It was bold. It was sweaty. It was deeply uncomfortable to watch with your parents. When Satisfaction premiered on Showcase back in 2007, it didn't just push the envelope for Australian drama—it basically shredded the envelope and threw it into a Melbourne gutter. We are talking about a show that dove headfirst into the high-end sex work industry, and honestly, it’s one of the few local productions that actually managed to feel sophisticated rather than just "soapy." People still go back to it today because it captured a very specific, moody, and neon-lit version of Australia that feels like a time capsule of the late 2000s.
The Australian TV show Satisfaction wasn't trying to be a police procedural or another medical drama set in a sunny suburb. Instead, it focused on 211, a high-class brothel, and the five women working there. It was written by Roger Simpson, a guy who already had some serious industry weight behind him with Stingers and Halifax f.p., but this was a different beast entirely. It lasted three seasons, wrapping up in 2010, yet its DNA is still visible in how modern Aussie streamers approach "prestige" content today.
What Made the Show Actually Work?
A lot of people assumed Satisfaction would just be titillation. You know, the kind of show that uses a provocative premise just to get eyes on the screen before delivering a boring plot. It wasn't that. Not even close. What kept people watching—and what still gives the Australian TV show Satisfaction its cult status—is how it balanced the business of sex with the crushing banality of everyday life. One minute you're watching a high-stakes negotiation with a client, and the next, a character is dealing with her daughter’s school drama or a crumbling marriage.
The casting was lightning in a bottle. You had Diana Glenn, Madeleine West, Alison Whyte, Kestie Morassi, and Bojana Novakovic. That is a powerhouse lineup. Alison Whyte, playing Chloe, brought this incredible, weary dignity to a character who was essentially the veteran of the house. Most viewers didn't realize at the time just how much the show would rely on these psychological profiles. It wasn't about the "act"; it was about the compartmentalization. How do you go from being "Mel" to being a mom? How does "Tippi" maintain her sense of self when her job requires her to be whatever someone else wants?
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The Melbourne Vibe and Production Values
Visually, the show was gorgeous. It didn't look like the flat, brightly lit sets of Neighbours or Home and Away. It was dark. It was moody. It used a lot of shallow depth of field and a color palette that felt like a rainy night in the Melbourne CBD. The production design of the brothel itself—211—was meant to look like a high-end boutique hotel, which added to that feeling of "prestige" TV that was starting to take off globally thanks to HBO.
Showcase, the Foxtel channel that aired it, was essentially trying to create an Australian version of that "It's not TV, it's HBO" energy. They succeeded. It won Logies. It got nominated for AFI Awards. It was sold to over 20 countries. Even the US looked at it for a potential remake, though the American version of these kinds of stories often loses the grit that makes the Aussie originals work.
The writing didn't shy away from the economics either. That's a detail most people forget. It showed the cut the house took. It showed the tax implications. It showed the physical toll. It treated sex work as a profession—a complicated, messy, sometimes traumatic, sometimes empowering profession—rather than a punchline or a tragedy. That nuance is why critics loved it.
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Why the Third Season Split the Fanbase
Every show has its "jump the shark" moment, or at least a point where things shift significantly. By the time season three rolled around, the cast had changed. Diana Glenn and Bojana Novakovic were gone. New faces like Renai Lombard arrived. For some, the chemistry shifted. The show became a bit more experimental, maybe even a bit more soap-opera-adjacent in its plotting, which turned off some of the original die-hards.
But even in its weaker moments, the Australian TV show Satisfaction remained miles ahead of anything else on free-to-air TV at the time. It dealt with aging, it dealt with kink without being judgmental, and it dealt with the reality of female friendship in a competitive environment. It's rare to see a show where women are the absolute center of the universe, and their relationships with each other are more important than their relationships with the men they are dating or serving.
The Legacy of 211 and Where to Go Next
If you’re looking to revisit the show or you're discovering it for the first time, you have to look at it through the lens of 2007-2010 Australia. We were in a mining boom. The "lad culture" was huge. The internet was changing everything. Satisfaction captured that transitional period where everything felt a bit more expensive and a bit more cynical.
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The show's influence can be seen in later works like The Girlfriend Experience (the TV series) or even more recent Aussie dramas like Bad Behaviour or The Newsreader in terms of production quality. It proved that Australian audiences had an appetite for adult-oriented, complex storytelling that didn't need a murder mystery to keep people engaged.
To get the most out of a rewatch or a deep dive into this era of Australian television, keep these points in mind:
- Look for the subtext in the client interactions. Often, the clients are surrogates for the audience's own insecurities about power and intimacy.
- Track the character of Natalie (played by Kestie Morassi). Her arc throughout the series is perhaps the most grounded look at how the industry can change a person's worldview over time.
- Pay attention to the soundtrack. The music supervisor did a brilliant job of picking moody, indie tracks that defined the "Melbourne sound" of the era.
- Check out the spin-offs and international versions. While none quite captured the original magic, comparing the French or British takes on the genre highlights how uniquely "Australian" the original's tone was.
If you are a fan of character-driven drama, tracking down the DVD sets or finding it on a streaming service like Stan (where it frequently cycles in and out of the library) is a must. It remains a high-water mark for Foxtel’s original programming and a reminder that when Australian TV takes risks, it usually pays off.