AustLit

'When Ferguson takes her revenge on the prisoners by bulldozing the garden project, Doreen turns her anger on Franky. Ferguson psychologically manipulates Vera and she crosses a point of no return whilst Maxine orchestrates a desperate bid to see her spurned lover.

'Franky accuses Ferguson of deliberately giving Simmo a hotshot, but Ferguson wrests back the power by letting Franky know she's got a snitch in the ranks.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 23/7/2014)

A re-boot of Prisoner, Wentworth takes place in an earlier time for Bea Smith: top dog in Prisoner, she is here a new inmate, trying to consolidate her position in prison.

For a full list of episodes and authors, see Film Details.

'Dr Lucien Blake, a keeper of secrets, a solver of mysteries, returns home to 1959 Ballarat after a 30-year absence to take over his deceased father's medical practice, and starts solving crimes.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 19/4/2013)

'Conspiracy 365 is the story of a year in the life of teenager Cal Ormond, who is forced to go on the run and become a fugitive as he searches for the truth behind a deadly family secret.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive (Sighted: 5/4/2013)

'The series looks at the lives of four best friends bound together by their shared experience of being 'the losers' in high school. Now ten years later the women are about to become winners, but at what cost?'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 2/12/2013)

'Set in the homicide squad of a large metropolitan city, this is a punchy one hour drama series about murder mystery and a group of young committed cops, focused on justice for the deceased. Jennifer Mapplethorpe, ambitious and intelligent; Simon Joyner, keen, cool, self-assured; Duncan Freeman, living high, ready to fall; and Matt Ryan, intense and driven. In Homicide, it's not always crooks and low-lives, most murders are committed by ordinary people - a moment of madness, a failure of communication, a desperate act. These Detectives follow a profession that makes blood, grief and drama just part of their normal day. Their day begins when your day ends.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive.

Mortified follows the trevails of eleven-year-old Taylor Fry, as she copes with the general embarrassment of having parents, as well as being annoyed by her sister, jealous of her neighbour, and completely oblivious to her best friend's crush on her. The program inserts some fantasy elements into the otherwise straight comedy-drama by having Taylor speak directly to the camera, using elaborate fantasy sequences to explore her daydreams, and showing her over-active imagination as bringing seemingly inanimate objects to life.

Mortified was the last major work of television producer and screenwriter Angela Webber before her early death in 2007.

An Australian-New Zealand co-production.

'When 14-year-old New Zealander Holly McKenzie arrives in the Australian seaside town of Woolich, her dreams of playing basketball with the RAMS, one of the best junior basketball teams in the district, are quickly shattered. Determined to prove her ability, Holly forms her own team—the OUTLAWS. With basketball as a backdrop, Holly's Heroes is a funny and light hearted exploration of being the new kid on the block, the importance of friendship, the value of teamwork, first love, and the rewards that come from participation and the simple love of sport. Holly learns that the feeling of belonging she achieves with her team is far more important than simply winning.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Silversun follows the journey of the titular spacecraft, two years into a ninety-year journey to a distant, Earth-like planet, intended for colonisation. The colonists are in cryogenic status, and the ship's crew is largely teenagers, who will take over the primary roles as the adult crew ages.

The program's focus was a combination of the coming-of-age/interpersonal relationship storylines typical of a teenage show and the type of ethical dilemmas common to science-fiction story-telling. Among the latter were such issues as whether or not a crew member's clone was human, and what effect long-distance interstellar travel would have on the human mind and emotions.

Season two of the program ended on a cliffhanger, and no plans have been made to revive the program.

Saskia (living in Australia) has on online friendship with Noah (living in the UK). Each 'deceives' the other with their online personas, Indy (for Saskia) and Max Hammer (for Noah): Indy and Max allow Saskia and Noah to be the people they hope to be, without any of their own anxieties and uncertainties. Despite this element of deceit, the friendship between the two is presented as genuine and strong. The program received much praise when it first aired for offering a counter-argument to the anxiety that often marks debates about online friendships.

According to Patricia Edgar's account of the creation of this program,

To take such an abstract philosophical concept and create involving stories with appealing characters was a difficult task for any writer. Elaine and I needed smart observers of people and situations who understood the world Noah and Saskia inhabit, who had a flair for sharp, witty dialogue for a modern, pacy story. With the different components in the United Kingdom, Australia and cyberspace, it could be structurally confusing. Chris Anastassiades, who had written the Yolngu Boy script and worked for several other ACTF projects, was the answer, along with Sam Carroll, a young woman who had not yet been spoiled by the demands of writing formulaic drama. She brought her youth and vitality to Saskia; Chris would write Noah.

(Source: Patricia Edgar, Bloodbath: A Memoir of Australian Television, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2006, p.401.)

Further Reference:

'Interview with Paul Nichola'. The Making of Noah and Saskia. ABC.(http://www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/noahandsaskia/behind_the_scenes/making_of/paul_interview.htm). (Sighted: 12/9/2012).

'Interview with Pino Amenta'. The Making of Noah and Saskia. ABC. (http://www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/noahandsaskia/behind_the_scenes/making_of/pino_interview.htm). (Sighted: 12/9/2012).

'Saskia finds her spunky co-worker Ernesto playing guitar, and seizes the opportunity to put a band together. She bribes her ten-year old guitar teacher with chocolate, organises a jam for the next day and logs on to update Max. But her imagination takes over when she catches Ernesto with his arms around Renee. She calls the band off, instantly regretting it. But later, nobody is more surprised than Saskia when her first kiss comes out of nowhere…'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 12/6/2013)

Guinevere Jones is a Canadian/Australian fantasy television series that revolves around the adventures of the title character. Gwen Jones and her mother flee from Canada to Melbourne, where Gwen's mother is committed to an asylum, Gwen enters foster care, and Merlin turns up to teach Gwen her destiny (to fight evil).

Although the program is billed as a co-production between Australia and Canada, the involvement of Australian script-writers is relatively minimal (though other crew members, including the directors, were also Australian). Only four episodes in season one were written by Australians, and all thirteen episodes of season two were written by Canadian script-writers. However, the Australian writers did invest the essentially European Arthurian legends on which the program is based with something of an Australian flavour: Piers Hobson's episode 'Warwe and Mineer', for example, involves mysterious Indigenous Australian rock paintings.

Guinevere Jones has never been released on DVD.

Chuck Finn follows Charles 'Chuck' Finn, a Canadian boy whose parents move from Toronto to the Australian country town of Tingalla. At first, he longs desperately to return to Toronto, but he soon finds the decommissioned and derelict paddle steamer the Tingalla Rose. Soon, he and his friends--some of whom are ghostly, rather than mortal--are enchanted by the possibility of getting the Tingalla Rose running again and seduced by life on the Murray River.

Unfortunately for Chuck Finn, Barron Entertainment declared bankruptcy during the production of season two. A truncated season of six episodes was completed and released, but the production was abandoned at that point.

The president of Catalyst software company hires five high-school whiz-kids to help save her failing business.

The program's interest in artifical intelligence, the Internet, and the video-game industry was comparatively unusual for the time. As with other Australian Children's Television Foundation programs, the focus was on the child protagonists, all Melbourne high-school students with a keen interest in video gaming, who are recruited as games testers by Alexandra Davis, president of Catalyst, in the hopes that they will be able to revitalise her failing business.

Produced in association with the Disney Channel, Crash Zone was successful in Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as Australia.

Farscape was an Australian/American co-production, a science-fiction television program combining puppetry and live actors to follow the trevails of American astronaut John Crichton, flung into the far reaches of the galaxy during the maiden flight of his experimental craft.

Farscape made use of puppetry to circumvent the problem of having to present alien life-forms as roughly humanoid in size and shape. However, despite the use of Jim Henson's puppet studios, the program was distinctly adult in tone and content.

Unlike other programs filmed in Australian studios (for example, Terra Nova), Farscape was very strongly a co-production, employing a high number of Australian actors and directors. Over a third of the scripts (thirty of the eighty-eight episodes in the original four seasons) were written by Australian script-writers (see below for details). In addition, two Australian script-writers (Lily Taylor and Grant McAloon) served as script/story editors and another (Justin Monjo) acted as creative consultant.

After its abrupt cancellation, Farscape was succeeded by a number of ancillary texts (including a mini-series, graphic novels, and a role-playing game), but these works were American productions rather than Australian/American co-productions.

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.