AustLit

A comedy drama set on Sydney's north shore, The Godfathers centres on nine-year-old Mike Varga and his widowed Hungarian mother. Crippled by the car accident that killed her husband, Maria Varga is confined to a wheelchair. To help financially, she takes in three boarders: Chris (a forty-something taxi driver), Pete (a thirty-year-old commercial photographer) and Gary (a twenty-one-year-old garage attendant who has just moved to Sydney from the country). Mike is an only child and a bit introspective, but the three boarders become fond of him and Mike adopts them as his 'godfathers.' Under their influence, he becomes a happy, outgoing kid, although they are often tested by his youthful ways.

Tensions are frequently raised through the on-going presence of Elizabeth Dent, a Child Welfare Officer who is constantly checking on Mike to see that he is being well cared for. After Pete leaves the Vargases' house to get married, he is replaced by another 'godfather,' Dave.

A thirteen-episode sit-com from the production company that was shortly to launch soap-opera Number 96.

The premise involves three men and two women who, for purely economic reasons, share a basement flat: Jeremy (who works in television), Mark (a medical student), Bob (an accountant), Jennifer (a university student), and Laura (a model and receptionist).

The program's tension comes from their landlord Tinto, whose prurient distress at the mixed-gender tenancy leads him to attempt various methods of evicting them.

According to Don Storey, on his website Classic Australian Television:

'The Group relies, in classic sit-com tradition, on misunderstandings and misinterpretations of events to generate comedy, which are usually the result of the scatter-brained antics of Laura. There is no underlying social comment, other than the overall theme of not judging by appearances as Tinto does. The sole purpose of The Group is to entertain, and this it does.'

Though The Group was popular with audiences, it was not picked up for a second season for various reasons, including (according to Don Storey) the lack of overseas sales, Bruce Gyngell's departure from the Seven Network, and Cash Harmon Television's planned production of Number 96 for the Ten Network.

Australia's first successful sit-com, My Name's McGooley's - What's Yours? blended domestic and social realism in an exploration of working-class Australian life.

According to Don Storey's summation of the program in his Classic Australian Television, My Name's McGooley - What's Yours? focused on

working class battler Wally Stiller and his wife Rita, who live with Rita's father Dominic McGooley, a crusty old pensioner. Their house is in Balmain, an inner suburb of Sydney that was then still largely working class. In classic sit-com tradition, early episodes centred on the farcical situations that McGooley blundered into, which were exploited for their comedy potential. As the series progressed, Wally Stiller became the protagonist, and the emphasis shifted to social issues within the family structure, with McGooley reacting to Wally's middle-aged ocker outlook on life.

Created by Ralph Peterson, who originally intended the program for British commerical network ITV, My Name's McGooley made use of actors who were already under contract to ATN-7 (both Gordon Chater and Noeline Brown, for example, had been working on The Mavis Bramston Show), as well as attracting John Meillon back from England to take the role of Wally.

Highly successful with audiences from the outset, My Name's McGooley ran for nearly ninety episodes before Gordon Chater left the program (and moved to a new vehicle, The Gordon Chater Show, still on ATN-7). With McGooley absent, the program was heavily re-tooled and re-invented as Rita and Wally.