The Tea Ladies was an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n situation comedy

Situation comedy

A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...

 series produced for Network Ten

Network Ten

Network Ten , is one of Australia's three major commercial television networks. Owned-and-operated stations can be found in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, while affiliates extend the network to cover most of the country...

 in 1978.

The series was produced by the same company that at the time was producing Australian versions of UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 comedy shows Father, Dear Father

Father, Dear Father

Father, Dear Father is a British television sitcom produced by Thames Television for ITV from 1968 to 1973 starring Patrick Cargill. It was subsequently made into a spin-off film of the same title released in 1973....

and Doctor in the House

Doctor in the House (TV series)

Doctor in the House is the syndicated title given, by the United States, to a British television comedy series , based on a set of books and a movie of the same name by Richard Gordon about the misadventures of a group of medical students — and their later misadventures as doctors.The first...

. The producer of these programs, William G. Stewart

William G. Stewart

William Gladstone Stewart is an English television producer and director of comedy and game shows, now best known as the former presenter of the Channel 4 quiz show Fifteen to One.-Career:...

, had earlier produced a pilot episode for a UK situation comedy series based on a group of tea ladies and resurrected the concept as The Tea Ladies in Australia.

The Tea Ladies was set in Parliament House and followed the exploits of four tea ladies at work. The regular cast included Pat McDonald and Sue Jones

Sue Jones (actress)

Sue Jones is an Australian actress, born in Wales, UK. She is probably best known for playing Pam Willis in Neighbours from 1990 to 1994. She had also played an on-going role in the situation comedy The Tea Ladies , and was Kathy Hall in Prisoner in 1981...

.

The series was produced at ATV-0

ATV-10

ATV is a television station in Melbourne, Australia, part of Network Ten - one of the three major Australian commercial television networks.-History:...

 in Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

. It began on air 14 September 1978 with each episode being broadcast in an 8.30 p.m. slot almost immediately after studio shooting was complete. The series had a run of just eight 30-minute episodes.