Return to Eden

Gilling and Smillie reprised their roles, with Peta Toppano replacing Hughes, for a 22-part weekly series that began airing on 10 February 1986.

Rich but insecure, and with two teenage children and two failed marriages behind her, she marries a handsome but unscrupulous younger man, tennis pro Greg Marsden (Reyne).

Stephanie sells the gems and goes to an island clinic where she meets Dr. Dan Marshall (Smillie), a brilliant plastic surgeon who uses his talents to repair her face and body.

Using her new identity and fortune, she plots her revenge on both Greg and Jilly and aims to take back what is rightfully hers, particularly her beloved family home Eden, a vast mansion estate in the Northern Territory.

[7] The events of the series take place seven years after the end of the original mini-series, with Stephanie now married to Dr. Dan Marshall and living at New Eden, a mansion in Sydney.

The most prominent storyline was Stephanie's continued attempts to keep control of the family company, Harper Mining, which ruthless businessman Jake Sanders (Daniel Abineri) was trying to take away from her.

Rebecca Gilling and James Smillie both reprised their roles from the original mini-series, while Peta Toppano replaced Wendy Hughes as Jilly Stewart, playing her as a glamorous, scheming "superbitch", much in the style of Dynasty's Alexis Colby.

The actors playing Stephanie, Jilly and Dennis were later brought back to film a hasty five-minute conclusion to the various unresolved storylines that was added to the end of the final episode in order to bring the series to a close.

The 1986 series of Return to Eden was clearly intended as an Australian answer to the glamorous American "supersoaps" Dallas, Dynasty and Falcon Crest, with the requisite ostentatious fashions, boardroom struggles, bedroom romps and outrageous storylines.

It is fair to argue that Return to Eden successfully delivered all the stock soap pleasures with the Australian setting giving the show a certain ironic distance.

It was shown again in the UK in 2010 by the satellite channel CBS Drama, which showed both the original 1983 mini-series and immediately followed this with the 1986 sequel series which included the revised ending.

In 2014, the South Korean webseries Birth of a Beauty was made, adapting the story of Return to Eden (and Khoon Bhari Maang).

The mini-series and the weekly series were screened on TF1 under the title "La Vengeance aux deux visages" (Revenge with two faces) and are regularly rerun on French TV channels, or available on streaming service.

Unfortunately, even though the packaging states "Digitally Enhanced", the picture quality of the discs actually leaves a lot to be desired and is reproduced from many generations of copies down from the master.

[11] A soundtrack album for the series, featuring music composed by Brian May (not to be confused with the Queen guitarist) was released on vinyl during the show's original airing.