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