Historian Michael Cathcart introduces William Wentworth and the "Emancipists", a loose-knit group of former convicts and their children who take on British Governor Ralph Darling in the 1820s in a struggle for independence and civil rights in colonial Australia.
John Wood as Governor William Bligh
John Brumpton as William Charles (WC) Wentworth
Leeanna Walsman as Mary Putland
Tony Llewellyn-Jones as Governor Lachlan Macquarie
Patrick Dickson as Governor Ralph Darling
Peter O'Brien as John Stephen Jnr
Geoff Morrell as John Macarthur
Heather Mitchell as Elizabeth Macarthur
Sophie Cleary as Jane New
John Gregg as Sir Joseph Banks
Nicholas Hope as Judge Advocate Richard Adkins
Les Hill as Sergeant Sutherland