“Good storytelling is genderless,” says the Picnic at Hanging Rock actress.

Natalie Dormer has insisted that male viewers shouldn’t feel excluded by female-fronted TV and film projects, like her new series Picnic at Hanging Rock.

BBC Two’s adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s novel features a female-led cast and had a female writer, with four out of the six episodes also directed by women.

“It has a different tone via osmosis, by being female-led,” Dormer told press, including Digital Spy, of the story of three adolescent girls and their governess, who mysteriously go missing in the Australian bush in 1900.

“God, it’s overdue to see that sort of storytelling, isn’t it? And to see sex and sexuality through a female gaze – female producers, writers, directors – as opposed to it coming through a male gaze. So for me, for that reason alone, it’s refreshing.

“But it’s still just, at its core, great storytelling, and should interest either gender or any of the sexualities or whatever your preferences in life are.

“I think we’re in an evolution at the moment where hopefully, in ten years’ time, this will all be so much more irrelevant, because it will naturally be happening – the parity or the quality of what stories we see in gender, in front of and behind the camera.

“Sexuality, ethnicity – hopefully we won’t need to talk about it so much in the future.”

Dormer – who plays Hester Appleyard, the enigmatic Headmistress of Appleyard College, in Picnic at Hanging Rock – insisted that “good storytelling is genderless”.

“It’s [just] good storytelling. It’s about humanity,” she said. “So, whatever you are.

“I wouldn’t want to say anything that ostracises a male audience. Because, if I can sit down and watch a hardcore Vietnam War film and enjoy it, then I expect my brother or best male friends to be able to sit down and enjoy Picnic.”

Picnic at Hanging Rock was originally published in 1967, with its surprising climax (no spoilers here!) sparking much discussion and analysis. The story, according to Dormer, “refuses, almost, to be contained as one genre”.

“Larysa [Kondracki, directors of episodes 1-3] calls it an enchanted chiller,” she said. “It has elements of psychological thriller, verging maybe on horror in some places. There’s really strong comedy in places.

“There’s romance in there. There’s adventure. There is a mystery that fundamentally is the anchor of the story. And that is what I appreciate of it, and hopefully different demographics will respond to that. It has this ability to morph as you watch it, which again, I think is just a testament to very strong writing.”

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