{"id":2650970,"date":"2026-08-28T06:45:02","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T10:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/theres-little-brilliant-about-netflixs-my-brilliant-career\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T07:09:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T11:09:56","slug":"theres-little-brilliant-about-netflixs-my-brilliant-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/theres-little-brilliant-about-netflixs-my-brilliant-career\/","title":{"rendered":"There&#8217;s little brilliant about Netflix&#8217;s &#8216;My Brilliant Career&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ftheres-little-brilliant-about-netflixs-my-brilliant-career%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2650970&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The article reviews Netflix\u2019s adaptation of &#8220;My Brilliant Career,&#8221; a six-part series based on the 1901 Australian novel by Miles Franklin. It follows Sybylla Melvyn, a young farm girl with feminist ideals, who dreams of writing rather than marrying to save her family from debt. The series presents a romantic story set in early 20th-century Australia, featuring two suitors, Harry Beecham and Frank Howden, who vie for her attention. Despite its period romance setting, the show highlights Sybylla\u2019s problematic literary talent-her writing is clich\u00e9d and ambiguous-yet her political aspirations remain central to her character. The review notes the contrast between the contemporary, more accepting view of women prioritizing careers and the earlier societal expectations. Ultimately, the article suggests that the series attempts to explore themes of independence and personal sacrifice, but its success is hampered by the outdated portrayal of feminism and the changing cultural context. The critic concludes that the story\u2019s ending may hinge on whether Sybylla makes a hard choice,emphasizing that true fulfillment might require sacrificing personal ambitions for meaningful connections.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<article class=\"fn-body\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Can one spoil a <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/tv\/\">TV series<\/a> based on a 125-year-old <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/books\/\" data-type=\"post_tag\" data-id=\"1127\">novel<\/a>? I won\u2019t, but let the record show that I badly want to. Netflix\u2019s <em>My Brilliant Career<\/em>, a six-part adaptation of the book by <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/australia\/\">Australia\u2019s<\/a> Miles Franklin, seems so obviously to be doing one thing that its reversal is a gut punch. I watched the full run with some interest, then went away wishing I hadn\u2019t. <\/p>\n<section class=\"explore-more-section\" id=\"wex-recommended-widget\">\n<div class=\"magazine-container single\">\n<h1 class=\"magazine-title mt-2\">Recommended Stories<\/h1>\n<p>             <i class=\"fa-solid fa-play icon\"><\/i>         <\/div>\n<div class=\"explore-grid\">\n<div class=\"explore-card\">                         <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/entertainment\/4703172\/cnn-picture-dolly-parton-impersonator-death-coverage\/?itm_source=parsely-api\">                             <\/p>\n<div class=\"explore-thumb-wrap\">                                                                                                                                  <\/div>\n<h3>CNN uses picture of Dolly Parton impersonator during coverage of her death<\/h3>\n<p>                         <\/a>                     <\/div>\n<div class=\"explore-card\">                         <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/entertainment\/4702909\/former-border-patrol-chief-claims-wants-killed\/?itm_source=parsely-api\">                             <\/p>\n<div class=\"explore-thumb-wrap\">                                                                                                                                  <\/div>\n<h3>Former Border Patrol chief claims Trump administration wants him \u2018killed\u2019<\/h3>\n<p>                         <\/a>                     <\/div>\n<div class=\"explore-card\">                         <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/entertainment\/4701242\/diner-en-blanc-picnic-returns-washington-dc-2026\/?itm_source=parsely-api\">                             <\/p>\n<div class=\"explore-thumb-wrap\">                                                                                                                                  <\/div>\n<h3>Diner en Blanc is back in DC \u2014 but where will it be?<\/h3>\n<p>                         <\/a>                     <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like the 1901 tale from which it is adapted, <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/netflix\/\" data-type=\"post_tag\" data-id=\"1727\">Netflix\u2019s<\/a> series presents audiences with a romantic fable set Down Under. Our protagonist, Sybylla Melvyn (Philippa Northeast), is a 20-something farm girl living in contented poverty in the Australian bush. Sent by her parents to visit a grandmother and aunt, Sybylla yearns only to write and vows to use the trip to fuel her fiction. Her mother and father, however, have other ideas. The homestead is in debt, the lenders are closing in, and only Sybylla\u2019s successful <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/marriage\/\">marriage<\/a> can save the family from ruin. <\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-1\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-1\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-15\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-1\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Readers of George Eliot and Charlotte Bront\u00eb will recognize some of these plot points. What is more surprising \u2014 indeed, what has the tinny ring of contrivance \u2014 is Sybylla\u2019s slogan-based <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/feminism\/\">feminism<\/a>, a belief system whose particular expression wouldn\u2019t have been out of place on the Bryn Mawr quad in 1965. \u201cI want to create, not procreate,\u201d the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/new-aoc-climate-film-attracting-tens-of-viewers\/\" title=\"New AOC Climate Film Attracting Tens of Viewers\">young woman tells<\/a> her sister, practically brandishing a handmade placard. \u201cWomen should swim, they should swear, they should eat like a man.\u201d Um, if you say so. <\/p>\n<div class=\"article-paywall\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\">Philippa Northeast as Sybylla Melvyn and Christopher Chung as Harry Beecham in \u201cMy Brilliant Career.\u201d<br \/> (Courtesy of Netflix)<\/p>\n<p>&#8221; data-large-file=&#8221;https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2026\/08\/localimages\/LA.TV_.090226.jpg?w=696&#8243; height=&#8221;658&#8243; width=&#8221;1024&#8243; &#8220;https:><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Philippa Northeast as Sybylla Melvyn and Christopher Chung as Harry Beecham in \u201cMy Brilliant Career.\u201d<br \/>(Courtesy of Netflix)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Given Sybylla\u2019s ideological starting point, the series would appear to have only one direction in which to go. And, as if on cue, two gentlemen do in fact present themselves immediately upon our heroine\u2019s arrival at Caddagat, her grandmother\u2019s tony estate in New South Wales. The first, played by the talented Christopher Chung (<em>Slow Horses<\/em>), is Harry Beecham, a well-meaning young landowner from a family of \u201ccolonial royalty.\u201d The second, the tersely mustached Frank Howden (Jake Dunn), is a visiting Englishman with a parental mandate of his own: marry soon, or be cut off from the ancestral purse. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Viewers might roll their eyes at both of these admirers if the onscreen chemistry between Northeast and her costars were not so pronounced. Having played a maniacally narcissistic IT bro on Apple TV\u2019s spy thriller for six seasons, Chung would seem an unusual choice for a romantic lead. Reader, he smolders. Dunn, meanwhile, might have stepped out of a novel by E.M. Forster, so powerfully does he summon a dashing Empire man abroad. <\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-2\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-2\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-16\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-2\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As in all period romances, Sybylla\u2019s budding relationships are beset by problems. Taking a page from Jane Austen, the young woman overhears Frank discussing her in abominably blunt terms (\u201cThere is a kind of uncouth spirit about her that is at once attractive and repellent\u201d). Harry, for his part, may well be engaged to someone else, a <em>m\u00e9salliance<\/em> at which Sybylla is understandably annoyed. Yet the firmest impediment to the happiness of one pair or the other is art itself: Sybylla\u2019s notion, unsupported by the evidence, that she was born to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/poll-pence-tops-desantis-by-double-digits-in-poll-of-2024-contenders\/\" title=\"Poll: Pence Tops DeSantis By Double Digits In Poll Of 2024 Contenders\">put pen<\/a> to page. \u201cI would love the freedom to write whenever I want,\u201d our heroine declares. Whatever one thinks of that monkey\u2019s paw of a wish, it presumably isn\u2019t the longing of a bride-to-be. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The irony here \u2014 and it is a deep one \u2014 is that Sybylla is a painfully bad literary stylist, forever muddling about in the land of ambiguity and cliche. \u201cBlack ink drips across the sky,\u201d she scrawls in a representative scene, sounding for all the world like a chatbot trained on undergraduate prose. \u201cHe was a distinctive man,\u201d she writes of her short-story protagonist \u2026 and then proceeds to share no distinctives. Watching this show, I wondered more than once whether the production was in on the joke. Did series creator Liz Doran (<em>Barons<\/em>) know that she had on her hands a scribbler of no great skill? In the end, I suppose it doesn\u2019t really matter. Sybylla\u2019s career goals are political rather than pragmatic. They exist for dramatic purposes to give the sane viewer something to oppose. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If <em>My Brilliant Career<\/em> fails, it is because these elements shake out very differently in 2026 than they did in 1901 \u2014 or, for that matter, in 1979, when director Gillian Armstrong adapted the book into a well-received film starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill. In those innocent days, a woman forsaking marriage for her work still rowed against the cultural tide. Now, such a figure sweeps blissfully in its foam. <\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-3\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-3\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-17\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-3\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/magazine\/4691477\/furious-hulu-series-review\/\">REVIEW: HULU\u2019S \u2018FURIOUS\u2019 IS A RIVETING, BRILLIANTLY ACTED CHARACTER STUDY<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To put it another way, dismissing one\u2019s beau a century and a quarter ago was entirely shocking. Whatever the winds of fashion, it was hardly less so in late-1970s Oz. Today, the bolder move \u2014 which is to say, the narratively interesting one \u2014 would be to do the opposite, affirming with one\u2019s actions a way of life that transcends the self. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Does Sybylla make that hard and excellent choice as the series ends? I shouldn\u2019t say. If she doesn\u2019t, however, no career, no matter how brilliant, will be worth what she gives up. <\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-4\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-4\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-25\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-4\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Graham Hillard is the TV critic for the<\/em> Washington Examiner <em>magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can a 125-year-old novel&#8217;s TV series be spoiled?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":956,"featured_media":2650971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/LA.TV_.090226.jpg?w=696","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[36241,37306,84794,5158],"class_list":["post-2650970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-film-review","tag-movie-critique","tag-my-brilliant-career","tag-netflix"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/LA.TV_.090226.jpg?w=696","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2650970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/956"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2650970"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2650970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2650980,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2650970\/revisions\/2650980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2650971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2650970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2650970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2650970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}