AustLit

A short-lived American animated version of an equally short-lived Australian sit-com, Sit Down, Shut Up focused on the teachers at a somewhat impoverished high school.

For a list of episodes, see Film Details.

An adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, set in the contemporary city of Verona Beach.

The Montagues and Capulets are two feuding families whose children meet, fall in love, but hide their relationship from their disapproving parents. There are also other obstacles in the way, such as Juliet's cousin Tybalt and Romeo's friend Mercutio.

An adaptation of Jon Cleary's novel about a politician's daughter trying to carve out a career in journalism.

'Medieval fantasy telling the story of two young lovers who have fallen under a spell cast by an evil bishop. By day Navarre is a knight who travels with a hawk, at night he is transformed into a wolf, and the hawk becomes the lady Isabeau. Imperius, who once betrayed the lovers to the bishop, helps them to undo the spell.'

Source: BFI (http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/title/258751). (Sighted: 28/2/2014)

A loose sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Shock Treatment revisits Brad Majors and Janet Weiss, now somewhat unhappily married. Caught up in the transformation of their town into a single enormous television studio (in which the town's residents act as a studio audience), Brad and Janet face their own personal weaknesses, the dissolution of their marriage, and an unexpected bid for revenge.

A cult favourite, The Rocky Horror Picture Show follows the mis-adventures of newly engaged couple Brad Majors and Janet Weiss, as they're forced, after their car breaks down, to take shelter in the sinister house of Dr Frank-N-Furter.

A co-production between the ABC and the BBC, 'in association with 20th Century Fox', Ben Hall was a thirteen-part historical drama series about bushranger Ben Hall (1837–1865). Famous as a bushranger who never killed anyone but was nevertheless shot dead by police under the Felons Apprehension Act 1865, Hall was the ideal candidate for a drama series in an era in which Australian television was becoming increasingly fascinated with the dramatic possibilities of its colonial past.

Quoted in 1974, Andrew Osborn (BBC's Head of Drama series) summed up the possibilities as followed:

'The thing that makes Hall so interesting is, he tried to make a go of the land. He married a local landowner's daughter and settled down. But through persistent police persecution, beginning when he was falsely arrested for highway robbery, he was forced into a life of crime. He was a very handsome man, had many sympathisers in the districts where he operated, and was a magnificent horseman. What better story could you have? It's wonderful.' (Australian Women's Weekly, Wed. 27 February 1974, p.10).

The full-page advertisements with which the program was marketed also summed up this approach to the narrative, reading:

'This gang is going to capture a dozen or more police, rob 10 mail coaches and raid 21 towns and homesteads. BEN HALL: From law abiding cattleman of the Weddin Mountains to embittered outlaw. This is the saga of Ben Hall. Tough. Colourful. A desperate period of Australian History.' (See, for example, Australian Women's Weekly, 10 September 1975, p.8).

For a detailed, episode-by-episode synopses, see Film Details.

Adaptation of Charles Shaw's novel about a marine and a nun trapped on a Japanese-occupied Pacific island during World War II.

'The story itself is set partly on the Sydney waterfront and partly in South Australia, and the period is the early nine teen-hundreds.

'It is about a young ne'er-do-well who passes himself off as the long-lost son of an elderly and sentimental station-owner.

'The situation is complicated by the fact the young man and his accomplice are fugitives from justice, and by the young man's falling in love with the squatter's daughter–his supposed sister.'

Source:

'Film Previews: "Kangaroo" Is Here', Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 1952, p.14.

A researcher at the Royal Aircraft Establishment becomes convinced that the 'Reindeer' clas airliners have a fatal flaw that will lead them to crash after a set number of hours.