If you loved Carol, you will love A Place to Call Home.

If you loved the 2015 film Carol, you will love the Australian television drama series, A Place to Call Home.

I know I am watching a great historical fiction when I find myself with an irresistible urge to grab my laptop and start conducting legal research on Lexis Nexus related to the plot. The moment when I have that insatiable curiosity to know when the courts finally ended the injustice I am watching on screen. Or when various groups came together to change the law for the better.

Okay, I have just confessed that I am a politically active constitutional law attorney. However, the feeling a great historical drama generates for me is one shared by lawyers and non-lawyers alike. That is the moment the story on screen has so gripped me emotionally, I need some satisfaction. I am not only watching the pain and suffering of the characters, but I am also feeling their pain and suffering. Yes, what is happening on the screen is fiction. But when it is historical fiction, the injustice is based on real life. And the same injustice impacted real people and real lives.

There are many things that make for a great drama: convincing acting, great directing, realistic scene settings, brilliant writing, engrossing plots, and compelling characters. But when it comes to a historical fiction drama, there is something extra that sets the great apart from the merely good.

The realism.

One of the reasons I loved Carol was because of its realistic portrayal of queer life in 1950s America. The movie focuses on an illicit lesbian relationship between a married mother going through a bitter divorce and a department store worker. The married mother faces the risk of losing her child because of her sexual orientation. It does not matter that she is a good and loving mother. If she is exposed as a lesbian, she will lose her child.

Carol does not whitewash the reality of the time. The 1950s and 1960s were the dark ages for LGBTQIA Americans. We faced far more than just regular discrimination or lack of visibility in entertainment. In 49 states, it was illegal for gay adults to have consensual sex. Gays and lesbians were portrayed as predators and child molesters. The medical profession still considered homosexuality to be a mental illness. In mental health facilities, gay people were often subjected to torture, including medical experimentation. LGBTQIA people routinely underwent the torture of conversion therapy. Being outed often meant the destruction of one’s life. It could mean the loss of one’s children, one’s professional license, one’s employment, one’s livelihood, and even one’s inheritance.

In 2021, with many major civil rights victories for LGBTQIA people in the United States and abroad, LGBTQIA story lines and LGBTQIA characters are increasingly common, even in historical fiction. I welcome this. Even though I am a Millennial, I can still remember the time when gay people practically did not exist on television or in movies. But there is a drawback.

It is very tempting to create queer positive historical fiction that glosses over reality. We crave a story where gay heroes stand up against great injustice and even right a historic wrong.

However, it frustrates me when an LGBTQIA portrayal in a historic fiction piece is a little too positive and too affirming. Sometimes, it is too easy for a queer person to find acceptance for their sexual orientation or gender identity in a time when there was close to none. Sometimes, heroes emerge instantaneously, immediately holding pro-LGBTQIA views. The plot is set in the 1950s or 1960s, yet the characters all speak as though it is 2021. And the reason for their attitudes is not explained.

But that is why I loved Carol. Carol does not sugarcoat the history. A good and loving mother, the main character can have her child taken away from her just because of her sexual orientation. She faces the choice to pursue her true love and true self or keep her child. That is the sad reality of the 1950s.

(In case you are wondering, the first time a court held a mother could not have her children taken away from her solely because she was gay is Nadler v. Superior Court of Sacramento County, 255 Cal. App. 2d 523 (Cal. Ct. App. 1967)).

And that is why I love A Place to Call Home, an Australian drama series set in the 1950s. The show is about an Australian nurse, Sarah Adams, who has survived the Holocaust and returned home to Australia to visit her ill mother, from whom she is estranged. Although raised devoutly Christian, the tall blonde Sarah converted to Judaism for her late French Jewish husband. She maintains her faith, which continues her estrangement from her own devoutly Christian family. On her journey home, she meets the wealthy and powerful Bligh Family of the rural small town of Inverness, New South Wales. Invited by the kind and welcoming patriarch of the Bligh family, she moves there to restart her life.

The show has convincing acting, great directing, realistic scene settings, brilliant writing, engrossing plots, and compelling characters. But what makes it a great series is that it also has realism.

While the series is ostensibly a soap opera, the plotlines often revolve around critical social issues at the time, including issues impacting the LGBTQIA community. And it does not sugarcoat them. The gay characters live in a time when consensual gay sex is illegal, when blackmail is possible, when living in the closet is expected, when the torture of conversion therapy is a recommended medical practice, and when their families do not automatically accept them. Like Carol, A Place to Call Home portrays real pain and suffering. But even better, straight allies are not simply straight allies, but those who evolve through the show (the main character is an exception, though it is because of her experience of having been locked in a concentration camp with LGBTQIA prisoners).

And it does not limit itself to only LGBTQIA issues. A Place to Call Home also addresses other social issues including the shaming of single women having children, interfaith relationships, drug addiction, racial discrimination, illegal abortion, the Australian Forced Adoption Policy, assisted suicide, Post-Traumatic Stress disorders, and rape.

While watching, I find myself with that same urge I felt watching Carol. I want to know when courts first intervened and stopped injustice. I want to know what the law says today.

But regardless of whether you also possess my habit of conducting legal research in response to a great historical fiction drama, you will hopefully enjoy A Place to Call Home. If you enjoyed Carol as much as I did, I am certain you will.