Picnic at Hanging Rock

(Peter Weir, 1975) Talking Pictures TV, 9pm

White lace historical drama, but not quite as you know it… A milestone of Australian cinema, the second feature by the versatile, ever-surprising Peter Weir is based on Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel. Set in 1900, it involves the mysterious disappearances of several members of a party from a girls’ school at Hanging Rock, Victoria. As Weir evokes the event and its consequences – with Russell Boyd’s cinematography exploring the expanses and crevices of the terrain – ambivalence is teasingly, chillingly sustained in a story of fear, desire, repression and the primal power of landscape. Rachel Roberts heads a cast that includes The Go-Between’s Dominic Guard, and a young Jackie Weaver.