Few actors have been on a hot streak as of late like Jacob Elordi, as the Euphoria star is returning to the show’s third season with a pretty impeccable track record. Although Elordi proved his ability to transform in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, 2025 saw him receiving serious awards buzz for his deep performance as the monster in Frankenstein. It’s admirable that Elordi has been able to use his star power to spotlight smaller projects, and Prime Video’s five-part miniseries The Narrow Road to the Deep North might feature the most obscure performance of his entire career thus far. However, the glowing responses to the powerful adaptation don’t lie; The Narrow Road to the Deep North isn’t just a powerful, epic miniseries that operates on a scale rarely seen on television, but one of the most underrated shows of 2025.
While it was not directly based on a true story, The Narrow Road to the Deep North was based on the acclaimed novel of the same name, which itself was inspired by real accounts of Australian prisoners-of-war who were taken captive in Japanese work camps during World War II. Elordi stars as the brilliant surgeon Dorrigo Evans, who is captured after the Battle of Java and sent to work at the highly dangerous Burma Death Railway, in which prisoners-of-war were forced to perform grueling acts of labor by their Japanese captors. The Narrow Road to the Deep North is by no means an easy watch, as the density of the material and visceral violence does not mean it can be passively viewed. However, the show is both an insightful examination of history and a profound celebration of the triumph of the human spirit.
‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ Goes Beyond a Typical World War II Story
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is able to skirt around clichés that are common within World War II stories because the show is centered around the presence of memory, and takes place in three distinct timelines. The first segment of the show is set prior to the war, in which Evans attempts to propose to his girlfriend Ella (Olivia DeJonge), despite knowing that he does not have the funds to justify marriage. The middle section of the series, which takes up the most screentime, is set during the banality of Evans’ capture; while his intelligence and knowledge of medical science have granted him more respect from the Japanese soldiers, it also puts him in a position in which he is forced to advocate on behalf of his brothers-in-arms, who have suffered immensely. The latest of the show’s timelines is set in the future, in which Evans is portrayed as an older man by Ciarán Hinds, and is now a respected former surgeon whose experiences inspire a curious journalist to inquire about his past. The show is not told linearly, as it moves between the three timelines in a way that embodies Evans’ scattered memories. Once more scenes of Hinds are revealed, it becomes clear that Evans is trying to suppress some aspects of the past so that he no longer has to deal with the pain.
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“To work on a set of that intensity with a filmmaker like Justin Kurzel, that really is your ultimate goal,” says Elordi, of making ‘The Narrow Road.’
At a time in which it appears that the streaming bubble could burst at any moment, it’s impressive that The Narrow Road to the Deep North was able to attain such a massive scale and take time to flesh out all of its environments with the appropriate attention-to-detail. The early scenes of Evans in his home in Australia needed to be achingly beautiful to show why his departure is so tragic, and to suggest why he is so desperate to escape and return to his country of birth. Likewise, the depiction of the death camps is visceral and upsetting, particularly in showing the ways in which the Japanese soldiers dehumanized the workers. The segments set in the future are comparatively more somber and subdued; this implies that after his trauma, Evans has become less engaged with the world, as part of him died when he was captured during World War II.
Jacob Elordi Gives His Greatest Performance of 2025 in ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’
Elordi’s performance in The Narrow Road to the Deep North is great because he conveys the deep emotions of a character who has learned not to express himself. Evans is a character who has come to think of himself as secondary, as there is great shame within his inability to connect with Ella prior to his service; even when he is celebrated for helping to save the lives of the other men who have been subjected to torture and abuse, Evans does not see himself as a typical patriot, which only gives him a greater sense of guilt when he is older and earns more acclaim. The Narrow Road to the Deep North isn’t the first artistic work that explored the physical pains experienced by prisoners-of-war, but it captures the lasting psychological impacts that post-traumatic stress has in ways that are heartbreaking.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a series that deserves more attention because it aspires to tell an important chapter in history that needs to be remembered so that it cannot be defeated. Heroism is often celebrated in war films as a monolithic achievement, but The Narrow Road to the Deep North allowed Elordi to play a complex, troubled man who comes to feel that the praises directed towards him are as much of a burden as they are a compliment. Elordi has been at the center of projects before where he was called upon to give historical insights, but his performance in The Narrow Road to the Deep North is representative of an entire generation of men who made unthinkable sacrifices. It’s not only one of the most powerful and intimate performances of Elordi’s career, but a sign that he’s gravitated towards important stories that need to be told on the grandest canvas possible.
