AustLit

'Set in the late 1960s and early 1970s, this coming-of-age film traces a young man's emotional and social development from leaving school in Ballarat to his time in Melbourne and on active service in Vietnam.'

Source: Screen Australia.

A Queensland bush pilot investigates the murder of his brother, who had been involved in diamond mining, and stumbles across the machinations of a group of diamond smugglers.

Based on Barry Oakley's popular 1970 novel, The Great McCarthy is a satire concerning not only Australia's obsession with sport but also the perception that city folk are amoral, corporate, and greedy, while their country brethren are virtuous, innocent, but somewhat slow witted. As comedy, The Great McCarthy is a pastiche of styles suspended somewhere between Alvin Purple and Barry McKenzie, while the concept of the hero as a recessive figure, acted upon rather than acting, is reminiscent of other Australian films of the 1970s, such as Between Wars.

The storyline revolves around McCarthy, a country lad with tremendous football talent, who is pursued by a number of first-grade Victorian Football League (VFL) clubs, to the dismay of the townsfolk with whom he grew up. McCarthy is abducted and brought to Melbourne to play for a team run by Colonel Ball-Miller, who also puts McCarthy to work in his insurance company. But the young footballer finds more to life after he embarks on a series of affairs with a secretary, a night-school teacher, and the colonel's daughter.

Series exploring the covert activities behind Japanese lines of covert operatives working from a secret headquarters in Sydney.

According to Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, Mirams determined not to dwell on Japanese treatment of prisoners of war nor to show the Australians as incorruptible heroes, but did intend to counter the idea that the war was won entirely by American soldiers.

According to Storey,

Mirams could only provide money for the pilot. Each episode cost approximately $23,000 for a return of only $18,000, which over 42 episodes amounted to a loss of almost a quarter of a million dollars. At one stage cash flow became so tight that Thompson and Sumner went 'on strike' until they got paid. To cover his debts Mirams sold his rights in the series to Paramount Pictures. Consequently, Mirams made nothing from the show despite excellent overseas sales.

Albert Moran, in his Guide to Australian Television Series, notes of script-writer Ron McLean that 'McLean was never one to get precious about originality and Spyforce cheerfully plundered such stories as Callan, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, the James Bond stories and The Bridge on the River Kwai for many of its narratives.'

Storey sums up Spyforce as follows: 'The show improved as it went on - the episodes became tighter and faster, and the directing proved more imaginative. The lead cast gave excellent performances, and the special effects got better - all testimony to the short-cuts and improvisation which the series is legendary for.'

Like The Adventures of the Seaspray and Barrier Reef, The Rovers was an adventure series based around a ship (in this case, an island schooner called the Pacific Lady). The concept allowed for a great degree of mobility, so that, in Moran's words (in his Guide to Australian TV Series), they 'drop anchor, go ashore and "have adventures".'

The crew consisted of Captain Sam McGill (called 'Cap'), Cap's ten-year-old grandson Mike, freelance wildlife photographer Bob Wild, and journalist for Wildlife magazine Rusty Collins, 'whose editor agreed to her accompanying the party on the boat as long as it doesn't cost him anything' (according to Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television).

Moran says of The Rovers that it 'was a bargain basement variation of the Barrier Reef formula' (despite the fact that Barrier Reef didn't air until nearly two years later, in February 1971). But Don Storey similarly notes that

To be fair, The Rovers could not be considered a ground-breaking pinnacle of artistic achievement, following as it does the well-trodden path taken by Seaspray, Skippy and Woobinda. However, for all its predicability and happy ending, The Rovers is a slick, well-produced and entertaining product, with a balance between the dramatic and the light-hearted that appealed to adults and children alike.

The central character in Woobinda is John Stevens, a veterinarian with a practice in the fictitious New South Wales country town of Gattens Creek. A widower, he has a teenage daughter, Tiggie, and an adopted Aboriginal son, Kevin. Stevens is assisted in his practice by Peter Fischer, a German vet, and his friend Jack Johnson, a local bushman. Called 'Woobinda' by local Aboriginals, Stevens has strong compassion for animals and is constantly striving to preserve fauna from what he calls 'senseless slaughter.'

New Zealand-born producer Roger Mirams followed his earlier children's television programs The Terrific Adventures of the Terrible Ten and The Magic Boomerang with this ship-based adventure series, which, as Don Storey points out in his Classic Australian Television, was one of 'three Australian half-hour adventure series [that] were set on boats' during the first twenty years of Australian television.

Adventures of the Seaspray followed the adventurers of a widowed journalist who is raising his three children on a schooner in the South Pacific (aided by a Fijian crew member, Willyum).

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, 'The 26 half-hour stories have all the adventure material that children love - haunted islands, rescues, shipwrecked sailors, hidden treasure, smugglers and primitive tribes all filmed in exotic Pacific locations.'

Storey concurs with this analysis, and adds

Seaspray was notable for several achievements, apart from a high standard of production. It was filmed on location in an international setting; it was the first Australian television show to be filmed in colour since the 1955 series The Adventures of Long John Silver (made before Australia had television); it was the first co-production with an overseas company; and it had a Fijian native in a lead role, the first Australian series to give such prominence to a non-white person.

Roger Mirams's second children's program for Pacific Film Productions had a strong element of fantasy: a teenage boy living on a sheep farm in Victoria finds a magic boomerang that, in flight, stops time for everyone but the thrower, allowing him to circumvent the nefarious plans of various villains.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, this program contained similar elements to Mirams's earlier program: 'the self-contained world of children, a large element of fantasy, several of the same children acting in the lead roles and weekend location shooting (this time at Woodend). However, the series was more conscious in its deployment of universal symbols of Australia, and this undoubtedly helped its overseas marketing'. Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, also notes that the program was progressive in its treatment of gender roles, so that the protagonist's cousin Penny 'was portrayed as a resourceful girl making a positive contribution to whatever situations occurred.'

Of the second series, Storey notes that 'there was little relevance to the original series. The new series was produced in colour, and there were significant changes to the cast, characters and setting, with a shift in emphasis from adventure to a more light-hearted show with an element of comedy.'

A short children's adventure program, which (according to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series) 'concentrated in a pleasant, innocent fashion on a group of children who created their own make-believe town, taking on such jobs as firefighter, police officer and so on'.

The program was the first Australian production for New Zealand-born Roger Mirams, who had arrived in Australia in 1956 to work as a cameraman for the Olympic Games. After this series, Mirams, in Moran's words, 'became an active force in the industry, especially children's drama, over the next 30 years'.