Some of Australia's best known faces will be calling the Seven Network home as stars of its new period drama, A Place to Call Home, which starts filming outside Sydney today.
Marta Dusseldorp, seen most recently as prosecutor Janet King on the ABC's legal drama Crownies, leads the cast as Sarah Adams, a woman with a mysterious past who returns to live in rural Australia in the 1950s.
Noni Hazlehurst plays Elizabeth, controlling matriarch of the privileged Bligh family, and Brett Climo (A Country Practice, All Saints) plays Elizabeth's only son, George, who heads the family's business interests.
Among other faces in the cast will be WAAPA graduate Abby Earl as Elizabeth's granddaughter Anna and veteran performer Frankie J. Holden.
The series comes from Perth-raised Bevan Lee, creator of Always Greener, Packed to the Rafters and Winners & Losers, who describes the lavish series as a compelling melodrama about love and loss set against the social change of the 1950s.
"It is above all a ripping emotional yarn about a woman fighting to find a place to call home and a wealthy family being challenged by a changing Australia," says Lee. "In learning to live again, Sarah brings new life and inspiration to all around her, especially the Bligh family."
Speaking by phone from Sydney, Dusseldorp said Sarah had been a nurse overseas and returned to Australia to get a job at the local hospital.
"She is a displaced woman, someone who has an enormous amount of strength, compassion and great tenderness but has no self pity for where she has been or what has happened to her," she said.
"She comes to this place for a new beginning and also hopefully a place to call home but also freedom and a kind of a rest … she has been pretty flat out the last 25 years. It's going to have all the romance and the beauty and the gestures of a period drama but this also looks at the ugly and the shameful side of Australia in the 1950s as well."
Dusseldorp will be seen later this year opposite Guy Pearce in the ABC's Jack Irish telemovies. She also hopes to be part of the still unconfirmed Crownies spin-off.
Seven's head of drama, Julie McGauran, said A Place To Call Home was "a sweeping and grand production and our most ambitious yet". No air date has been announced.
