Ladies in Black

First floor: Ladies Wear, Hats, Shoes, Gossip, Scandal, Petty Theft, Racism, Affairs and Wigs with More Bounce than Skippy The Bush Kangaroo.

Ladies in Black is the latest in a long congaline of period dramas which highlight women’s rights, societal change and multiculturalism encroaching on a White Australia Policy in post WWII.

That it does so with broad appeal, a loving visual eye, and a charming cast is but one of the reasons this will prove popular with ABC audiences.

It’s 1961 in Goodes Department Store, which prides itself on dressing Sydney’s finest ladies. ABC’s 6 part drama picks up 6 months after the film of the same name, and the novel by Madeleine St John which itself is loosely based on David Jones store.

Between the gloves and the cocktail dresses we find a microcosm of society through characters defined by class, background and race.

Polish-born Magda (Debi Mazar) is about to step aside from her shop floor position in Model Gowns to begin her own boutique store, with ex-Harrods doyenne Mrs. Ambrose (Miranda Otto) ready to usurp the role with all her conservative fashion advice.

But Magda’s dreams are thwarted when husband Stefan (Russell Dykstra) has foolishly offered a bridging loan to Rudi (Thom Green) to start his own trucking business, without consulting her. That also puts Magda at odds with Rudi’s new wife Fay (Jessica de Gouw) who also works at Goodes, but who wants to go on the pill rather than start a family in her first year of marriage.

Also working on the floor is Lisa (Clare Hughes) a budding journalist whose family circumstance means she must return to retail work. She juggles her university studies while railing against the expectation that males write the articles for the student newspaper, edited by handsome lothario Richard (Tom Wilson).

There’s also a rat in the store ranks in the form of Angela (Azizi Donnelly) who steals the Goodes ‘look book’ to copy designs for her Lebanese family store, headed by Dawud Mansour (Hazem Shammas).

A number of other key characters weave in and out of the series including Huw Hugginson, who has the perfect period face for Goodes CEO Mr. Ryder, Todd McKenney as store manager Mr. MacKenzie, Julian Maroun as Visual Merchandiser Ellias, plus Sacha Horler, Carlos Sanson Jr. Ngali Shaw, Kate Box, Hamish Michael -it’s quite a shopping list of fine Australian actors.

Visually this is a series that pops and swings, with sumptuous colours and elegant designs in the frocks and furnishings, store fixtures and accessories galore. The replicated women’s department is so large it can look a little thin of customers, but other location shots really bring a sense of history.

The drama hangs elgantly off the coathangers of staff private lives and workplace discontent. There is family pressure, personal dreams, power games, gossip, love and secrets. Interspersed throughout are songnotes of racism, repression and a time of change, seen largely through the eyes of its female principals. This makes the series not dissimilar to a range of others in the genre, from Brides of Christ to Love Child, or Paper Giants to 10 Pound Poms. Yet it succeeds by packaging everything up so handsomely and without preaching its social commentary.

Amongst the cast, Clare Hughes is a stand-out as Lisa, embarking on independence, sex and her own career, while Debi Mazar delivers as Magda, the woman trying to realise her dream but held back by a husband’s power. Miranda Otto relishes the role of the store snob and it’s great to see Heartbreak High‘s Tom Wilson and The Twelve‘s Ngali Shaw bring their charisma back to screen.

The real star of the series is the production design by Michael Rumpf. I fully expect ABC viewers are going to sink back into this ‘romantic’ era of elegant shopping and glamorous clothes. The music swirls while the colours burst. None of it looks like it has taken shortcuts and I had no problem with injecting No Doubt’s I’m Just a Girl alongside Brenda Lee (others may get picky).

The test for the series, aside from defining its purpose beyond the book / film, is in new observations around the experiences of its suppressed characters rather than the lightweight soap of stolen design books and locker room gossip.

Ladies in Black easily entertains with its window dressing, and is smartly, quietly, drawing back the curtain to reveal more raw workplace battles.

Ladies in Black screens 8:30pm Sundays on ABC (all episodes on iview).