# Bangkok Hilton (1989)

> A young Australian woman searching for her missing father is framed for drug smuggling in Bangkok and imprisoned in the notorious Bangkok Hilton.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/5426

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 3
- Episode runtime: 90 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama
- Network: ABC TV
- Cast: Nicole Kidman, Denholm Elliott, Hugo Weaving, Jerome Ehlers, Judy Morris, Norman Kaye, Joy Smithers, Noah Taylor
- TMDB rating: 7.8/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096540/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: mild
- Tone: tense, claustrophobic, sombre, harrowing

## What critics say

Audiences rate this 1989 Australian miniseries positively, praising its gripping prison drama and strong performances.

## Synopsis

Bangkok Hilton (1989) is an Australian television prison drama miniseries created for ABC TV, produced by Kennedy Miller Productions and running three ninety-minute episodes. Nicole Kidman stars as Katrina Stanton, a young woman who travels from Australia through England to Bangkok in search of the father she has never known. Her search turns into a nightmare when a charming young man, Arkie Ragan (Jerome Ehlers), plants drugs in her luggage and leaves her to face the authorities during a routine airport search. Imprisoned in the notorious Bangkok Hilton, she waits on a decision that could send her to the gallows. Denholm Elliott plays her father Hal Stanton, and Hugo Weaving and Norman Kaye appear among the principal prison and legal figures around her. The engine of the story is survival under a rigid, foreign justice system, with each episode built from the cramped routines of the cellblock, bribery, uneasy alliances among inmates, and the slow grind of a case that moves at the pace of bureaucracy. Set in 1980s Bangkok, the miniseries carries a tense, claustrophobic, and sombre register that draws on the anxiety of a wrongful conviction abroad. Fans of Midnight Express and Brokedown Palace will find kinship in its portrait of a foreigner trapped in an Asian prison, while viewers of Prisoner will recognise its Australian take on women behind bars.

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