A “Thumped” Schapelle Bumps Doc Martin

TV One will pre-empt Doc Martin and Benidorm on February 20 for the controversial Australian telemovie, Schapelle.

It dramatises how Schapelle Corby was convicted of drug smuggling in Indonesia and premiered Sunday on Channel Nine, when it promised to reveal the truth behind her arrest and trial.

But The Guardian thought it stripped her story of “its most compelling elements – and turns a fine cast into Corby family impersonators at a crime-scene re-enactment“. (The cast includes Colin Friels, Denise Roberts, Jacina Stapelton and Krew Boyan.)

However, the Sydney Morning Herald argued it “delivered the basic goods … In the course of 120 minutes or so, we were given a more nuanced, honest and empathetic picture of this young woman we think we know than we had ever encountered in a decade of obsessive watching of the real thing.”