Last Days of the Space Age is set in Perth, Australia, in 1979. Some real events that received worldwide attention happened in Perth that year. NASA’s Skylab fell out of orbit and scattered debris all over the Indian Ocean and Western Australia. The Miss Universe pageant was underway in Perth at the time. It was Perth’s 150th anniversary, and residents were determined to have parties to celebrate.

Last Days of the Space Age is really a story of family and community. Several families lived near each other in Perth and their stories are intertwined in the series. The drama of history aside, the characters in the story were fictional.

Tony (Jesse Spencer) and Judy Bissett (Radha Mitchell) were at the center. He was part of a striking union at a power plant. Everyone’s electricity went out with regularity. Judy was still reporting for work in an administrative job inside the plant. In the first scene a brick is thrown through their car window with a message about her being a strike breaker. It almost killed them both.

Tony and Judy had two daughters. Tilly (Mackenzie Mazur), the oldest, was determined to be an astronaut and knew every single thing about the space program and Skylab. Mia (Emily Grant), on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to surf with her grandfather Bob (Iain Glen).

Next to them lived Eileen (Deborah Mailman), a local teacher. She was having a secret affair with Bob. Her nephew Bilya (Thomas Weatherall) came to stay with her for a while and changed some significant things about her life and her place in her aboriginal world.

Close by was a Vietnamese family who ran a food truck on the beach. Sandy (Linh-Dan Pham) was the mom, Lam (Vico Thai) the dad, and Johnno (Aidan Du Chiem) was Tilly’s best friend. Tilly wanted Johnno to be an astronaut, too, but he wanted to be a singer like David Bowie.

Back in Viet Nam, Lam had been a professor of engineering. He and Tilly had a good time plotting out where Skylab was going to crash.

Tony’s brother Mick (George Mason) was starting a media company. He got involved with Miss USSR, Svetlana (Ines English), as a way to promote his business. Although he was a gay man with a partner at home, he got very caught up in Svetlana’s problems. Partly because she was good for business, but also because he actually wanted to help her.

In reality, the Soviet Union did not have anyone competing in the Miss Universe contest that year.

Last Days of the Space Age was so authentically 1979. The clothes, the music, the phones, the cameras. That was over 50 years ago and things were very different. They could have done a better job with the Russian and Vietnamese accents. I liked the way Eileen got on the radio and spelled out some of the truth about how horribly aboriginal people had been treated by the colonists in Australia. There was also a small secondary plot about the way the government treated people affected by the atomic bomb testing in Western Australia.

I see a series like this, with the Australians looking square into the face of their less than perfect past, and wish America was more inclined to accept and repair past actions.

The characters suffered losses and problems, but overall the series ended on a bright note. Especially since Perth didn’t turn out to be ground zero for the Skylab debris to crash, as Tilly was convinced it would be.

Rachel Ward directed 3 of the episodes. She’s another actress who is working behind the camera now. You can stream this series on Disney+ or Hulu.