You've probably seen the trailer for Ten's new series The Wrong Girl, the one where Jessica Marais slides on her knees towards her boss' office like a New York Yankee stealing a base, screaming "Noooooo!" as her papers fly into the air in slow motion. It's an inauspicious start to what turns out to be, frankly, a shit of a week for Lily Woodward, breakfast TV producer and protagonist of the show based on the bestselling book by Zoe Foster Blake.
"Lily's a 30-year-old girl trying to forge a career in a breakfast TV show, trying to manage a chaotic personal life and chaotic work life," explains Marais during a set visit.
"She's very competent at her job, but producing, it's a managerial thing and there are things outside of her control all the time that she has to deal with."
As well as attempting to impress her tough but fair boss, Sasha (Doris Younane), Lily is trying to contain her crush on the show's new recruit, chef Jack, played by Rob Collins (Cleverman), who swiftly hooks up with her housemate.
Complicating matters, she's developed disconcerting feelings for her best mate Pete (Ian Meadows), whose own relationship status is somewhat murky.
As for her family, her independent divorcee mother Mimi (Kerry Armstrong) has just shelved her business plans to take care of Lily's brother Vincent (Hugo Johnstone-Burt), an adrenaline junkie turned paraplegic after a kitesailing accident, while Dad (Steve Vizard) is a former businessman turned eco-warrior after a mid-life crisis.
In the book, Lily's father is absent and her mother has only a minor role, but fans of the novel should not expect the show to follow the exact same script, says writer and producer Judi McCrossin.
"The book lent itself to an hour or so of television and we had to make eight hours, but Zoe [Foster Blake] was excited by that, she saw it that way too, it was a great pilot or starting off point," says McCrossin.
Marais concurs. "If we stuck strictly to the book plot it would be a feature length film, it would be over after episode two so the show is quite different but the heart of the story is the same," she says.
On the day Fairfax Media visits the set Lily is getting heat from the network boss, played by Steve Bastoni. Lily, as she is portrayed in the trailer, is something of a bumbling, fumbling heroine – accomplished, but refreshingly relatable and flawed.
"She should be on Saturday Night Live, she's so funny, she's like Lucille Ball – so good at physical comedy," says McCrossin of Marais.
"She's beautiful, of course, but I don't care about that, she's really funny and really likeable."
Marais was able to show flashes of her comic chops as Rachel Rafter in Packed to the Rafters, her first major TV role for which she quickly became an audience favourite. She went on to gain plaudits for Carlotta, in which she was cast as the eponymous transgender entertainer, and for Love Child, where she plays a streetsmart Sydney obstetrician in the swinging '70s and for which she won a Silver Logie this year. Playing Lily feels a lot closer to home, Marais says.
"Love Child is a period drama, there are so many circumstances that are outside of my own experiences, whereas this is my life as a 30-year-old woman," she says.
"Working in a hospital saving lives is so far from my lived experience whereas working in TV land is something that I know a bit about."
The title of the book refers to the fact that the object of Lily's affection is in love with the wrong girl – her housemate. But encouragingly, in the book and the series, Lily's career is given equal weight to her love life.
"I was really interested in a show that had so many strong female characters that were at the forefront of what they were doing, in the workplace as well," says Marais, who also co-produced the series.
"It's not all about who she falls in love with, it's how do you honour a female friendship with your best friend, how do you move up a career ladder at work and be put into situations that are quite difficult?"
At 29, Lily is still young, but not yet tethered to the responsibilities of marriage and children.
"When you're that age, your career is really, really important," says McCrossin.
"And you can make things happen and you can work long hours. I wanted to show that, what it's like to be 29 and want to get ahead."
McCrossin is best known as chief writer on the first three series of Ten's The Secret Life of Us. The mid-naughties drama, a precursor to shows such as Love My Way and Offspring, was perhaps the first time that Australian twenty-somethings saw themselves accurately reflected on the small screen.
It also rated its socks off, existing in a time before Pay TV and streaming split audiences.
"When I started there were just four channels, there wasn't even Foxtel. Now it's so completely different, but in a way, I think it's challenging, I'd love to get people back to free-to-air," says McCrossin.
The Wrong Girl – boasting an all-star cast that includes Craig McLachlan and Madeleine West as the breakfast show co-hosts and Hamish Blake as a weatherman – may well be the series to do it.
"I think there's not much like this out there," says McCrossin. "Hopefully it will find a humungous audience."
WHAT The Wrong Girl
WHEN Ten, Wednesday, 8.30pm