Incredible Journey to a land down under

Jack Davenport takes the role of aristocratic naval officer Ralph Clarke.

You're poor, dirty and so hungry you'll do anything. So you steal. But then you're caught, thrown in jail, raped, and shipped off to a place that barely registers on the civilised map. During the six-month boat trip you somehow survive the horrid conditions and give birth.

But your plight is not over. Once you arrive in Australia's first penal colony, life doesn't get any easier. Rations are short, and with another young mouth to feed you know you must find a way to escape ...

No wonder the TV adaptation of one woman's real-life survival story is called The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant.

"It's astounding, astounding, what that woman did to save her family," says British actor Jack Davenport, who plays the aristocratic naval officer Ralph Clarke, who has a love-hate relationship with Mary.

"It's not some hokey Hollywood film. This woman was transported to Australia for like, pick-pocketing ... She was all of 24."

Set in the late 18th century when England transported its convicts to Australia, the epic A$15 million ($16.5 million) two-part mini-series stars Romola Garai as Mary and Sam Neill as one of the toffee-nosed military superiors. Filmed at beaches in Sydney, Queensland and the Whitsundays, the stunning production won the Australian Film Institute award for Best Telefeature or Mini Series.

Mary Bryant ... is not just a tale of survival and one woman's fight for freedom, but an expose of the British class system.

Clarke was a typically uptight result of the conservative social order, a young man put in charge of men old enough to be his father. Davenport, an easygoing bloke, imbues the character with an endearing schoolboy awkwardness.

"I think a way of disguising one's lack of confidence despite the authority you're meant to have," he explains, "is to, frankly, appear like you've got something stuffed very far up your arse."

His relationship with Mary begins in similarly clumsy fashion. There are moments of genuine tenderness between them, despite their conflicting positions of power. But the friction between the officer and Mary's true love, Will, makes Clarke as easy to pity as he is to despise.

"You should be feeling those things because he's a conflicted man," says Davenport. "A piece like this needs a character who serves those functions.

"Obviously, poor old Mary is in extreme jeopardy from the moment it starts, but without that kind of tension between the two men, something's lacking. So if you liked him and then thought he was a bit of an idiot and then felt a bit sorry for him, then my work here is done."

Davenport has always been drawn to troubled characters, in what has been an impressively international career.

He says his most rewarding role was in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr Ripley, playing a gay musician who falls in love with the title character. Past roles include a tactless lawyer in the TV show This Life and a bastard boyfriend in the drama, Coupling.

He's not yearning for hate mail - he just finds conventional romantic hero roles "terribly boring". "You know along with everybody else that you're going to get the girl. It's like, who cares? Characters who are not necessarily the out-and-out villain but who have issues are more interesting to play."

And yes, there's a reason he looks familiar in that nautical military garb. Davenport played stuck-up Commodore Norrington in Pirates of the Caribbean and is now shooting the sequels.

"Maybe it's because they think I look good in a tunic. You can refuse to be typecast in this way or you can go, well, it's a completely different character in a completely different context. Yes, he's got britches on, but so did everybody in that period of history."

Although the costume instantly put him in Clarke's headspace, he realised it would take more than a tunic to be convincing, particularly given the story's cultural significance.

For an actor who doesn't normally do much research, Davenport enjoyed the study, particularly Robert Hughes' Australian history bible The Fatal Shore and his discussions with cast mate David Field, who has an interest in Aboriginal politics.

Davenport learnt Clarke did not have a relationship with Mary in real life. But he discovered a piece of land was named after him - Clarke Island in Sydney Harbour. "And he complained about everything all the time".

"The soldiers would grow their own vegetables but the convicts would nick them all so he got a boat and would row out opposite Watson's Bay and plant his own stuff, at which point the convicts just went and stole it from the island. So it was in keeping with the general tenor of the man."

And while Clarke is a stuffy sort of man, the story is not.

"If people are put off by silly costumes and big wigs, they should consider it in the context of a moment in the birth of a particular side of a nation, and as a document of real, proper, hardcore human survival. Period drama or not, it's a rattling good yarn."