My Brilliant Career review – a joyous heroine lights up this rare and beautiful period drama

Phillipa Northeast is brilliant as a young woman rebelling against society’s expectations in 1890s Australia. It is witty, intelligent and absolutely glorious to watch

“I’m hot headed, with a snub nose, and that’s why I prefer a direct gaze.”

So speaks Sybylla, the charmingly irrepressible and irrepressibly charming heroine of My Brilliant Career, played utterly convincingly and with vim, vigour and joy by Philippa Northeast in the new adaptation of Miles Franklin’s 1901 Australian classic of the same name. Creator Liz Doran must have wept with happiness when they found an actor capable of bringing so much to an already glorious script – and who embodies the joie de vivre upon which so much of the plot, as everyone she meets becomes part of her orbit, depends.

My Brilliant Career is on Netflix