After three episodes, I think that I am getting the message from Tony Ayres. Other reviews seem to miss the point. Very few people predicted what the fires were going to be like. We have always had bush fires in Australia. The RFS has fought them with a fair degree of success. What those fire fighters faced in 2019-20 was, to use the word of the year, "unprecedented".
The young fire fighters in the first episode were behaving like typical teenagers until they came face to face with the reality of surviving. I found this episode to be the best so far, not knowing whether or not they would survive.
The uncertainty of knowing where loved ones were and the loss of communication was the focus of the second program. I found this part a little too slow. I felt like I was living the experience in real time.
Property owners in the third part were typical of people who have been told how to prepare their homes in the event of a bush fire. As with the fires in Victoria a few years earlier, the fires were too intense for preparation to make any difference. I thought that the ending was not satisfying.
This series has exceeded my expectations. "The Newsreader" was a hard act to follow on Sunday nights but "Fires" has proved to be a worthy successor.
