Flair (miniseries)

Flair is a 1990 Australian miniseries about an ambitious designer who wants to break into the fashion industry.

The plot concerns a driven career woman returning to Australia from New York to make her mark in the world of fashion design. Tessa (Heather Thomas) returns home to Melbourne to establish her own label while battling her devious younger sister, the mob, and a slew of other enemies including an alcoholic competitor, a stalker, drug dealers, jealous wives, corrupt police, and militant unions. Tessa also juggles love affairs with a married Australian businessman who may be a gangster, an American photographer, and a hot-tempered Irish thug, in between surviving various attempts on her life and investigating the “accidental” death of her father.

The program was described as cross between Dynasty and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, with Australian media academic Albert Moran calling it: “an entertaining melodrama with its characters moving in a fantasy world of glamour, greed, wealth and sex.”

Cast

 * Heather Thomas - Tessa Clarke
 * Andrew Clarke - Phillip Harmon
 * James Healey - Chris Drake
 * Rowena Wallace - Pamela Winter-Smith
 * Joseph Bottoms - Matt Lee
 * Charles Tingwell - Bert Clarke
 * Imogen Annesley - Sally Clarke
 * David Reyne - Mark Tupper
 * Elaine Smith - Megan
 * Briony Behets - Samantha Harmon
 * Terence Donovan - Sgt. Doogan
 * Khym Lam - Mira

Production
Flair was filmed on location in Melbourne and the Gold Coast with a budget of $4.5 million.

Like the earlier Australian melodramatic miniseries Return to Eden, Flair was an Australian response to glamorous American television melodramas of the era such as Scruples, Bare Essence, Sins, and Dynasty. Flair is notably more humorous and provocative than those American programs, as it included “nudity, many sex scenes, and sub-plots involving prostitution, lesbianism, drug abuse, and open marriages.”

Thomas had two stunt doubles and a body double for nude scenes, telling the Sydney Sun Herald newspaper that: “I don’t believe in nudity, so I always have to have a body double. In Flair, none of that’s me. I’m a little taller and slimmer than that girl.”

The casting of Americans Thomas and Bottoms, and Irish-Australian actor Healey (who had just completed a season-long role as Alexis's husband Sean Rowan in Dynasty) was indicative of a trend in Australian miniseries from the late 1980s and early 1990s to cast well-known foreign actors in leading roles to increase the potential appeal to international audiences.

Broadcast and reception
Critical reviews of Flair were generally negative, but some critics appreciated it as a “pure escapist miniseries.” The program obtained good audience ratings when it aired on the Seven Network in August 1990.

The program was broadcast in Brazil with the title Flair: Estilo Perigoso (Dangerous Style). It was broadcast in Finland with the title Kateus Ja Kosto (Jealousy and Revenge).

Home media
Flair has yet to be released for home media in any form.