The Hello Girls

We older persons who yearn for the good old days of the manual telephone exchange, when you turned a handle and a human person said "number please - I am sorry Misses Jones is visiting her sister this afternoon I will connect you there instead" will be rushing to embrace the computerised telephone exchange after one visit to the Hello Girls (ABC TV Mon. to Thur, 6.30 PM). It is full of Chrissy Cross( a Bra. and Corset manufacturers dream) plus a weird collection of female telephonists who look like Ally McBeal on a bad hair day.. They never appear to answer a single call but spend their switchboard shifts discussing male technicians and boy friends too dumb for the Seven & Nine's Super Quizzes

The program has no laugh track and if recorded before a live? studio audience, they are sitting there like stunned mullets too shell shocked to even giggle let alone laugh out loud. Oh Hugh ( ABC programmer) please find some David Croft productions old or new for this time slot.

This was a very pleasant show set in a time that was doomed to be shortlived. The telephone exchange workers of "Bloody Darby" (as Sylvia once put it) live under the threat of automation - a poignant fate we know is not far from them, while going through their lives and loves in a small community where everyone knows and loves the "hello girls".

It is not a grand series, but it's nice. The music is great (I'd love to own the sound track), the characters are easily identified and, while never really making your heart race, they draw you in and make you care about what happens to them.

As with most short lived series, though, we never find out everything we want to know, which is a shame because these girls are worth knowing.

It's amusing but it's sobering too... could it have been only a generation ago that people looked like that, dressed like that, and above all behaved like that... in an atmosphere of petty regimentation and bleak economic prospects all around? The series revives a recent past with love and care, and the little details of the characters' lives become important to us. The series' success led to a second run of episodes, but unfortunately without any further inspiration to work with.

The Hello Girls is an excellent drama series (please note it is not meant to be a comedy!) which brings to life the late 1950's in England. The music and the fashions set the mood perfectly and bring back wonderful memories for anyone who was in England at that time (my mum loves it). Each part has been cast to perfection and it is a series I can watch over and over again. The second series continued the excellence by introducing new characters and a particularly good storyline for Sylvia. Enjoy it for what it is, a program which doesn't require swearing, innuendo or jumping camera work to get the stories across. A family program of the old fashioned kind.