A Town Like Alice (miniseries) A Town Like Alice (miniseries) A Town Like Alice is a five-hour 1981 Australian television adaptation of Nevil Shute's novel of the same name. Produced by the Seven Network, and directed by David Stevens, it was the second major adaptation of the book. In the United States it was shown on PBS under the Masterpiece Theatre banner, a rare non-British production to be so aired. It stars Helen Morse in the lead role of Jean Paget, with Bryan Brown as Joe Harman and Scottish actor Gordon Jackson as the aging lawyer and trustee Noel Strachan. The series won an International
A Town Like Alice have to leave the town to find work in the bigger cities. Having worked with a firm in Britain that produced crocodile-leather luxury goods, she gets the idea of founding a local workshop to make shoes from the skins of crocodiles hunted in the outback. With the help of Joe and of Noel Strachan, who releases money from her inheritance, she starts the workshop, followed by a string of other businesses; an ice-cream parlour, a public swimming pool and shops. The third part of the book shows how Jean's entrepreneurship gives a decisive economic impact to develop Willstown into "a