Gloss - First Episode

Morning, dad. Now you're not going to nag me about my hair, are you? Had it done especially for you.

– Chelsea (Lisa Chappell) rocks up to her father's wedding with a very colourful haircut, in clip one

Women with short legs look vile in hats...It's just one of those things.

– Gloss staff member Jasmine (Geeling Ng) takes a cheap shot at her colleague Magda, in clip one

Once I get a taste of the big time, there'll be no holding me back. 

– Small-town girl Gemma (Miranda Harcourt) can’t wait to start working for Gloss magazine, in clip two

...watch what you say about my wife. You’re not too old to get a kick in the pants. 

– Bradley (Michael Keir-Morrissey) warns his son Alistair (Simon Prast) about his attitude, in clip three

You should be able to help. Three letter word meaning rodent.

– Alistair (Simon Prast) talks crosswords with her father (Michael Keir-Morrissey), in part three

Gloss had a new sophistication and cultivated a flagrantly international flavour (particularly compared to earlier local TV drama) and it knew the difference between methode champenoise and champagne.

– Paul Stanley Ward in the backgrounder for this show

The Gloss concept combined a wealthy family, the Redfern’s, with a lucrative high-fashion magazine business. Blending (Rosemary) Mcleod’s ‘acerbic wit’ with (Janice) Finn’s sense that wealthy Aucklanders were flaunting their money, Gloss characters shared an unmasked ambition, an unnerving vanity, a disdain for political correctness, a penchant for spending (providing it was someone else’s money) and a scathing cynicism. Appropriate to the high-fashion concept, an important feature of Gloss’s tongue-in-cheek approach and the popular following it achieved was its thoroughly overdone costume, hair and make-up. Hats and long coats were obligatory, the more outlandish the shapes, designs and colours the better. 

– Trisha Dunleavy in book Ourselves in Primetime (2005), page 203

It's about the Auckland where wealth, once discreetly deployed from behind high fences in the best suburbs, is having to move aside for the make-mine-Mercedes generation that grew up collecting share issues the way other kids collected first-day covers. Their motto: if you’ve got it, flaunt it. If you haven't, get it. 

– Writer and critic Diana Wichtel in Trisha Dunleavy’s book Ourselves in Primetime (2005), page 204

Is it an especially great example of TV? Well, no. It’s an hour-long drama made in the 80s – the plots are padded out more than the shoulders, and while the duds are high fashion, the sets and cinematography are high nothing. But there’s a commitment to always giving us something to look at or laugh at that I really miss in an era of, “Oh it gets good after the third episode of the second season.”

– Sam Brooks on the series, The Spinoff website, October 2021