Jacob Elordi has come a long way since The Kissing Booth. Over the last three years, the Aussie actor has pushed himself time and again with starring roles in the likes of Saltburn, Priscilla, and Oh, Canada, working with such filmmakers as Emerald Fennell, Sofia Coppola, and Paul Schrader while honing his craft. And his latest role, as lovestruck POW Dorrigo Evans in The Order director Justin Kurzel’s five-part WWII miniseries The Narrow Road To The Deep North, looks to be the rising star’s most challenging assignment yet. Check out the trailer for the show, adapted from Richard Flanagan’s eponymous Booker Prize winning novel, below;

You could probably count on one hand the number of films and TV shows that offer a meaningful insight into Australia’s contribution to the war effort during World War Two — and most of us would probably struggle to name more than two (Gallipoli and Breaker Morant being the obvious duo.) But it looks like Justin Kurzel and his Nitram scribe Shaun Grant’s adaptation of Flanagan’s book will make a fine addition to that niche canon, with this first trailer deftly shifting between the POV of Elordi’s younger Dorrigo as he finds himself a prisoner of war in occupied Burma, buoyed only by the memories of a passionate love affair with Odessa Young’s Amy Mulvaney, and that of an older Dorrigo (played by Ciarán Hinds), a veteran surgeon uncomfortable with the status of ‘war hero’ foist upon him. “We all left part of ourselves in that jungle,” reflects the older Dorrigo as visceral flashbacks offer glimpses of sweat, toil, and unimaginable suffering, “memory is the only true justice.” And, well, this looks nothing if not destined to be memorable.

The Narrow Road To The Deep North — which hits Prime Video in Australia on 18 April and has yet to receive a release date from the BBC in the UK just yet — marks the beginning of another busy year for Elordi. Not only is he set to star as the Creature in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein on Netflix later this year, but he’s also currently in production on Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn follow-up Wuthering Heights, in which he’ll play Heathcliff to Margot Robbie’s Catherine Earnshaw, ahead of shooting Sir Ridley Scott’s sci-fi thriller The Dog Stars this summer. It’s a busy, dynamic upcoming slate to be sure, but you know what they say: Elordi moves in mysterious ways. (Sorry.)