When Marigold suggests a possible change of plan – that they could get among it and do some panning – Gert shoots back: “Nah fuck that, my back could never.” This early line establishes Gold Diggers as subscribing to the Deadwood mode of the old frontier: importing modern language and zhooshing up old settings with contemporary sensibilities. Despite the plethora of blokes around, this proves easier said than done. The Brewer sisters have arrived in the town of Dead Horse Gap (sounds like a lovely place!) on a mission to, as Gert puts it, find “newly minted dumb-dumbs and/or dying aristocrats”. They are Gert (Claire Lovering) and Marigold (Danielle Walker) Brewer: two sisters who’d happily sign up for reality TV dating programswere they not about a century and a half too early for the likes of Farmer Wants a Wife. The old “walk and talk” technique is deployed multiple times to whisk us through the space, establish the plot on the run, and introduce the protagonists, whose role is to break decorum in an already indecorous place. Much of Gold Diggers was shot in central Victoria’s Porcupine Village (so you can, in fact, visit the set for yourself), which combines era-original buildings with replicas. Tonally, it feels like an innocuous simulation: a Westworld theme park, sans the vengeful robots. (Murder and brutal racism really make for different vibes.) Gold Diggers plays this time and setting for shits and giggles, constructing a cartoonish half-reality that is more Saturday Night Live than historical document. Much more so than SBS’s New Gold Mountain, which is based in a similar location during the same period and rather more serious. This boisterously amusing new comedy series from the ABC, set during Australia’s gold rush, is one of those shows that make you want to visit the set for yourself, so you can amble around and explore its nooks and crannies.

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