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In the greater scheme of things, the fact that we sent our least-desirable criminals to populate the Antipodes is one of those wrongs that will probably never be fully righted. Although (and while it was certainly never envisaged as some sordid quid-pro-quo retaliation effort) there's many who'd argue that Australia has more than succeeded in getting its own back since. Its revenge? A stream of stultifyingly awful soap productions, all clad in suburban white-picket-fence values, boasting hackneyed scripts delivered by actors who, whilst ornamental enough, were never going to be troubling the juries on the acting award circuit.

Which only makes Channel 4's big drama offering for the Summer all the more astonishing. The Secret Life Of Us is pretty extraordinary in many respects, to be fair, but the notion of an Australian drama series heading up a British network's schedules is nigh-on unthinkable. Add to that the fact that Channel 4 came on board as co-producers before even seeing a single frame of the show, and it's plain that we're not gearing up for yet another drama-by-numbers Grundy production here.

So what went right? Well, before getting to that, it's useful to know what was going wrong in the first place. As the recent move to Channel 5 by Home & Away demonstrates, the halcyon 80s, when Australian TV product sold the world over, are well and truly over: as TSLOU's co-producer, John Edwards confirms, "We have a crisis in Australian telvision drama. Basically, our networks pay less than is necessary to make our shows and where traditionally our dramas sold very well in foreign markets, they've been less successful in recent times. And the deficit between what the network will pay and what it costs to make the show, is getting wider."

A veteran of Australian TV Production, Edwards knew that in order to attract outside interest, this show had to offer an alternative to the barbie-driven sagas more usually associated with the country. And his starting point was to do away with the usual rule-book and come up with something morally ambivalent. "In your usual Australian drama, evil comes into the world, fucks up the characters for a while, then gets expelled. That's how it works, and it just gets repeated forever. We wanted to make the stuff of the grey - the mess of life is where the real fun is."

Out of that idea was born TSLOU. An urban drama, led by eight disparate characters - a sort of female-driven, twenty-something This Life, if you will. Throw in a respectful nod to the sensibilities of Sex And the City, and the stylishness of Queer As Folk, and you've got the picture. It's co-writer and co-creator is Judi McCrossin, a whirlwind of a woman who keeps having to switch the reporter's tape-recorder off in order to share key moments of delicious (and, sadly, unprintable) indiscretion. Put it to her that her creation is credited already with rescuing Australian TV drama, and she accepts the accolade freely. "If it does, though," she insists, "it's not just luck. That's the important thing to remember. I watch some Australian shows, and I can tell you exactly where they went wrong. And generally things go wrong with the script. I mean you can fuck up at any point, but generally people are dying to get those scripts out so they can get on with scheduling, as though scheduling is the first part of the process."

And indeed it was McCrossin's writing that sealed the Channel 4 deal. As Edwards recalls, "We took our pilot script to Channel 4, who were initially worried that this was not the kind of production that Australians have shown themselves to be good at doing. So we said 'Trust us, we can turn it into a two-hour pilot. If it works, then you've got to order the series very quickly, if it doesn't you've still got a telemovie out of it. You can't lose.' Which made it a very easy pill for them to swallow."

Channel 4's leap of faith was rewarded in full when the first episodes started to arrive in their London office. "They needed to get some tapes duped for various executives," chuckles Edwards, "and they found that these tapes just kept disappearing. And they soon worked out that the tapes were being knocked off within the office. And that created a lot of interest among the execs at Channel 4. The fact that it was a much-pirated show was a really good sign as far as they were concerned."

There remained one secret weapon, though, one which surprised the entire crew when it was announced. The female lead in the show, a brittle but beautiful character called Alex, was the last role to be cast. And with a heartwarming optimism almost bordering on the arrogant, the production team approached Claudia Karvan. Largely unknown over here, Karvan is one of Australia's best known and most-loved film actresses, viewed as the talent most likely to follow Nicole Kidman into the international arena (she has a part in the forthcoming Star Wars II film), a woman who had on many previous occasions made it abundantly clear that she simply did not 'do' serial TV roles. Under any circumstances.

And what changed her mind? Again, The Script. "We got her a copy on a Friday," smiles Edwards, "she got back to us Monday and said this is fantastic, let's do it. By Wednesday she'd gotten nervous and wasn't going to do it. We ended up with a compromise offer - commit to the pilot and four further episodes. And if you don't like it after that, we'll write you out. But she fell in love with it very quickly. That was fantastic, getting her on board. I mean, Claudia's a movie star."

On the St Kilda set of TSLOU, the "movie star" in question is - much like the rest of the cast - enjoying herself far too much to worry about any previous concerns. The well-worn onset cliché states that the crew are like "one big happy family". The truth of the matter is, this lot are more like a bunch of mates who've known each other since Kindergarten. Any gaps in the filming schedule are quickly filled with a dash to the production office to catch up on the latest completed episodes. But rather than sit about studiously patting each other on the back for marvellous performances and so forth, they just watch. Laughing where appropriate, crying too, in short, enjoying the show.

As Karvan explains, TSLOU has pretty much changed her view of serial dramas. "I've never really been involved in a long-running TV series, so I was wary. With TV shows, because there's so many writers over a long period of time, you tend not to have a consistency of character: you can end up doing all kinds of things that might make for a good story, but which make no real sense." And now? "Well with hindsight, they were all over-cautious, self-indulgent concerns. All of which have been dispelled."

The character of Alex is - as is readily confirmed by all who know her - pretty much based on the woman who wrote it, Judi McCrossin. "Alex is the character I'm closest to," admits McCrossin, "but unfortunately, none of the boys who've watched this want to root her, so that's made me look at myself a bit. Claudia described her as 'emotionally constipated' in an interview and I was furious! I couldn't believe it! She's just.... kind of dignified about her emotions, I like to think."

As Alex, Karvan supplies the pilot's catalyst, when she indulges in an ill-conceived spot of al fresco adultery with her best friend's fiance, the consequences of that act underpinning much of the action that follows thoughout the show's 22 episodes. Not, of course, that Claudia Karvan, movie-star, would ever do anything so utterly unforgiveable in real life. Would she? "Hmmm... I've done something equally incestuous," she smiles. "Actually it was quite similar to this... Sorry, but I'm not going to go into exact details there, but I remember telling my girlfriend about it and she said 'I can't believe it - you just shat in your own back yard and got away with it!'"

And in much the same way, the viewer happily forgives Alex her transgression. "Peculiar isn't it?" frowns Karvan. "But that's the other thing that attracted me to this series - it's not about making judgements, or portraying things in black and white. Everyone's so deliciously flawed."

For the older viewer, those flaws are all-too clear a reminder of that 20-something, 'first taste of independence' mindset, where everything seems crucially important, where it feels like you're always just slightly out of your depth. At 29, Karvan identifies readily with all that, although is less certain that we improve as we enter our 30s. "I think if you're someone who genuinely fucks up, you're probably going to carry on doing it whatever your age. I think fucking up just gets a lot easier to deal with as you get older. The frequency remains as high - it just matters less."

Links:

• Sunday Times - http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/