THE LOST FLOWERS OF ALICE HART – Episodes 4 & 5 – SPOILERS

The story jumps ahead fourteen years and a twenty-three year old Alice (Alycia Debnam-Carey) picks up the mail at the post office and finds a letter from Oggie (Ben Bennett), whom she once planned to marry. She had not heard from him in years, and he writes to tell her he is marrying someone else. It comes to light that five years ago, June (Sigourney Weaver) discovered their plans, and had Oggie, who was in the country illegally, deported. June also sent him an email in Alice’s name breaking up with him; blocked his email so he could not respond; and intercepted all the letters he sent her. After learning all this, Alice freaks out, hops in her truck, and heads for a (fictional) place called Agnes Bluff. On the way she picks up a stray dog at a truck stop and, in what might be a reference to the Dickens novel Great Expectations, names him Pip. Alice is quite angry, though she doesn’t know the half of it yet.

She takes Pip (played by a dog named Alice) to a very friendly veterinarian named Moss (Xavier Samuel), and finds work at Kililpitjara National Park, a fictional place modelled after Gosse’s Bluff.

At Kililpitjara, Park Ranger Ruby (Shareena Clanton) relates an aboriginal folk tale associated with the crater at Gosse Bluff. “One evening,” Ruby explains, “the star women were dancing on the milky way and a mother put her baby in the turna, a shallow wooden dish with curved sides, while she danced. The baby rocked from side to side and rocked so hard she fell from the stars to the earth. the turna landed on top of the baby and covered her, forming a crater. The baby’s mother and father saw that she was gone. They searched everywhere, but they couldn’t see their child under the Turna and they cried out in pain. To this day, the walls of the crater protect the baby. We still see the parents, the evening and morning stars, move across the sky as they search endlessly for their precious child.”

Initially, Alice starts going out with the very pleasant veterinarian who treated Pip, but quickly decides that the mysterious Dylan (Sebastián Zurita), recently returned from seven and a half years of traveling the world, is more her type. When Lulu (Vivienne Awosoga) seems to be avoiding the two of them, Alice asks her why, and Lulu responds: “I’ve never seen him out in public with a girl before. Just be careful because, he can be a lot.” Despite Lulu’s warning, Alice accompanies Dylan on a camping trip to a place with fireflies. When she asks Dylan if he ever brought Lulu there, he walks away and sulks for a while before returning to explain that he did bring Lulu there, but that was different and they were never a “thing”.

Alice opens up to Dylan about her own history. “When I was little,” she tells him, “I used to dream about setting my dad on fire, and one day I did. He used to hurt us – me and my mum – and she was going to have a baby, and I just wanted it to stop, and I stole the kerosene, and everything went up in flames, and they died. I killed them all.” Dylan is very understanding. “It’s okay. You were just a kid,” he tells her, and finishes with: “You and me. We’re the same.”

Meanwhile, back at Thornfield, more of what June covered up is revealed. When Candy (Frankie Adams) was thirteen, she and June’s son Clem (Charlie Vickers) were beginning a relationship, and when June found out she sent Candy away and informally adopted the recently orphaned Agnes (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) with the idea of fixing her up with Clem. It appears that June was aware of Clem’s violent tendencies, and foisted him on Agnes to save Candy.

June has terminal cancer and hasn’t told anyone else about that.

Thornfield was likely named after Thornfield Hall, the primary location in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. In an article for the Sydney Morning Herald, author Holly Ringland said she wrote the entire first draft of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart in Manchester. The location of Thornfield Hall was not specified in Brontë’s novel, but in Susanna White’s 2006 TV adaptation, scenes at The Hall were filmed at Haddon Hall near Bakewell in Derbyshire, not far southeast of Manchester.

June calls Sally Morgan (Asher Keddie) looking for Alice, and we find out that Alice’s brother Charlie (Jeremy Blewett), who was born prematurely following the death of his mother and was not, at the time, expected to survive, is now fourteen and in excellent health. June has been paying for all of his medical expenses, but didn’t tell anyone else at Thornfield that he was alive, including Alice, who thinks that he died in a fire that she was responsible for. We don’t get the details of the coroner’s report, which June also kept from Alice, but indications are that it exonerates her of responsibility for that.

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THE LOST FLOWERS OF ALICE HART can be streamed on Amazon Prime.