AustLit

'Former regional manager and convicted 'Headhunter' serial killer, Thomas Reddmann (Redd), escapes The Lansdale Clinic: home for the criminally insane. Redd, demented from surgical and chemical experiments, maintains his innocence and is determined to prove it. He creates Redd Incorporated, a twisted version of the modern office environment, and fills it with six of the people he holds directly responsible for his incarceration. His captive 'staff members' are literally chained to their desks and forced to perform impossible jobs. They must work to prove the unprovable or face grisly, deadly consequences.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 4/2/2014)

'Pete and Jerry are cousins in their early twenties living together on the outskirts of Sydney. Their life consists of dead-end jobs, getting stoned, hanging out at the local pub and talking about girls. Which is fine until Cheryl enters their lives; she's sexy, confident and dangerous. When they both fall in love with her their lives spiral out of control. Dramatic, tense and explosive, WEST explores what happens when you discover how few choices you have in life...'

Source: Screen Australia.

'Set in a small country town, FIREFLIES centres on the townspeople and its rural bushfire brigade. You can measure a township by the commitment of its people. Most of them are volunteers, from the fire brigade to the CWA. Whether you're new in town, or here for generations, when you're facing the driest hottest summer in decades, it pays to belong.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 3/12/2013)

One of Australia's highest rating dramas, All Saints is a Logie Award-winning Australian medical drama set in the fictional All Saints Western General Hospital in suburban Sydney. The stories originally focused on the nursing staff of Ward 17 run by Nursing Unit Manager Terri Sullivan. It was sometimes referred to as the 'garbage ward' because it took the overflow of patients.

In 2004 Network Seven producers overhauled the series in an effort to increase the show's gradually dwindling audience. They achieved this by closing down Ward 17 and transferring some of the staff to the Emergency Department managed by Frank Campion. Several other new lead characters were also introduced. The changes also saw the storylines begin to focus more on the lives of the doctors and nurses.

Another significant change to the series came in early 2009 when the producers introduced the Medical Response Unit. Central to this development was the helicopter which took doctors to rescue situations outside the hopsital and which in turn brought patients to the All Saints Emergency Department. The show's name was also changed at this time to All Saints: Medical Response Unit. The increased production costs created by having scenes shot on location played a part, however, in the series being cancelled mid-year. The series ended with the Emergency Department and Medical Response Unit teams having a dinner to farewell the last remaining original character, Von Ryan on her final day at All Saints.

All Saints was popular in many countries including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium and Iran.

Set at Sydney's Bondi Beach, the series's storylines and characters are all linked to several establishments located in a majestic building that takes in the grand sweep of the beach boulevard. These are a cafe (Kate's), a community newspaper (The Breaker), a modelling school (BMS), and a volunteer agency (Against the Tide) that finds work and accommodation for the homeless kids who are drawn to the beach suburb.

The main characters are the teenage children of The Breaker's owners, the young models, the clients and volunteers of Against the Tide, the customers and staff of the cafe, and staff of the newspaper.

'Inspired by true events, Stingers reveals the shadowy and ambiguous world of undercover cops — people with covert lives and constantly changing identities. They are police who defeat crime from within the criminal world — always without a badge and frequently without protection. The series follows the lives of the operatives as they befriend and betray those on the other side of the law. For these select few, it is a deadly way of life.The undercover cops of Stingers are a unique breed. They must juggle their own lives — love, laughter, family and humanity — with the tension of the criminal personas they adopt in their passion for justice.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 7/6/2013)

'Murder is the ultimate crime. It touches the lives of ordinary people, casting its long shadow over the glossy cityscape and glamorous haunts of the sprawling metropolis. For homicide detectives Steve Hayden and Tessa Vance, solving a murder is a journey from darkness into light. An urgent, vicious confrontation with evil, a walk through the devil's own world.

'Tessa and Steve are the elite new face of homicide. She is young and brilliant, he is logical. She is instinctive, he goes by the book. She's complicated, he's down to earth. Together this powerful partnership must confront and overcome the intrigue, fear and shattered lives which murder leaves in its wake.'

Source: McElroy All Media (http://www.mcelroyallmedia.com.au/index.php?page=murder-call). (Sighted: 19/4/2013)

The authors above are those credited as script-writers for the series. A number of other authors were also credited with 'story': Jennifer Rowe is the most frequently credited, but other authors credited with 'story' are Leanne Williams, Duncan Ball, Kel Richards, Jenny Pausacker, Kerry Greenwood, Richard Hall, Peter Gawler, John Banas, Jean Bedford, Karen Petersen, and Helen Robinson.

Mirror, Mirror II was a sequel to Mirror, Mirror, but only in so far as both programs involved travel between two time periods through the agency of a magic mirror, allowing people who live in the same house at different times to interact with one another. The two programs were closely linked aesthetically, including identical title sequences. However, the programs had very little overlap in script-writers.

In this series, Daniel and Fergus McFarlane (from the late 1990s) and Constance de Lutrelle (fom the 1860s) travel between each others' time periods, experiencing culture shock from such events as sealing (in the 1860s) and school discos (in the 1990s). As with the original series, there is also a significant object over which the protagonists struggle: in this case, a mysterious crown.

'Every day is an adventure for the pilots at Big Sky Aviation. A high spirited bunch to start with, they can't help but relish the kind of job that sees them one day flying to a medical emergency on a remote property deep in the outback, the next on a tricky city mission and another soaring over some of the most beautiful tropical coastline in the world. BIG SKY is an action adventure series with heart, humour and nerves of steel.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 9/4/2014)

An anthology-style television program, like its British predecessor Tales of the Unexpected, Twisted Tales featured a weekly story of horror or the unexpected, each with a surprise ending. The program made use of a combination of emerging and experienced writers and directors. Each episode was introduced by Bryan Brown.

Twisted Tales was followed by Two Twisted.

A drama series set in a sports academy. The various stories target issues of interest to teens. The young athletes' loves, disappointments, families, schools, and rivalries are seen in sharp contrast to the tremendous pressures and unique demands of the international sporting world.

An Australian television series which deals with the New South Wales Police Rescue Squad and its work attending to various incidents from road accidents to train crashes.

Like previous Grundy production Waterloo Station, Richmond Hill was an attempt to replicate Crawford Productions' success with the police-drama/soap-opera fusion that was Cop Shop. But like Waterloo Station, it was unsuccessful, limping through a year's worth of poor ratings before being cancelled.

Moran notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series that the program was

designed to fit on the other side of the main evening news, thus hopefully holding viewers already hooked by Neighbours. Although the program had its share of younger characters, it is chiefly remembered for its older players, including the monumental Maggie Kirkpatrick as the pretentious butt of much of the comedy, veteran Gwen Plumb as the caring owner of a boarding house, and Ross Higgins as the police sergeant trying to hold it all together.

Moran also notes that the serial cost $8 million to produce.

Home and Away is a television serial created by Alan Bateman and produced by the Seven Network. The idea for the series came to Bateman (then head of drama at Seven) after he stopped to buy ice-creams in a small country town in southern NSW. While chatting to some locals, he learned that the town was unhappy about plans to build a home for foster kids from the city. At that time, Channel Seven was still smarting from its decision to let Neighbours go to the Ten Network, where it had become hugely popular, and was looking to create another series to rival its success. Bateman saw in the idea that became Home and Away the potential for plenty of storylines and conflict by having streetwise city kids being relocated to a small regional environment,

In the beginning, the series focused on Pippa and Tom Fletcher, who, being unable to have children of their own, decide to become foster parents. When Tom is retrenched from his city job, the couple buy the rundown Summer Bay Caravan Park and move there with their five foster children. Soon after arriving, they also take in troublesome Bobby Simpson.

The series debuted in January 1988 with an hour-long telemovie. Although this rated well, the series itself took some while to develop an audience. Having learned their lesson from the Neighbours debacle, Network Seven gave its new show time, and its ratings gradually increased. As with Neighbours, the Home and Away series and performers became very popular in the United Kingdom.