AustLit

'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)

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.

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.

'It's a story about justice...and the corruption of justice. JANUS is about the lawyers, police, judges and magistrates who work with a very imperfect system. The focus of our story will be the new Director of Public Prosecutions Officer, taking over the handling of all Committals for trial - the first sweeping changes recommended by the Janus Taskforce Committee.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 3/5/2013)

A 'second-generation' Skippy, with Ranger Hammond's younger son Sonny grown up and running an animal-based theme park, Habitat, on Australia's Gold Coast, in company with his ten-year-old twins, Jerry and Lou. The theme park is adjacent to a national park, bringing in Ranger Dave as a character, along with Sonny Hammond's housekeeper Thelma and assistant Kate.

A one-hour soap opera focusing on life in a gritty inner-city suburb.

Butterfly Island follows the travails of Charlie Wilson and his children, who are determined to retain the tropical beauties and charm of Butterfly Island, but face such difficulties as the competition from nearby resorts, unscrupulous land developers, and shipwrecked boys with mysterious pasts and unwittingly criminal tendencies.

Moran points out in his Guide to Australian TV Series that the program made use of the same locations as its predecessor, Fauna Productions' Barrier Reef, and 'promoted the kind of tourist image of Australia, so much a feature of Fauna's work'. Indeed, he argues,

Butterfly Island was conceived principally in terms of the formula of 'likeness and difference' so much a feature of Fauna Productions in the 1960s and 1970s, with likeness in the form of father, mother, kids, adventures, odd characters, comedy and adventure; and difference in the form of the Great Barrier Reef, the Whitsundays, Australian beaches, outdoor life, sun and sand.

As such, the program relied heavily on location shooting, and was comparatively expensive by Australian standards.

The program employed a local cast, but Moran points to such American actors as Ann B. Davis, Cameron Mitchell, and Susan Strasberg in cameo roles.

Television program focusing on a working-class family living in the western suburbs of Sydney, centred around Ed Devereaux (formerly of Skippy) as panel beater George King.

The program aimed for social realism in the presentation of working-class life, but Moran notes (in his Guide to Australian Television) that it did not attract a good initial audience, leading to, firstly, a halt to production and, secondly, an unannounced return to the screen, which also failed to attract good viewing figures.

Set in a small, fictional, New South Wales country town called Wandin Valley, A Country Practice focused on the staffs of the town's medical practice and local hospital and on the families of the doctors, nurses, and patients. Many of the episodes also featured guest characters (frequently patients served by the practice) through whom various social and medical problems were explored. Although often considered a soap opera, the series was not built around an open-ended narrative; instead, the two one-hour episodes screened per week formed a self-contained narrative block, though many of the storylines were developed as sub-plots for several episodes before becoming the focus of a particular week's storyline. While the focus was on topical issues such as youth unemployment, suicide, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, and terminal illness, the program did sometimes explore culturally sensitive issues, including, for example, the Aboriginal community and their place in modern Australian society.

Among the show's principal characters were Dr Terence Elliott, local policeman Sergeant Frank Gilroy, Esme Watson, Shirley Dean Gilroy, Bob Hatfield, Vernon 'Cookie' Locke, and Matron Margaret 'Maggie' Sloan. In addition to its regularly rotating cast of characters, A Country Practice also had a cast of semi-regulars who would make appearances as the storylines permitted. Interestingly, while the series initially targeted the adult and older youth demographic, it became increasingly popular with children over the years.

According to Moran's Guide to Australian TV Series, Holiday Island was something of an attempt to emulate the appeal of the American television series The Love Boat. Set on a tropical island holiday resort, the concept was, as Moran notes,

a good one with the potential for a continuous series of new characters in the guide of holiday guests, and the possibility of romance and other entanglements between them and the regular characters who worked at the resort. The opportunities for the intervention of nature in the shape of such happenings as cyclones and storms, and the appearance from time to time of more eccentric and enigmantic characters who had come to the island, offered promise.

But the program was broadcast without fanfare in the middle of the ratings season, to replace the poorly rating Bellamy, and only managed moderately good ratings. It was cancelled in 1982.

A relatively short-lived drama series based in a secondary school in one of Sydney's more impoverished suburbs, Glenview High focused on teacher Greg Walker, dividing its attention between his work with his students and his homelife with his brother and two flatmates.

Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, notes that 'Glenview High frequently looked at the problems faced by city kids preparing for a world of uncertainty, with less opportunity and high unemployment. It also dealt with the frustration of the education system from the point of view of both teachers and students.' Albert Moran, conversely, notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series that 'Glenview High was mildly concerned with social issues in and around school, kids, teachers and parents but with each episode needing to tie its stories up inside the hour, social problems were mostly solvable and social issues were raised but not explored.'

Storey summarises the program as follows:

Grundy's claimed that Glenview High could not be compared to Class of 74/75, a valid statement with which the critics agreed. Glenview was a better product than Class, but it could not be considered an outstanding series: the scripts sometimes lapse into melodrama, with corny and contrived endings, and being produced entirely on video gives it a cheap look.

(Note: Moran mistakenly lists Ken James and Rebecca Gilling as playing teachers, rather than their actual roles of Greg Walker's brother Tom and flatmate/air hostess Robbie Dean.)

Young Ramsay follows the adventures of a Sydney-based vet who becomes disillusioned with his work on the racecourse circuit, and moves to the small, fictional town of Jindarra, where he starts work with the veterinary practice of Jack Lambert (who is semi-retired on the grounds of ill health). It was conceived as family entertainment: neither violent nor explicit, but sufficiently exciting to keep the attention of both children and adults. Ramsay is supported by Julie Lambert (Jack's daughter, nurse, and receptionist) and Ray Turner (local park ranger).

The program begins in media res, with Ramsay already established in Jindarra, and unfolds his background and past experiences slowly, over a number of episodes. According to Don Storey, in Classic Australian Television, Ramsay is 'Not a super-cool type who never puts a foot wrong, but rather a well-rounded personality with successes and failings. He is a very competent vet; sometimes he makes a fool of himself or confuses names but he always makes good under pressure or in an emergency'.

Series one was followed by a two-year hiatus, and significant changes were made to the program for series two, including the re-casting of Ramsay's receptionist (Julie Lambert having been said to have left Jindarra after her father's death) and a stronger focus on happy endings.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian Television Series, 'Young Ramsay had a heavy stress on good ecological practices and was actively supported by the Victorian Ministry for Wildlife and Conservation'.

When the sailing ship United World is almost sunk by a hurricane, the forty teenagers who are sailing in her scramble for the lifeboats, but five are overlooked in the general panic. Along with the ship, they are driven into the lagoon of a mysterious island, Tambu. Here, they find a lost civilisation: the descendants of settlers originally headed for New Holland, who still live an eighteenth-century lifestyle. But they are under the domination of the mysterious Q, a seemingly immortal being who allegedly prolongs his life with the aid of a blue weed obtained from a nearby island, Malo. The five children, with the assistance of the Quinns, a local family, seek to avoid the malevolence of Q, who fears they are a threat to his domination of the island.

The Lost Islands was another production from New Zealand-born Roger Mirams, who was also responsible for such Australian television programs as The Terrific Adventures of the Terrible Ten, The Magic Boomerang, The Adventures of the Seaspray, and Spyforce.

Grigor Taylor's first role after leaving the highly rated Matlock Police, Silent Number focuses on Dr Steve Hamilton, a doctor working for the New South Wales Health Department. Hamilton has chosen this path because he couldn't afford to start his own practice, and thought, even before he is seconded to the NSW Police as a police doctor, that this would be more rewarding than work as a GP. This situation causes some tension with his wife, who would rather he worked shorter hours for higher pay in private practice.

According to Don Storey in his Classic Australian Television, Silent Number suffered somewhat from the close attention of censors after early episodes were deemed too violent, which led to the Australian Broadcasting Control Board decreeing that all episodes must be submitted to them for assessment prior to screening. Storey also notes that Silent Number was screened in Melbourne opposite Matlock Police, which seriously damaged its ratings.

Nevertheless, Storey concludes that 'Silent Number was quite a good series. If you allow a certain suspension of disbelief for the premise - real police doctors rarely, if ever, get involved with criminal detection the way Steve Hamilton does - the only valid criticism that could be levelled against it is the "cheap" look that using videotape gives to the interior scenes.'

Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, concurs with this assessment, noting that 'producer Roger Mirams and writer Ron McLean put their heads together to come up with a successful formula for the crime variation. They reasoned that because both medical and police series were popular, a series about a police doctor had to very popular. It wasn't. Again, though, the series is very watchable. Never profound, it does succeed as entertainment.'

The People Next Door spins off from previous Gemini Productions' sit-com The Godfathers. The child welfare officer who prompted much of the tension in the original program, Elizabeth Dent, is now married with a child of her own. She and her husband Bill also board Dave Milson, one of the 'godfathers' from the original series. Elizabeth, Bill, and Dave take a house next to misanthropic writer Daniel Penrose and his three children. Following the pattern established by The Godfathers, the program was focalised through the viewpoint of the youngest Penrose child, B.J.

Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, notes that the Nine Network commissioned 48 episodes, with an option to review after 16 episodes:

Perhaps it was the timeslot. Perhaps it was the changing tastes of a fickle public. Perhaps the formula was not quite right. Whatever the reason, The People Next Door was nowhere near as successful as The Godfathers. Low ratings caused Nine to exercise their option to reduce the number of episodes, and production ceased after 20 episodes were made.

The Spoiler arose from the pilot for a proposed late 1960s' television program called Vendetta, in which a policeman left the force to pursue a private vendetta against a crime boss. Though Vendetta was not picked up as a series, the central idea was later re-visited by producer Robert Bruning. Bruning was approached by the marketing director of TCN-9; the network wanted a police program, but Bruning was keen to differentiate his program from the plethora of police procedurals then airing. Bruning settled on the notion of a vengeful former police officer.

According to Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, 'Bruce Barry plays Jim Carver, the 'spoiler' of the title. Carver is a Sydney detective who discovers that Sir Ian Mason, a leading respectable businessman, is head of a crime syndicate, and is kicked out of the police force because of his investigations that have so far turned up no evidence of complicity. His dimissal makes Carver all the more determined to find the evidence he needs to bring Mason to justice.'

Of the central character, Storey argues that 'Carver was a rough, tough character. When he needs information he often extracts it by force. He drinks hard. He's a womaniser, and he treats his women rough.' Storey also notes that the program became notorious for the quantity of nude and semi-nude scenes: 'A number of girls come into contact with Carver who end up in various states of undress, usually for no reasons of any pertinence to the plot.' Carver is supported by a sympathetic barmaid/sometime girlfriend, a friend in the police force, and an underworld informant.

The Spoiler was not successful: it rated poorly from its original airing in Sydney, so poorly that neither Melbourne nor Brisbane television stations even attempted to air it in a prime-time slot.

Summing up critics' responses to the program, Storey suggests,

The anti-hero was an aggressive, boozing chauvinist who belted the crooks and treated women like dirt, and was a sort of warring psychopath tolerated by the police and not understood by anyone. The show downgraded women, upgraded the law of the boot and took a dog-eat-dog view of society. There was very little for men to identify with, and certainly nothing to appeal to women.

While Storey acknowledges the legitimacy of these arguments against the program, he also suggests that the program might have been ahead of its time. The Spoiler cannot, however, be re-evaluated in terms of modern television, since the master tapes were wiped and no other copies of the episodes have surfaced.

'Set in Sydney's Kings Cross, an open house is run by an ex-cop, a priest, a single mother and her landlady. About the plight of street children before crisis centres existed.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 25/2/2014)