AustLit

Tales of the sexually unexpected. A half-hour anthology that explores the growing phenomenon of the electronic date. Bold and innovative in style, Love Bytes makes us the voyeurs in a sexual world where nothing is quite what it seems.
(Source: Australian Film Commission website)

Fat Cow is a small and dying town. Desperate to keep the town alive, motel proprietor Cassie Brown claims that an '80s pop legend recently died in the town's motel, hoping to draw tourists to the location. When the story is punctured by visiting journalist Jack Green, he and Cassie combine forces to keep Fat Cow alive and solve a succession of mysteries on the way.

Fat Cow Motel was an interactive, multi-platform series. Each episode ended on a cliffhanger, and viewers were invited to solve the mystery at the official website before the resolution aired on the next week's episode.

A short-lived television series about idealistic young police officers in an inner-city Sydney area, Young Lions did not rate well, and was not renewed for a second season.

'The Metro is a funky inner city block where there are as many stories as there are apartments, where a cafe and a community police station make up the ground floor, and where the penthouse (and indeed most of the building) is owned by a corrupt businessman who enjoys the irony of living 'above the law'.

'Created by veteran Australian television writer Tony Morphett (Blue Heelers, Water Rats) and wife Inga Hunter, Above The Law invites the viewer into a 'vertical village' where a host of colourful characters form firm friendships and relationships based on humour, respect, love and lust.

'When 'Vegas' Pete Murray is sent to jail, his unsuspecting daughter Olivia (Alyssa-Jane Cook) is forced to move into The Metro. While she confronts her father's murky past, she finds herself struggling to control his empire, and learning to live with the other inhabitants of The Metro.'

Source: McElroy All Media (http://www.mcelroyallmedia.com.au/index.php?page=above-the-law). (Sighted: 19/4/2013)

Seven people are shipwrecked on the 'Treasure Island' of which Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, and need to find a way to escape the island. Unfortunately, the island is isolated by a ferocious storm called the Maelstrom. The island itself, as the shipwrecked newcomers find, is divided into three tribes (the Samurai, the Traders, and the Horselords), who feud fiercely among themselves. Looming over all is the sinister figure of Dante, who fears the newcomers are a threat to his control over the island.

Search for Treasure Island was another production from Roger Mirams, responsible for such Australian television programs as The Terrific Adventures of the Terrible Ten, The Magic Boomerang, Adventures of the Seaspray, The Lost Islands, Runaway Island, Secret Valley, Professor Poopsnagle's Steam Zeppelin, and Mission Top Secret.

The two seasons of Search for Treasure Island aired two years apart, the first in 1998 and the second in 2000.

One of Australia's highest rating dramas, All Saints is a Logie Award-winning Australian medical drama set in the fictional All Saints Western General Hospital in suburban Sydney. The stories originally focused on the nursing staff of Ward 17 run by Nursing Unit Manager Terri Sullivan. It was sometimes referred to as the 'garbage ward' because it took the overflow of patients.

In 2004 Network Seven producers overhauled the series in an effort to increase the show's gradually dwindling audience. They achieved this by closing down Ward 17 and transferring some of the staff to the Emergency Department managed by Frank Campion. Several other new lead characters were also introduced. The changes also saw the storylines begin to focus more on the lives of the doctors and nurses.

Another significant change to the series came in early 2009 when the producers introduced the Medical Response Unit. Central to this development was the helicopter which took doctors to rescue situations outside the hopsital and which in turn brought patients to the All Saints Emergency Department. The show's name was also changed at this time to All Saints: Medical Response Unit. The increased production costs created by having scenes shot on location played a part, however, in the series being cancelled mid-year. The series ended with the Emergency Department and Medical Response Unit teams having a dinner to farewell the last remaining original character, Von Ryan on her final day at All Saints.

All Saints was popular in many countries including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium and Iran.

'A fast-paced television drama set within the fascinating environment of a State Coroner's office complex. Each day a team of highly trained professionals deal with the questions of deaths, murders, accidents, suicides, fires, drownings and even the odd natural cause. We see their battles with grieving families, slow or meddling authorities and organized crime, from the initial inquiry through to the courtroom appearances and the Coroner's final verdict and recommendations for trial or reform.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive (http://www.australiantelevision.net/statecoroner/statecoroner.html). (Sighted: 8/3/2013)

In this sequel to David Ogilvy's Escape from Jupiter, the colonists are preparing to return to a newly established mining colony on Ganymede, Jupiter's moon. The journey is rendered more dangerous by instability and tensions among the crew members, a malfunctioning computer, a stowaway, and the various dangers of space itself (such as asteroids).

As with Ogilvy's previous work, the focus is strongly on the child protagonists, rather than the adult characters.

Water Rats is an Australian police television series which was broadcast on the Nine Network between 1996 and 2001. The series was based around the men and women of the Sydney Water Police who fight crime across Sydney Harbour and surrounding locales. The show was set on and around Goat Island in Sydney Harbour.

Hughie, a writer in his late forties, is married with three children and living in the country. Through an uncontrollable desire to step outside himself, to recapture the naturalness of feeling of his childhood, and to seek renewal, Hughie leaves his family for the outback. What began as a tentative adventure has the power to change him in ways that are unforeseen, profound, and ultimately irrevocable.

'A 10-part series about the prison psychologist Louisa Correlli who has recently begun working in the male prison, Blackstream. The series deals with her experiences in dealing with the inmates and staff of the prison. In particular, it deals with her relationship with one of her clients, a prisoner by the name of Jones.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 4/6/2013)

'It's a story about justice...and the corruption of justice. JANUS is about the lawyers, police, judges and magistrates who work with a very imperfect system. The focus of our story will be the new Director of Public Prosecutions Officer, taking over the handling of all Committals for trial - the first sweeping changes recommended by the Janus Taskforce Committee.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 3/5/2013)

A character-based television drama series about the lives of police officers in the fictitious Australian country town of Mt Thomas, this series began with the arrival of Constable Maggie Doyle (Lisa McCune) to the Mt Thomas station in the episode 'A Woman's Place'. Doyle and avuncular station boss Senior Sergeant Tom Croydon (John Wood) were the core characters of the series until the departure of Lisa McCune.

Immensely popular for a decade, Blue Heelers was cancelled in 2006 after thirteen seasons. The announcement was front-page news in Australia's major newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney's Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun and The Age in Melbourne, and Brisbane's Courier Mail.

On June 8, 2006 Ross Warneke wrote in The Age:

'It's over and, to be perfectly blunt, there's no use lamenting the demise of Blue Heelers any more. When the final movie-length episode aired on Channel Seven on Sunday night, 1.5 million Australians tuned in, a figure that was big enough to give the show a win in its timeslot but nowhere near big enough to pay the sort of tribute that this writer believes Heelers deserved after more than 500 episodes.It is unlikely there will be anything like it again. At almost $500,000 an hour, shows such as Blue Heelers are quickly becoming the dinosaurs of Australian TV.'

G.P. is an Australian television series that ran for eight seasons. Set in and around a fictional general medical practice in an inner-city suburb, the storylines explore the professional and personal lives of the doctors and staff who worked there.