AustLit

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.

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.

Bella, an orphan girl, is rescued from a catastrophic shipwreck on the coast of Australia by Black Beauty, though the accident costs Bella her memory. Both Bella and the horse are adopted by a country doctor, but Bella finds herself haunted by dreams (or memories?) of a missing gold shipment.

The first television program from prolific children's television producer Jonathan M. Shiff, Kelly follows the adventures of a police dog who, after being injured at work, is sent to recuperate in the country; here, Kelly becomes the constant companion of Jo Patterson and her friend Danny Foster, and manages to ferret out some criminals even in the country.

"A heartwarming rags-to-riches story of a family during the Depression. The story is from a novel by Mary Grant Bruce."

Source: South Australia Made Showcase.

'They're women of action, they're women of the '90s, they're intelligent, highly trained and resourceful. But in the police force they call them "skirts".'

Source: Screen Australia

Like other Crawford's programs in the 1980s (such as The Flying Doctors), All The Way began as a six-part mini-series, and was spun off into an ongoing series (which began production before the mini-series was screened on Australian television).

Set in the 1960s, the program follows three families through key historical events both abroad (such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy) and in Australia (such as the Maralinga atomic tests and the Bogle-Chandler case).

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, the program was 'a soap opera neither any worse nor any better than a host of others such as Cop Shop, The Box, The Restless Years or Neighbours', but it 'has an orientation towards the worlds of work and public affairs that, to the extent that one can generalise about the above-mentioned programs, tends to be present in Crawford soaps and missing from those produced at Grundy's.'

Moran is, however, critical of the program's setting, suggesting that the comparative lack of identifiable iconography in the early 1960s means the program 'looks and sounds little different from the present. Instead the viewer has the feeling that the costumes, props and sets were all found at the local Salvation Army depot.' The result, he argues, is that 'the serial just looks old-fashioned and therefore potentially of interest only to older viewers.'

A comedic adventure series that follows two men (Abel Moore and Charles Willing) living and working on a houseboat on Sydney Harbour, particularly their attempts to keep up payments on the boat. Also living on the house boat are aspiring actress Angela and the young, streetwise Parramatta.

Moran notes, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, that while the series reprised the ABC's The Fast Lane, it was nowhere near as successful a production:

there was little difference between the principal characters, both looking for the main chance. In addition the playing-off of Shane Withington and Grant Dodwell against each other (mildly tolerable in A Country Practice where the two had become fictional bachelors and odd-couple house companions after the departure from the series of their fictional wives) was decidedly threadbare.

Moran notes that this was the first series that Lynn Bayonas produced after leaving A Country Practice, and she had brought with her to the production not only the two main actors but also a number of writers.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, 'This hybrid series revolves around a company of opera singers (incarnated as puppets) who live in a disused theatre. They are found by two children who are their only audience as they proceed through thirteen different operas'.

The program was designed by Marcia Hatfield as a way of introducing child viewers to opera, and ran through such productions as Il Trovatore, Carmen, Aida, and I Pagliacci.

Moran notes that SBS, which purchased the series, ran it in an early evening timeslot during the traditionally poor summer season, but that the series did sell well to overseas markets.

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.

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.

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.