauty of South Australia, and the different locations, from the modest stone cottage at Possum Gully to the grander, almost Mediterranean sprawl of Five-Bob Downs, each carry their own distinct mood and temperature. The costuming and set design never feel like museum pieces either, they feel lived in, which matters for a story this concerned with class and appearance.

Where I found myself more divided was the soundtrack, which leans into the now-familiar trick of taking contemporary pop songs and reworking them into period-appropriate arrangements. It mostly lands, giving certain scenes an unexpected emotional kick, but there are stretches where the choice calls attention to itself in a way that pulls me slightly out of the 1900s setting the show otherwise commits to so fully. It’s a minor grievance in an otherwise confident piece of storytelling, but it’s the one element that occasionally made me feel like I was watching a very polished period cosplay rather than something wholly its own.

I also wished the show trusted its audience a bit more with its politics in a couple of episodes, since there are moments where Sybylla’s feminist convictions get spelled out a touch too plainly rather than simply dramatized through her choices. It’s a small complaint given how much else the season gets right, but it’s noticeable in a show that otherwise handles nuance so well elsewhere.

Taken as a whole, this is a genuinely lovely piece of television that honors where it came from while carving out its own identity, anchored by a lead performance strong enough to make you forget you’re watching a remake at all. I walked away thinking about Sybylla long after the credits rolled, which is about the highest compliment I can pay a coming-of-age story. 9 out of 10.

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments!