AustLit

Script-writer.

Although perhaps best known as the screenwriter for the 1981 feature film adaptation of Puberty Blues, Margaret Kelly has also carved out an impressive career over four decades as a television script-writer.

Kelly's first television scripts were for Crawford Productions' Homicide, for which she wrote in the early 1970s. She followed this with scripts for Quality of Mercy (1975), an anthology series for which all authors were Australian women; the ABC's comedy series No Thanks, I'm on a Diet (1976); Pig in a Poke (1977), co-written with John Dingwall and co-starring Justine Saunders, in which a wealthy Melbourne doctor moves to Redfern; and the ABC's Top Mates (1979), co-written with Anne Brooksbank. Both Pig in a Poke and Top Mates dealt with, among other issues, the disenfranchised and impoverished state of Australia's indigenous population.

In 1980, Kelly adapted Patricia Wrightson's novel as the ABV TV series The Nargun and the Stars, in which a heartbroken and orphaned city boy moves to the country and finds, hidden in the depths of undeveloped land, creatures from the distant Indigenous Australian Dreamtime. This was followed by Kelly's adaptation of Puberty Blues, which she had optioned from the as-yet unpublished stories of Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey, whom she had met at a writing workshop in a suburban theatre.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Kelly wrote for A Country Practice (1982, for which she wrote at least seven episodes), The Cowra Breakout (1984), G.P. (1989-1990), Heartbreak High (1994-1995), and SeaChange (1998).

Her post-2000 credits include scripts for McLeod's Daughters (2003).

In 1978, she shared the Logie Award for Best Dramatic Script with John Dingwall for her work on Pig in a Poke.