Return of A Place To Call Home gives more than one lesson in history

A NEW season of Foxtel’s wildly popular drama series A Place To Call Home will give fans another history lesson when it returns to showcase channel in September.

Foxtel's drama series, A Place To Call Home returns to air for season 4 on September 11. Picture: Foxtel/Nick Wilson

A NEW season of Foxtel’s wildly popular drama series A Place To Call Home will give fans another history lesson when it returns to showcase channel at 8.30pm, Sunday on September 11.

Across the 12 episodes, relationships between the key characters will explore two contrasting social issues from 1954 — the reds under the beds communism scare sparked by the infamous Petrov Affair; and the social and moral challenges which liberalised life for Australians.

But the extraordinary wardrobe work of costume designer Lisa Meagher will also provide a dazzling display of that period’s fashions — as modelled here by the show’s leading ladies Marta Dusseldorp, Abby Earl and the ever elegant matriarch, Noni Hazlehurst.

Viewers will be alert to the latter’s return to form in this first release photo from season 4 — after her character Elizabeth Bligh’s life was left in the balance, suffering a heart attack, in last season’s finale.

The gripping story of the Bligh family and its fortune has drawn record audience figures for Foxtel, which saved the series after it was dropped by Channel 7.

It is also winning overseas fans, including The Wall Street Journal which listed it in its best television of 2015.

Grandmaster Flash, an executive producer for the Netflix original series The Get Down with Baz Luhrmann.

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Baz dances to a new hit

Looks like Baz Luhrmann (and Grandmaster Flash) have a hit on their hands, with reviews for the new TV series, The Get Down, giving the Netflix production (dropping this Friday) the thumbs up.

Tracking the beginnings of hip-hop music, one reviewer lauded the Aussie for creating “a fantastic and fresh blend of his own: a TV show told as a film, a music video told as a six-hour miniseries and an original story holding more truth than most true stories.”

Geraldine Hakewill as Chelsea, and Rebecca Gibney as Lola, in Wanted

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Gibney’s still wanted

A second season for Channel 7’s top-rating drama debutante, Wanted will reunite one of the best female pairings since Thelma & Louise, with Rebecca Gibney telling me her co-star, Geraldine Hakewill was “ the perfect partner in crime” in the series which launched earlier this year:

“Geri and I get on like a house on fire so we can’t wait to return to life on the run.” Filming starts next month.

Style Squad, starring Elle Ferguson and Tash Sefton, returns to Style Channel on Sept 12.

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Blog-ettes back on air

Keeping up with the Kardashians is one thing. Sharing the secrets of how to dress like them proves a job for the Style Squad, when the series returns to the Style Channel on Monday, September 12.

Blog babes and business partners Elle Ferguson and Tash Sefton dig into their bag of fashion tricks for this season’s ultimate in best friend makeovers, for seven lucky women and one brave bloke.

The Code was one of the best dramas of 2015.

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Code’s chilling return

TV Insider rated ABC cyber thriller, The Code one of the best dramas of 2015 — and after a sneak peek at the second season (premiering 8.30pm, Thursday, Sept 1), it picks up the tense action where this quality production left off.

Backing up in his acclaimed role as autistic hacker, Jesse Banks, actor Ashley Zukerman and his on-screen brother Ned, played by Dan Spielman, are threatened with extradition to the US over their cyber crimes in series one, if they don’t help in a new national emergency.

Joining the world-class cast is Sigrid Thornton as cyber security agent Lara Dixon; hunting Anthony LaPaglia as Jan Roth, a mercurial merchant of illegal weapons, drugs and danger online.

Originally published as Return of A Place To Call Home gives more than one lesson in history