In the 1970s, parents across Australia forbade children from watching the racy television soap opera Number 96.

Producers of the show, about the residents of an inner-Sydney apartment block, loved to shock our staid society with bed-hopping and shower scenes.

Nigel Giles, author of a new book about Number 96, says it was the first Australian series to feature on-screen nudity. Buxom blonde actor Abigail was famously blase about signing the show's nudity clause.

"It was accepted that sooner or later there'd be a bed scene or a shower scene or blokes running around in their jocks, or a nude bum – male or female," Giles says.