AustLit

'Carrie, an attractive high-powered career woman cautiously accepts an invitation from Vincent - a best-selling author for a long weekend on his unspoiled tropical island. When she senses something is terribly wrong she decides to leave early, only to find herself racing from the house into a rain forest in fear for her life. What she discovers about Vincent turns everything on its head and hurls them into a one-sided battle against a psychopathic killer.'

Source: Screen Australia.

'Georgy Girl is brand new musical from Richard East, one of the originating producers of Mamma Mia! and Dennis Smith, producer of Dusty - the Original Pop Diva.

'In its world premiere season, Georgy Girl tells the true story of The Seekers on their rise to international fame, the challenges of success and all the laughs along the way.

'Experience swinging sixties London and re-live their journey along with the golden soundtrack that the world fell in love with.

'Featuring all the hit songs of The Seekers including The Carnival Is Over, I’ll Never Find Another You, A World Of Our Own and of course, the Oscar nominated Georgy Girl.' (Production summary)

'A fast-paced television drama set within the fascinating environment of a State Coroner's office complex. Each day a team of highly trained professionals deal with the questions of deaths, murders, accidents, suicides, fires, drownings and even the odd natural cause. We see their battles with grieving families, slow or meddling authorities and organized crime, from the initial inquiry through to the courtroom appearances and the Coroner's final verdict and recommendations for trial or reform.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive (http://www.australiantelevision.net/statecoroner/statecoroner.html). (Sighted: 8/3/2013)

'The series is based on a national park ranger, her two children, their friends and how they form the Bush Patrol to help protect the park and its native inhabitants. There's plenty of adventure and fun featuring Australia's unique flora and fauna and modern family relationships.'

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

A character-based television drama series about the lives of police officers in the fictitious Australian country town of Mt Thomas, this series began with the arrival of Constable Maggie Doyle (Lisa McCune) to the Mt Thomas station in the episode 'A Woman's Place'. Doyle and avuncular station boss Senior Sergeant Tom Croydon (John Wood) were the core characters of the series until the departure of Lisa McCune.

Immensely popular for a decade, Blue Heelers was cancelled in 2006 after thirteen seasons. The announcement was front-page news in Australia's major newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney's Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun and The Age in Melbourne, and Brisbane's Courier Mail.

On June 8, 2006 Ross Warneke wrote in The Age:

'It's over and, to be perfectly blunt, there's no use lamenting the demise of Blue Heelers any more. When the final movie-length episode aired on Channel Seven on Sunday night, 1.5 million Australians tuned in, a figure that was big enough to give the show a win in its timeslot but nowhere near big enough to pay the sort of tribute that this writer believes Heelers deserved after more than 500 episodes.It is unlikely there will be anything like it again. At almost $500,000 an hour, shows such as Blue Heelers are quickly becoming the dinosaurs of Australian TV.'

Children's adventure television series about children who live on fictional Circe Island, a fishing community and communications base off the coast of Western Australia. The first series featured episodes in which the children outwitted adults, particularly the character Hermes Endakis. The series later emphasised environmental issues, particularly in the second series, where the children try to stop a big corporation from destroying their island.

Inspired by A. B. Paterson's classic poem and set in a fictional Snowy Mountains township called Paterson's Ridge, this turn-of-the-nineteenth-century adventure concerns wealthy cattle-station owner and widower Matt McGregor and his three children, Colin (the town preacher), Rob (played by Guy Pearce), and Danni (the tomboyish youngest daughter). Unresolved sexual tension comes in the shape of Matt's independent, free-spirited childhood friend, the recently widowed Kathleen O'Neil, who returns to Paterson's Ridge with her son after having spent many years in England.

'In this political satire Diane Lane steps on a few toes as she conspires her way to the top job in the land and becomes Australia's first woman Prime Minister.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 23/1/2014)

'The story of a Melbourne house-wife who becomes a member of parliament.'

Source: Screen Australia.

'Set in the highlands of Victoria, a story about the bitter struggle between environmental activists and the cattlemen.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 23/1/2014)

A daily television drama series set in the fictional Melbourne suburb of Erinsborough, Neighbours chronicles the lives of the residents of Ramsay Street. The series initially revolved around three families: the Ramsays (at number 24 Ramsay Street), the Robinsons (at number 26), and the Clarkes (at number 28). The scope of the series has since broadened to include new Ramsay Street familes.

An attempt to re-invoke the popularity that police procedurals had enjoyed a decade earlier, Special Squad was the most expensive program produced in Australia up to 1985 (at $150,000 per episode), yet received such lukewarm ratings that Channel Ten chose not to commission a second series.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series,

it was good to watch, with expert stunt work and special effects. With well-paced narratives, intelligently and nicely worked out situations and plenty of emphasis on the villains and victims, Special Squad was just as watchable and entertaining as Homicide had been in its last series.

According to Moran, the failure of Special Squad lay both in its difference from and its similarity to Homicide. The novelty (of Australian accents and Australian locations) that had helped make Homicide so successful was no longer in play, and 'the sight of tough men (on both sides of the law) made the program [Special Squad] seem very old-fashioned. In addition, the plethora of other Australian dramas on air at the time gave viewers more than enough alternatives.'

Two expert BMX riders and their friend Judy become entangled with a group of bank robbers.

'Set a century ago, it starts with some of the marauding rebels (the Tyrones) bailing up an Australian bush town. Palmer (Gerard Kennedy) and Ben (Gus Mercurio) team up to outwit the bandits.

'The news of their bravado soon reaches high-ranking members of the Administration who offer the two the deadly mission (well-paid, of course) of killing the Tyrones' leader and destroying his camp.

'Needing more men. Palmer blows Ned (Hu Pryce) and Dick (Christopher Pate) out of jail, and Alex (Rod Mullinar) joins them after a dawn duel over a lady.

'They seize the local undertaker's best hearse, raid a police stockade for dynamite and set out for the Tyrones' camp.

'They return victorious only to find they've been done out of half of their promised payment. However, they think nothing of arriving, bloodied and dirty, at the relevant official's mansion in the middle of a ball to collect their dues.

'This is a hilarious scene with the grimy crew wooing the ladies at the ball while Palmer goes to collect the money. But they have walked into a trap'.

Source:

Deidre Nolan, 'Raw Deal', Australian Women's Weekly, 9 February 1977, p.43.

The success of Cash and Company was such to warrant a continuation of the series, but Serge Lazaroff (Sam Cash), considering that his character had developed as far as it plausibly could, quit the series, and Homestead Productions decided instead on a quasi spin-off, Tandarra (named for character Jessica Johnson's homestead).

The tension in Tandarra was generated by the character of Ryler, a bounty hunter who entered Cash and Company in the final episode. Ryler was played by Gerard Kennedy, capitalising on his success in Crawford Production's Hunter and Division 4. According to Don Storey in Classic Australian Television,

Tough, resourceful and professional, Ryler poses a far greater threat to Cash and Company than the incompetent Keogh, to the extent that they must question their future together. As Ryler traces Sam and Joe to Jessica's homestead, the trio decide to split up and the final scene shows Sam and Joe parting company and riding away in different directions.

Tandarra picks up from this point, with Ryler tracking Brady to Jessica's homestead, Tandarra. However, when Ryler manages to cross Lieutenant Keogh (who makes his last appearance here), he becomes convinced of Brady's innocence, and remains at Tandarra. Thus, this program mirrors Cash and Company in its positioning of a central trio against the corrupt forces of law and order, but with Sam Cash negated not only in ongoing storylines but also in the occasional flashbacks to Brady's earlier adventures.

Albert Moran says of the series in his Guide to Australian TV Series that 'this Australian western had thieves, soldiers, gamblers and a medley of other familiar types. Its episodes were equally familiar but reaosnable viewing all the same.' Like its predecessor, the series also sold well overseas.

A bushranging adventure series, conceived by Patrick Edgeworth (a British-born script-writer who had arrived in Australia in 1969 and begun working for Crawford Productions) and Russell Hagg (then script editor for Crawford's Matlock Police) to counteract the comparative absence of historical programs on Australian television. Though the ABC did begin airing Rush shortly before Cash and Company aired, Don Storey notes in Classic Australian Television that 'Unlike Rush, Cash & Company was conceived purely as an escapist adventure series. Although the stories are based on fact, they make no attempt to recreate any authentic events. However, much research was done to ensure the settings, costumes and props faithfully recreated the period'.

The series follows bushrangers Sam Cash and (American) Joe Brady, the sympathetic widow Jessica Johnson, and their nemesis, Lieutenant Keogh. According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, Cash and Brady (who have a 'cavalier attitude towards mining licences and other people's sheep') are 'rough diamonds from the wrong side of the track but more masculine and attractive to the horeseriding quasi aristocrat Jessica Johnson than is Keogh'.

However, Storey counters that the 'Contrary to the entry in Moran's Guide To Australian TV Series, Cash & Company is not about their "cavalier attitude to mining licences and other people's sheep".' Instead, he argues, 'Cash & Compan reflects the view that not all outlaws were necessarily bad, but were sometimes reasonable men who were persecuted and driven outside the law by the law itself -- as administered by ruthless officials'.

Storey also notes (in support of this claim) that critics, who were positive about the series, didn't compare it to Rush, but to prior positive depictions of outlaws, such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) or the long-running Richard Greene series The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-1959).

Cash and Company was sold to the United Kingdom, Sweden, Holland, Yugoslavia, Ireland, Norway, and Nigeria, and screened at the Cannes Film Festival. It was successful enough to warrant a second 13-episode series, but Serge Lazaroff's decision to quit the series prompted instead the production of the quasi spin-off Tandarra.

The script held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection contains the following character notes (excluding regular characters):

'PETE EDWARDS: Early thirties. Attractive to women. Well educated. Enjoys the money his work brings him. Whilst constantly bantering with Terry, they still, basically get on well. [sic] Likes the birds and the booze.

'TERRY EDWARDS: Early thirties. Similar to Pete in many ways. They have known each other all their lives and can almost read each other's mind. His weakness is gambling. Whilst they have a close relationship there is nothing camp about these two. Both very hetero. They trade wisecracks without a smile. Must drive.

'STANLEY REYNOLDS: Fifties. Apparently well to do businessman. Married late in life after spending his formative years making money, not too ethically. Latterly he has squandered thousands on gambling. He is a cold, calculating man and quite well preserved for his age. Must drive.

'MADELEINE REYNOLDS: Late twenties. Marrying Stanley gave her the financial stability, her [sic] background had fitted her for. A gentle, attractive pleasing personality, she loves her husband dearly. She has no knowledge of his business methods and gambling losses.

'BOBBY GREEN: Gold plated bitch.

'VINCENT GREEN: Her pompous, rich husband.

'RECEPTIONIST: Early twenties. Attractive.

'DRUNK: Fifties. Rough appearance. Lines.

'CROUPIER: 30 - 40. Smooth, slick. Only calls bets. Lines.

'MAN AND WOMAN: (A passionate illicit relationship. Early 30's) Lines.

'ATTRACTIVE GIRL: Early twenties.

'3 GAMBLING EXTRAS: Well to do people. 40 - 50's.

'2 HOTEL EXTRAS: Any age. No lines.

'BARMAN: No lines.

'DOG: Must bark and growl to order.'

The script held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection contains the following character notes (excluding regular characters):

'MARK WALKER. Late twenties. Smooth, tough, cool. Very fond of his sister who's [sic] death he wishes to avenge.

'PETER YOUNG. Late twenties. Handsome Ski Instructor. Likeable personality. Complete libertine.

'CAROL GREEN. Twenties. Attractive. Good figure. The pleasures of becoming the boss's wife have faded. She looks for excitement outside the marriage bed - and finds it.

'CHARLES GREEN. Fifties or older. Austrian - now resident in Australia. He's very jealous of his young wife. We shall come to sympathise with him.

'LILIAN DAVIS. Late thirties. Well dressed, well kept - and well off. She can indulge her fancies. As she gets older - the men get younger.

'TED SCOTT. Mid thirties. General factotum around the Lodge. Friends with everyone. Eager to please.

'RECEPTIONIST. Twenties. Attractive. Personable.

'MANAGER. 50's. Genial - helpful. Could be Continental.

'BOBBY. No lines, but direction needed.

'YOUNG MAN. Extra.

'MARK'S GIRL. No lines, but direction needed.

'YOUNG GIRL. Extra.

'GUNTHER STRAUSS. Part to be played by actual Ski Instructor/Stuntman.'

The script held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection contains the following character notes (excluding regular characters):

'CARL REID: About thirty. Hard, tough. He's been in trouble as long as he can remember. He knows no other way of life than committing crimes and trying to avoid the consequences. Roz is his soft spot.

'ROZ THOMPSON: Mid twenties. Though young in years, she's been around. Attractive, resourceful, tough. She's completely wrapped up in Carl and would do anything for him. Drives.

'ROCKY WALKER: About forty. One time boxer turned stand-over man. He's almost a match for Carl. Has the same creed of looking after No. 1 first. He is homosexual, but this is not obvious in his appearance or mannerisms.

'TONY GREY: Early twenties. Pleasant, good looking. He is completely out of his depth with Carl and Rocky. Before Gaol he would have led a quiet life working in an office and living at home.

'BENNETT: Thirties. Preferably tall to contrast with Smith. Affable. Easy going.

'SMITH: Thirties. Somewhat overweight. Pessimistic glutton.

'BRIAN YOUNG: Forties. Affable. Considers himself the life and soul of any party. Flying is his life.

'JILL: Twenties. Attractive country girl. Drives.

'JOE: Fifties. Amiable - but tough when confronted by Carl Reid.

'GUARD (JACK): Any age. Few lines.

'GUARD (JIM): Any age. Few lines.

'DOCTOR FOX: Any age. Few lines.

'FARMER: Middle age. No lines.

'EVANS: Forties. Slight, shifty man. Few lines.

'ANDERSON: Forties. Big, bluff, no nonsense man. Few lines.

'TAYLOR: Thirties. Preferably bigger than Evans. Few lines.

'POLICE CONSTABLE: Any age.'