"OF COURSE, I'm very proud of my little brother, and it goes without saying Mum is too, as we've seen him ascend from crafting gore-riddled post-modernist sculptures at Oxley High, to standing on the glittery stage at the Cannes Festival, accepting the Palme D'Or for his short film Cracker Bag.

The world of the arts is notoriously tough, as I can attest, but Glendyn has drawn some long straws, worked hard and the results have been great.

His TV directing excursions in Beaconsfield and Puberty Blues maintained the intimate subtlety meets close-to-the-bone realism for which he's become known, but a re-telling of Gallipoli was always going to be a challenge.

If Australia's national identity is so closely married to this awful chapter in the First World War, what sort of a gamble would Channel Nine be willing to take?

Once I knew something of the way this story was to be treated, with accurate reference to historical records it's basing on the writings of lauded author Les Carlyon and importantly, an avoidance of over-the-top heroics, focusing instead on the hard truth of the events I know I began to look forward to this telling of the Gallipoli story.

Watching episode 1, The First Day, the things I've always suspected were true are there the palpable fear of the rookie soldiers, some dropping dead with fright; the grief and reluctance of the mothers and wives on the home front; that there was no instant bloody battle on the beaches and that the enemy, the Turks, in many ways, were like the Anzacs just as young, scared, confused and human.

Sure enough, the Aussie larrikinism and notions of mateship, so central to the Anzac legend, are evident in this rendition teen soldier/brothers lean on each other as never before, their naivety and wonder dashed to shreds as they bayoneted their first Turk and realise what it means to kill.

Also central is the supreme folly the British commanders were willing to perpetrate for the sake of their own face, the Anzacs a mere expendable commodity. Colonials crude, yet useful.

Throughout this episode, Glendyn and director of photography, Germaine McMicking allow the daydreaming of central character, Tolly Johnson, to expose what must be the hyper-real and unreal experience of finding oneself in a full-blown unfolding tragedy.

The child-soldier's nascent thoughts of love and sensuality are brought jarringly back to reality as his captain calls a charge. Before the officer can complete the directive, he is dropped dead by a sole projectile. The bullets do not discriminate.

Gallipoli will likely educate many who take the time to watch it. We learn that by nightfall of The First Day, it was expressly requested by the commanders onshore to evacuate the troops, the task clearly an overwhelming impossibility.

Yet, mere months after the orders to "Dig, dig, dig!" came from British command 8500 Anzacs, many more French and English and an astounding 80,000 Turkish troops would lie dead across the peninsula.

And Gallipoli was just a forerunner of greater casualty in the Great War.

As a family, Glendyn, mum and I have never been all that involved with Anzac Day, other than the few times I played The Last Post badly on the cornet and the fact it also happens to be mum's birthday.

I know my brother and I don't feel that identity and spirit that is said to have shaped the nation. Yet the horror of war, its stupid waste and emotional destruction is not something we take for nothing.

This telling of Gallipoli may prove to be a risk for the commercially conscious likes of Channel Nine, though their cliched trailers and adverts paint a more familiar concept.

It is a victory for the art of TV drama and also victory over the narrowing of what is thought to be Australia's defining moment."

Reviewed by Leigh Ivin, February 10, 2015