AustLit

Set in Sydney, The Sum of Us explores the relationship between Harry, a charming, beer-drinking, down-to-earth widower, and Jeff, his gay son. Harry is the caring 'mate' whose open-mindedness borders on being annoying. Jeff unsuccessfully searches for love with the unwanted guidance of his father.

Another production by Roger Mirams, Runaway Island was a period drama, but like The Terrific Adventures of the Terrible Ten, The Magic Boomerang, and Secret Valley, it focused strongly on independent child protagonists who operated in a world that was either largely without adults or in which the adults were antagonists.

In his Guide to Australian TV Series, Moran notes that the program follows the adventures of two children, Jamie and Jemma McLeod, who

see their father's lands and house in early Sydney Town seized by the wicked Captain Korkle, who has plans to become governor. To escape his soldiers, the children take off with a young pickpocket off the streets. They and other children escape to Runaway Island, an island off the Sydney coast. They are safe there, though they make some dangerous forays back into the town.

Moran notes that the production cost over $2 million, but was left languishing for more than two years before the Seven Network finally aired it. When Seven did air it, it attracted a reasonable audience, and sold in sixteen countries other than Australia.

As with his earlier productions, The Terrific Adventures of the Terrible Ten and The Magic Boomerang, Mirams re-used actors from his previous show, Secret Valley, in this production (namely, the Buchanan siblings).

Just after the close of World War One, pilots Charles Kingsford Smith and Keith Anderson face hard times as they try to gain funds for their attempt to be the first men to fly across the Pacific Ocean.

'An adventurer...a crusader...a fighter...a lover...Against impossible odds, he went out to explore the last uncharted area. The Sky.

One of Australia's great period dramas, A Thousand Skies charts the life of Charles Kingford Smith, from his war years to his spell in Hollywood as a stunt flyer, his first pilot job at Australian Airlines in 1924, and the realisation of his dream to fly the Pacific. Forced down in the North Australian wilderness when attempting a record flight to England, the fast living Kingford-Smith risked death a thousand times in a thousand skies to achieve the impossible!'

Source: Publisher's blurb, ABC DVD

A romantic dramatisation of the beginnings of the Australian Berlei Corset company, which went on to become the most widely recognised brand for lingerie and underwear in Australia. Victorian Fred Burley founded Unique Corsets Limited with his brother Arthur in 1912 and went on to form Berlei Limited in 1919. The company eventually expanded its operations to New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

A ground-breaking television series, Women of the Sun was, according to Moran in his Guide to Australian TV Series, born out of co-writer Sonia Borg's desire for a more balanced televisual representation of Indigenous Australians: 'Angry at the plight of Aborigines, she was concerned that many scriptwriters could conceive of Aboriginal women only as prostitutes.' To counter this tendency, she contemplated a series that showed Australian history from the perspective of Aboriginal women, a project for which she sought the colloboration of sociologist and social worker Hyllus Maris.

Because, as Moran notes, it 'portrayed the history of Aboriginal people since the incursion of the whites, focusing on the relations between blacks and whites over the previous 200 years', Women of the Sun 'was a direct counter to the various official histories in preparation for the Bicentennial celebrations in 1988'.

Women of the Sun is divided into four parts, each of which focuses on a different woman in a different period of history.

'Alinta the Flame' (set in the 1820s) shows the interaction between the two cultures as an Indigenous Australian tribe (the Nyari) nurse back to health two English convicts whom they find washed up on the beach, only to find the new settlers increasingly encroaching on Nyari lands--a process that ends in the annihilation of the entire tribe, barring Alinta and her young daughter.

'Maydina the Shadow' (set in the 1890s) follows Maydina, abducted and abused by a group of seal-hunters, from whom she eventually escapes with her daughter Biri (who is of mixed Indigenous Australian and European heritage). Taken in by Mrs McPhee, head of a church mission, Maydina is separated from her child and sent into service for the church. When she falls in love with an Indigenous Australian man and attempts to leave with him and Biri to return to a traditional lifestyle, Mrs McPhee has them pursued by troopers, who kill Maydina's lover and remove Biri from her care.

'Nerida Anderson' (set in 1939) focuses on the Cumeroongunga Walkout, showing the deterioration in conditions on the reserve through the eyes of Nerida Anderson, raised on the reserve and returning there after a period working in the city as a book-keeper. Her attempts to foster improvement on the reserve are greeted angrily by the reserve manager, who attempts to have Nerida and her family tried for treason; ultimately, Nerida incites a successful walkout.

'Lo-Arna' (set in the 1980s) focuses on 18-year-old Ann Cutler's discovery that she is not of French Polynesian descent as she believed, but actually the biological daughter of her adoptive father and Alice Wilson, an Indigenous Australian woman from a nearby town, prompting her to reconsider her relationship with her adoptive parents and with her own identity.

Moran notes of the series as a whole that 'Although each of the four episodes of Women of the Sun is self-contained, nevertheless, taken together the episodes powerfully suggest what 200 years of white contact has done to Aboriginal society'.

'Medical student Paul Armstrong spends a day at a Melbourne VD clinic.'

Source: Australian Screen.

Set during and immediately after World War II, A Town Like Alice is both a love story and a war story. It spans two decades and three continents. The story begins with the capture of a group of civilian women by the Japanese and follows the nightmare of their captivity in the jungles of Malaya. It is during this time that one of the women, Englishwoman Jean Paget, meets a cheerful and laconic Australian prisoner of war, Joe Harman, who hails from Alice Springs. When he is tortured for a simple act of kindness, she believes that he has died. Later, after the war has ended, she discovers that he didn't die, and sets out to find him in Australia. Meanwhile, he travels to England to find her. The two are eventually reunited in the rugged outback of Australia.

Source: Moran's Guide to Australian TV Series

Adapted from the play of the same title by Kenneth Ross, Breaker Morant is based on the 1901 Boer War court martial of three colonial officers in the Bushveldt Carabineers, who are sacrificed to the dictates of imperial expediency. The interweaving of courtroom drama with the re-creation of the events leading to the court martial (the supposed murder of twelve prisoners and a German missionary) is given a degree of moral complexity, but the balance of sympathies is manipulated to favour the three Australian 'irregular' soldiers. The accused (Lieutenants Harry 'Breaker' Morant, Peter Handcock, and George Witton) are defended by Major Thomas, an inexperienced Australian lawyer who struggles to have his case heard.

'Susan Martin is very fortunate to have Sergeant Monica Rourke answer her cry of rape. However, even with the support of Monica, she has a lonely ordeal ahead of her.

'Bluey and Gary do not share Monica's belief that Susan is an innocent victim as there is a great deal of lying on the girl's part. This, coupled with a dubious past, gives them every reason to doubt her story. It will take much more than Monica's "gut feeling" to make Bluey believe Susan is justified in her complaint.

'The age old conflict of who is guilty in such a situation rears its head and accusations and lies from several quarters do nothing to help Department B in its search for the truth.

'And there is always the thought that the rapist will strike again - perhaps at the same woman.'

Source: Synopsis held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection (RMIT).

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

'SUSAN MARTIN: 30 years old. A very pretty woman. Married, but separated from her husband. Susan's a sweet-kind-vulnerable woman, caught up in her own emotional needs, not really knowing what they are. In no way is she helped by her husband or boyfriend.

'HENRY MARTIN: 32 years old. Susan's husband. Goodlooking [sic] in a weak way - no real backbone - He loves his wife, but his work becomes his life, thus throwing Susan into the arms of another, more alive man. Henry hasn't the strength of character to really try to win her back.

'JACK STEVENS: 28 years old. Handsome with a rough, back to nature, look. The sort of man most women in Susan's position, fall for, only to live to regret it. Jack's cruel, selfish, without any real feelings for anyone but himself.

'ROGER STEVENS: 25 years old. Jack's brother. Like Jack, he's handsome and still has the look of an innocent about him. Roger hasn't the way with women that Jack has. He has more feelings, but is unable to show them in the usual way.

'KATIE COOPER: 17 years old. Very pretty. A little vague. She's scared stiff of Bluey, fancy's [sic] Gary. The sort of girl you'd invite to a party, because of her attractiveness and sense of fun.

'MR. TIMMS: 55 years old. A weasel type character. Nosy, loves peeking into other people's windows. A little creepy, but no real harm in him.

'P.C. BEECHER: 21 years old. Young and attractive. Quite new to the force. He's heard a lot about Bluey, but never really believed it until he meets him. He's likeable and eager to learn.

'DRUNK: 40 years old. Ordinary looking, business type man. Still quite athletic looking. (NOT YOUR USUAL DRUNK) Just a man who's been on a magnificent celebrating spree after hearing some wonderful news. Unfortunately it lands him in trouble.

'PHOTOGRAPHER: 30 years old. Knows and likes his job. He's photographed a hundred women like Susan and tends to get easily irritated with them.

'EXTRAS IN GYM (2) Athletic types (No lines)

'VKC (V.O.)

'TWO POLICEMEN (UNIFORMED) Young. Middle twenties (No lines)'.

Note 1: Between the writing of these character notes and production, the character of the photographer was changed from male to female.

Note 2: The character notes show signs of minor annotation in blue ink (for example, closing the brackets in 'VKC (V.O.)' and correcting 'TWO POLICEMAN' to 'TWO POLICEMEN'.

'A strange mixture of characters leads Bluey and Department B on the puzzling mystery of tracing "The Hydra". Who or what is The Hydra?

'The young, defenceless sister of a stripper, who is a good friend of Bluey's, is in great danger. Someone or something is lurking in the mire of sleazy night clubs, waiting, watching, ready to pounce.

'Bluey and his team enter the bizarre world of would-be religious fanaticism, blackmail, female impersonators and the lost world of the soup kitchen. The clues have been given by The Hydra - but are they real clues or ones to throw the police off the track?

'Which ever is the case Bluey is working against time to reveal the true identity or identities of the Hydra - a beast with seven heads.'

Source: Synopsis held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection (RMIT).

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

'RANDY KNIGHT: Also known as Angela; Randy Knight is a stage name. In her early twenties, Randy is a stripper in a sleazy nightclub in Fitzroy Street. But don't judge the book by its cover. She's a battler, loved by everyone, raising and looking after a handicapped sister. She takes her job very seriously, and her audience of winos and local derelicts never fail to go away a little richer for the experience of seeing her on-stage. She should be blonde. She should be a dancer, and she should behave with a lovable, Marilyn Monroe style innocence.

'FELICITY: Randy's younger (16) sister. She is deaf and dumb. She goes to a special school by day, and is babysat in the evenings while Randy is working. A bewitching, sloe-eyed creature, who seems the essence of childlike purity ... a fawn. She communicates with Randy through a simple sign language, and seems to have great admiration for her big sister. Felicity often seems to behave at the mental age of about eight years, and we are never to know if she is 'backward'. On special occasions, however, we feel that she is way ahead of us. No spoken dialogue.

'GAY GORDO: A very convincing female impersonator who works with Randy at the strip joint. A junkie. A seamstress. Camps it up even when off-stage. Bit of a creep. Personally, I don't like him very much.

'BENNY ALLMAN (Allen Easter): Stand-up comic at same strip joint. Delivers with a vaguely Dave Allen style, but never seems to get many laughs from the audience of pervs. A very short, very fat, very depressing man, who might best be described as the 'beast' in this beauty and the beast story.

'STELLA HEDLEY: Stella manages this same strip joint. The Ethel Merman type. Loud. Showbiz. Gets on well with Bluey. Will bear a resemblance to one description of "The Hydra".

'MRS. McCORMACK: Felicity's babysitter. Ocker. Smokes always. Bluey will say to her "Mrs. McCormack, I wouldn't let you babysit my dog." She also could be "The Hydra".

'HARRY SILVERMAN: Although it defies genetic believability, Silverman is the father of Angela and Felicity. Brain addled with turps, Harry hasn't quite been himself since about five or six years ago when he walked out on his two lovely daughters. He has been a merchant marine, but mainly he's into drinking. Such a bloody mug we should feel sorry for him. He looks a lot like the men who make up Randy's audience.

'JUD: Jud is a man who brings a little sunshine into your life just by walking into the room. He's a Salvo, knows the skid row scene, gets along with Bluey.

'CLERIC: Runs small city chapel. Long hairs, bearded. Could actually be Jesus.

'DRUNK:

'DERELICT EXTRAS: Club audience.'