Best movie of this year hands down!

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

I've rarely been so disappointed with a BBC miniseries. This is a romance, almost a romantic colony with most of the plot revolving around who is sleeping with whom tonight and the resultant conflict. About the only historical effort came from the costume department. But, Banished is not even a costume drama. I give it four stars only for some of the acting.

How can you create an historical drama without the history? The colony was on full rations until 1790. Officers had no monopoly over female convicts. Until July 1788 the First Fleet was anchored in Sydney Cove. The Aborigines are invisible, but were spearing any Europeans who strayed beyond the camp which, unlike this series, was not next to the Pacific. Freeman is seen managing the 100+ km to Katoomba, when no European managed this until 1813. On attempting the Blue Mountains in December 1789 William Dawes's party reported that the terrain was entirely hostile. Ross was a Scot and Johnson from Yorkshire. And so it goes on. There appears to be almost a wilful policy of ignoring the extremely well-documented actualities.If McGovern had wished to set a series in a dystopian nightmare he didn't need to travesty the complex, nuanced and subtle history of early colonial Australia. He could have invented some futuristic corporation, or perhaps imagined a version of Putin's Russia.

Dear America (and anywhere else that Auntie Beeb tries to sell it)Sorry.Our BBC normally produces better than this. This time it failed and on behalf of Britain I apologise. I can allow for "bending" of the facts to help a better drama but historical inaccuracies in an "Historical Drama" are just not acceptable. As well as these glaringly obvious errors, victims of floggings recover amazingly quickly, others are "starving" because they have not eaten since breakfast and the female lead has such perfect teeth. Most of us in the UK in 2015 still don't have teeth as good as this let alone in 1788!As for us Brits. This is being on BBC2 - BE WARNED it is NOT a BBC TWO drama! At best this is BBC1 fare but more likely this would be something that you would find on "the other side" (and I don't mean Channel 4).It is a reasonable yarn and the idea is a good one (and why I have given it as high as 4/10).Admittedly my opinion is based on the evidence of the first episode only but so far it is soap-opera tosh. I WILL give the second episode a chance in the hope it is improves but for me this show is very much living on borrowed time.Sorry, we are so sorry.

Well what can I say about this new series? Awful, terrible or a waste of time?All of these descriptions are correct. I only managed to watch 2 episodes. It's historically inaccurate , cast is very small and acting is very bad. It is actually a very good idea for an historical costume drama but BBC got it very wrong this time. If anyone had read The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes, you would know that 25 lashes from a whip would render you bed bound for days, starvation and exhaustion would leave you no time for flirtations, marriage and love. The whole 2 episodes were about sexing up the show. Completely ridiculous! A shame really because it's a great idea for a series.