AustLit

A man recently released from prison pursues his wife and teenaged son into the Australian countryside, where the three find themselves stranded in a roadhouse by a raging flood, along with the roadhouse owners, two backpackers, and a hired assassin.

'In England a recently bereaved widow and her two children discover that they've inherited a property in Australia. With some reluctance they head to Australia to claim their inheritance only to discover that the profitable sheep station they've imagined is in fact a rather out of the way wildlife park full of Australian native animals. What's more it has human occupants as well - a distantly related trio of grandchildren who have been bequeathed lifelong rights to live on the property. As well, there's an Australian born Vietnamese animal handler who's somehow the only one who has real expertise in dealing with native Australian animals.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 23/5/2014)

'Life is never simple for single mum Tori Konrad and her 14-year-old son Jake. Their quiet little horse-riding school just outside the city has suddenly been invaded by teenagers.

'There's Julia, a highly independent 16-year-old from Germany who has come to Outriders to stay with her Aunt Tori and hopefully recover from the trauma of her mother's recent death. Regina (she prefers Reggie) was asked to leave three different schools before her parents jumped at the opportunity of her taking up a working residence at Outriders. Vince is 17, going on 30. He's been in and out of foster homes for as long as he can remember. Before he arrived he'd hardly seen a horse, let alone ridden one. And then there's Shane, a country boy who is now resident stable hand, riding instructor and jack of all trades. He's hard working and uncomplicated, with a big heart and an even bigger sense of humour.

'It's an unlikely crew, but strangely the chemistry seems to work. Each offers something the others admire and slowly a bond between them forms. Reggie's enthusiasm balances Julia's caution. Shane's honesty counters Vince's street smarts. Of course, there's always a few hiccups and a fair bit of horseplay. But when danger threatens or troubles arise, you wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of Outriders.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 28/11/2013)

'High Flyers traces the lives of a group of ordinary kids, sharing their disappointments and triumphs as they discover their collective talents in an extraordinary children's circus. When Luke and Phoebe move to the country, first impressions of their new home aren't encouraging. New school, no friends, in the middle of nowhere — who needs it? But when they discover it has its own circus for kids, the dramas, adventures, relationships and backflips unfold.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 6/6/2014)

'A story of forbidden love set in Singapore before, during and after World War II.'

Source: Screen Australia.

A comedic adventure series that follows two men (Abel Moore and Charles Willing) living and working on a houseboat on Sydney Harbour, particularly their attempts to keep up payments on the boat. Also living on the house boat are aspiring actress Angela and the young, streetwise Parramatta.

Moran notes, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, that while the series reprised the ABC's The Fast Lane, it was nowhere near as successful a production:

there was little difference between the principal characters, both looking for the main chance. In addition the playing-off of Shane Withington and Grant Dodwell against each other (mildly tolerable in A Country Practice where the two had become fictional bachelors and odd-couple house companions after the departure from the series of their fictional wives) was decidedly threadbare.

Moran notes that this was the first series that Lynn Bayonas produced after leaving A Country Practice, and she had brought with her to the production not only the two main actors but also a number of writers.

A documentary exploring the short but spectacular career of Les Darcy, rated by many boxing critics as the best fighter Australia ever produced. The program also examines both the tarnishing of Darcy's reputation when his mother twice stopped him from joining the Australian Imperial Forces during World War I (leading to subsequent accusations of cowardice) and his unexpected death in the USA at age 21 from septicaemia (the result of an infected tooth).

The 1986 television series is set seven years after the events of the 1983 mini-series. Stephanie Harper, Australia's richest woman, is happily married to her plastic-surgeon husband. Her two children are now young adults, involved in the Harper 'empire' but with their own problems. The release of Jilly Stewart from prison starts a dramatic chain of events.

Frequently described as an 'Australian western', Five Mile Creek was based on Louis L'Amour's 1982 novel The Cherokee Trail, with the action moved wholesale to Australia.

A co-production between the Seven Network and the Disney Channel, the program, according to Moran in his Guide to Australian TV Series, 'revolved around two women, Kate Wallace and the American Maggie Scott, who ran a stage way station at Five Mile Creek in New South Wales.' Moran also notes that it 'was the most expensive series ever filmed in Australia up to that time, costing Disney $12 million for the first two series, although this was still thought to be about half of what it would have cost in Hollywood.'

The series did poorly on Australian television but extremely well on the Disney Channel in the United States. According to Moran,

Five Mile Creek was a kind of stunning confirmation that Lew Grade was right all those years earlier in thinking that the Australian outback could be adapted to the genre demands of the western. Indeed in Five Mile Creek the reciprocal parallels and symmetries between America and Australia are pushed in a deliberate and warmly calculating way. The Australian bush is, as it were, transfigured so that it seems intrisically like part of the Old West.

In contrast to this Australian/American fusion that Moran notes in the program's sensibility, he also notes that it had the Disney Channel's 'cultural/commercial values written all over it.'

'In 1885, George Dean, a Sydney ferry boat Captain, was accused of attempting to poison his wife. Dean, having saved six passengers from drowning, was a local hero. The verdict of guilty outraged the public and the popular press took up cudgels. Citizens formed Dean Defence Committees. Dean's lawyer Richard Meagher, realised his hoped-for political career could benefit from the publicity. His partner, William 'Paddy' Crick, championed Dean's cause in parliament, and a Royal Commission was set up to examine fresh evidence and decide whether Dean should be released.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 21/9/2012)

A fictionalised account of the life of real-life Melbourne-based gangster Joseph Leslie Theodore 'Squizzy' Taylor, who enjoyed a fearsome reputation in Melbourne before dying in 1927 in a mutually fatal gunfight with Sydney-based rival gangster John Daniel 'Snowy' Cutmore.

Set in a small, fictional, New South Wales country town called Wandin Valley, A Country Practice focused on the staffs of the town's medical practice and local hospital and on the families of the doctors, nurses, and patients. Many of the episodes also featured guest characters (frequently patients served by the practice) through whom various social and medical problems were explored. Although often considered a soap opera, the series was not built around an open-ended narrative; instead, the two one-hour episodes screened per week formed a self-contained narrative block, though many of the storylines were developed as sub-plots for several episodes before becoming the focus of a particular week's storyline. While the focus was on topical issues such as youth unemployment, suicide, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, and terminal illness, the program did sometimes explore culturally sensitive issues, including, for example, the Aboriginal community and their place in modern Australian society.

Among the show's principal characters were Dr Terence Elliott, local policeman Sergeant Frank Gilroy, Esme Watson, Shirley Dean Gilroy, Bob Hatfield, Vernon 'Cookie' Locke, and Matron Margaret 'Maggie' Sloan. In addition to its regularly rotating cast of characters, A Country Practice also had a cast of semi-regulars who would make appearances as the storylines permitted. Interestingly, while the series initially targeted the adult and older youth demographic, it became increasingly popular with children over the years.

A crime drama devised for Grundy's by Ron McLean (Don Storey suggests, on Classic Australian Television, that it evolved from an earlier concept called The Killer Stalks), Bellamy was not successful when it aired on Australian television.

According to Albert Moran in his Guide to Australian TV Series, the problem was that Bellamy was, by the time it aired, an archaic concept:

Police series production had effectively come to an end in 1975 and women had become a more important part of Australian television, both on screen and in the audience. Yet the Network went against the tide by commissioning this police series starring ex-Homicide star John Stanton in the title role. As conceived and executed by Grundy's, Bellamy and underling Mitch had little or nothing in the way of a personal life and were pitted against monstrous villains, almost invariably murderers who lacked social backgrounds and psychological complexity. As a result many of the episodes had strong similarities, with a two-dimensional Batman and Robin duo pursuing such villains in the threadbare chase narratives.

The program was cancelled even before the first set of episodes had been completed.

The inspirational boyhood story of Alan Marshall, born in rural Victoria in the early 1900s. As a young child, Marshall contracted poliomyelitis (polio), which left him crippled. He made it his goal to try to overcome his physical disability and live a normal life.

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

Mini-series tracing the history of the Kelly Gang, timed to coincide with the centenary of Ned Kelly's execution.

Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, paraphrases co-author Ian Jones's opinion that 'the mini-series was a perfect narrative vehicle for the Kelly story because it allowed sufficient screen time for the full detail and the general impact of the outbreak to be portrayed. The result on air was an absorbing saga that slowly built in intensity until only Ned Kelly was left to face the hangman'.

Moran also notes that screening the last episode on the exact anniversary of Kelly's hanging one hundred years earlier might have been disadvantageous, since this meant the program ran very late in the ratings season. For whatever reason, the program was not as commercial or critical a success as Pegasus Productions' earlier series, Against the Wind.

When the owner of a surfing supply store, who has been receiving mysterious death threats, is brutally beaten outside his store, he takes an old friend up on his offer to 'go to ground' with his wife at the friend's beachside holiday house. But the two couples are followed to their sanctuary by a mysterious motorcyclist, and soon find themselves trapped inside the house by their would-be assassin.

Peter Clarke, a former member of British Intelligence–inactive for years but still subject to the agency, aware as they are of his role in a homicide–is called on to deliver a package to his native Australia: the package contains an audio tape of recordings that will erase a listener's memory. Clarke's handler also hopes that the package will draw an enemy agent out because, by listening to the tape, he will neutralise himself. But this is only one of the parties who is interested in the potential of these recordings.

Young Ramsay follows the adventures of a Sydney-based vet who becomes disillusioned with his work on the racecourse circuit, and moves to the small, fictional town of Jindarra, where he starts work with the veterinary practice of Jack Lambert (who is semi-retired on the grounds of ill health). It was conceived as family entertainment: neither violent nor explicit, but sufficiently exciting to keep the attention of both children and adults. Ramsay is supported by Julie Lambert (Jack's daughter, nurse, and receptionist) and Ray Turner (local park ranger).

The program begins in media res, with Ramsay already established in Jindarra, and unfolds his background and past experiences slowly, over a number of episodes. According to Don Storey, in Classic Australian Television, Ramsay is 'Not a super-cool type who never puts a foot wrong, but rather a well-rounded personality with successes and failings. He is a very competent vet; sometimes he makes a fool of himself or confuses names but he always makes good under pressure or in an emergency'.

Series one was followed by a two-year hiatus, and significant changes were made to the program for series two, including the re-casting of Ramsay's receptionist (Julie Lambert having been said to have left Jindarra after her father's death) and a stronger focus on happy endings.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian Television Series, 'Young Ramsay had a heavy stress on good ecological practices and was actively supported by the Victorian Ministry for Wildlife and Conservation'.

Set in a small sugar-cane town in post-World War II Queensland, the story follows a young boy's experiences of becoming a man.