Loveday Writing

The job of a show’s pilot is to establish its premise and characters with the audience, and story arcs for the season. Ladies in Black is in the unique position of being based on the 2018 film of the same name, which in turn, was based on the 1993 novel, Women in Black. So, some audience members may already be familiar with the show’s characters and overall premise.

Full disclosure, I have not read the novel but I have seen the 2018 film and will be reviewing the series with this mindset.

The pilot and show kicks off with a montage of the titular ladies in black getting ready for their working day at Goodes Department Store (with the exception of Lisa). The first few lines reveal that Magda, the Head of Model Gowns and Hungarian immigrant, is leaving to establish her own boutique, and that Mrs. Ambrose, from Britian who worked at Harrods, is replacing her. When Mrs. Ambrose arrives, she makes a grand but silent entrance, making her high standards and dislike of Goodes’ set up and Magda’s tastes very clear.

Meanwhile, Lisa and her friend, Petra, discuss Lisa’s father not letting her grow up, as well as Lisa’s dreams of becoming a famous writer, discussing groundbreaking feminist topics, instead of just being stuck as an editorial assistant at the uni’s newspaper. She makes the editor, Richard White, notice her when she makes fun of fellow student and Richard’s number-two, Clive’s, direction of a play, and tells him how it should have been interpreted. Petra then tells her that her mother is on the phone and needs to talk to her. We then cut to Lisa, and her mother, Dorothy, watching Lisa’s father and Dorothy’s husband’s dead body being removed from their house.

After the funeral, Lisa and Dorothy discover that their father and husband respectively let his life insurance lapse, sold his stocks and shares, and took out a shared mortgage on their home to feed his gambling addiction. Although Dorothy will get a widow’s pension from his work, she’s advised by their bank manager to use it on the second mortgage repayments, which Lisa points out will leave them with nothing to live on. The bank manager asks them to return the cheque book as apparently women can’t be trusted with cheque books, and when Lisa suggests working at Goodes full-time, the bank manager informs her that she’ll meet a better-quality husband at university than as a shop girl. He then suggests that they take in a boarder and that Dorothy should join a tennis club to meet a second husband, before they leave.

Later, Lisa confides in Magda at work about the situation. Magda offers to have her husband, Stefan, deal with the paperwork, and gives her more shifts on Saturdays and during university holidays. When Lisa asks Magda if she can work full-time for her, Magda gently refuses saying that she should stay at university and that she is destined to become a writer. We are then introduced to Goodes’ Chief Buyer, Mr. MacKenzie, who makes his racism and sexism very clear.

When Goodes opens, Mrs. Ambrose spends her time monitoring the staff and how they treat the customers, meanwhile Dorothy handmakes flyers to try and find cleaning work. After Goodes’ staff member, Jenny Giles, helps a woman find a dress to “impress” her boss, she is accused of stealing money by the customer. At the end of the day, Mrs. Ambrose finds the money in Jenny’s locker. Jenny says she didn’t put it there and accuses Mrs. Ambrose of framing her, but she is fired anyway and insults Mrs. Ambrose and Goodes on her way out.

Later, Fay’s husband, Rudi, is trying to teach her how to drive so she’s not trapped at home with the babies. During her frustration at the driving lesson, she also expresses her resentment at taking calls from various women for Rudi’s trucking company. Fay gets out of the car and Rudi follows her in frustration, attracting the attention of two sailors walking nearby. When they make a racist remark about Rudi, Fay tells them off.

The next day we are introduced to Cheri St. Clair, the editor of Lilian Australia magazine, which Mrs. Ambrose scoffed at on her first day. When Mrs. Ambrose insults the magazine further, Cheri retorts that Magda’s boutique will soon become Goodes’ competition. Magda, trying to ease the tension, responds that her boutique will be for women who dress for themselves not to be a trophy on someone’s arm and won’t be focusing on model gowns, and therefore not Goodes’ competition. However, Cheri points out that Goodes’ chief buyer buys gowns from overseas a season out-of-date, their competitor, Younger Brothers, is beating them on price, and boutiques will beat Goodes in quality, as well as the rumours that Goodes will be bought out by a retail chain.

Later, Magda and Stefan come over to Fay and Rudi’s house to celebrate Magda’s new business venture. Fay tries her best to cook a Hungarian dinner but burns it, but Magda saves the day with a few items from the deli, anticipating Fay’s culinary disaster, but Fay isn’t the least bit offended.

When Rudi makes a toast to celebrate Magda’s boutique and his growing business, he reveals to Magda’s shock, that he was able to buy out another transport company with a bridging loan from Stefan. When Magda and Stefan go home, Magda forces Stefan to sleep on the couch as the loan impacts on her ability to open her boutique as Rudi needs to pay them back to do so, and Stefan gave Rudi the loan without telling her.

The next day, Mrs. Ambrose points out a woman who regularly looks around but never buys anything, suspecting she is the shoplifter that Goodes’ Manager, Mr. Ryder, told them about. When Lisa tries to look after her, Richard drops by as he is there with his sister, and asks Lisa where she has been as he hasn’t seen her at the office lately, and passes on his condolences over her father’s passing. Richard encourages her to go to a bar as that is more intellectually stimulating than uni, and when Lisa asks him if he read her articles, he clearly hasn’t.

When Fay tells Lisa that a pair of satin gloves are missing, she accuses the mystery customer. The customer gets offended and makes a scene, and reveals that her family owns competing department store, Mansours. Mr. Ryder asks her to meet him in his office for an apology. Fay later reveals that she found the gloves in a fitting room.

When Miss Mansour goes to Mr. Ryder’s office, beating him there, she snoops around Mr. MacKenzie’s office and takes his Look Book, hiding it in a Goodes bag. Mr. Ryder then greets her and they go into his office.

After she leaves and walks down the street, Richard follows her and asks to get a drink, telling her that he knows her brothers and they never mentioned they had a sister. He asks her to get a drink with him and he won’t tell her brothers that she’s been shopping at the competition, but she rebuffs him by saying she won’t tell them that he’s been hanging out in a women’s department store. She does introduce herself to him, and the audience, as Angela.

Just as Stefan goes to sign the lease on the boutique, Rudi tells them that he has converted their loan into ownership, as the bank refused him a business loan, and it will take him six months to pay them back through his business.

The next day, Magda goes to see Mr. Ryder to get her job back. As he can’t replace Mrs. Ambrose and he already replaced Jenny, he offers her a position in ladies’ shoes, which she politely declines. He then offers her a part-time position in ladies’ cocktail as Lisa will soon return to uni and he believes Fay will have children soon, offering to make it a permanent position once Fay leaves, which she agrees to.

Later, Lisa goes to The Beat bar and finds Richard, Clive, and another uni student with them. Richard suggests to her that she converts her uni scholarship to a teacher’s scholarship as it will provide her with a uni allowance, but Lisa doesn’t want to become a teacher. He also tells her that he read her articles, but wants her to think about articles for men as they are the majority of the student body and he has a hard time getting them to relate to “women’s issues.” He then walks off to meet Angela for a drink. Lisa spends the night getting drunk and runs into Angela in the bathroom. Angela offers to help her get home, but Lisa rebuffs her. Richard and Lisa then goes back to Richard’s dorm room.

Meanwhile, Fay takes a call from Irene at Edgell’s, who wants to speak to Rudi but won’t let her take a message, fuelling her suspicions that Rudi is having an affair.

Meanwhile, Immigration Officers pick up Stefan from his and Magda’s home. When he returns, he has brought his son, George, home with him.

Overall, this was a solid pilot with the characters and their lives firmly introduced, and story arcs set up for the season with Rudi’s possible affair, Magda losing her boutique and dream, George and Angela introduced as new characters, Angela working at Goodes, and a possible Lisa and Richard love interest story arc (although I can’t get past the implication of Richard raping Lisa). I also felt it was a good continuation/sequel from the film, as the film ended with Fay and Rudi getting engaged, Lisa finishing her high school exams, and the characters welcoming in 1960, so the show brings us forward almost two years later into a new decade to explore.

I’m looking forward to reviewing the rest of the season and seeing where the show goes from here.

Stray Observations:

-The pilot takes place between late-September and early-October 1961, shown when Magda overlooks the lease before Stefan signs it, showing the date as 2 October, 1961.