- Lisa McCune is the heart of this epic drama, set in the criminal world of early nineteenth-century London and the convict settlement of Van Diemen's Land, as a young orphan girl struggling to make her way in the world.
- The queen of Australian television, multi-Gold Logie Award winner Lisa McCune is the heart of this epic drama, set in the criminal world of early nineteenth-century London and the convict settlement of Van Diemen's Land, as a young orphan girl struggling to make her way in the world.
The adventures of Mary Klerk (Lisa McCune), known as Mary Abacus, begin when, as a young orphan employed as a maid in a great London house, she is dismissed because of a sexual indiscretion. Following a harrowing series of misadventures on the dangerous streets of London, she is eventually thrust into prostitution in order to survive. However, her ability to read, write and calculate at brilliant speed on a Chinese abacus saves young Mary who hears by chance that London's most notorious petty criminal Ikey Solomon needs a clerk. He sets her some complex problems which she solves in their first big battle of wits. Ikey, a fence who deals in stolen goods, employs her and soon realises that, for the first time in his life, he is in love.
It will be a spiky affair. There is little love lost between Ikey and his wife Hannah (Sonia Todd), a brothel keeper, strong minded, and consumed by warring passions. She doesn't love Ikey but hates the idea of any other woman having him and becomes furiously jealous after learning of his involvement with Mary Abacus-a woman she once employed. When Ikey branches out into the major crime of forging banknotes Hannah betrays him to the authorities. Arrested, Ikey manages a daring, even fantastic, escape from Newgate Jail and gets away to New York. Hannah and Mary meanwhile are apprehended by the police, tried, found guilty, and finally transported across the seas as convicts to Van Diemen's Land where they are to serve out seven-year sentences, Mary for her successful brothel, and Hannah on a trumped up charge for the possession of stolen goods.
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