AustLit

'There are strange goings on at Brindabella Homestead. Every time someone visits the house, they seem to come to a sticky end. Who is committing these horrible murders?

'Could it be glamorous socialite Mrs Peacock, owner of Brindabella? Perhaps it is her step-daughter, the lovely Miss Scarlet? Scarlet's boyfriend, Professor Plum, has charm but is he to be trusted? The family cook, Mrs White, seems a kindly old soul. But looks can deceive! Colonel Mustard's fine war record would suggest an upright gentleman. But is he? And the good Reverend Green? Surely a man of the cloth couldn't be a killer ... or could he?

'The answer is that any of them could be the killer and the task of finding out who is the criminal rests with you, the audience. In your investigations you will be assisted by the local sleuth, Detective Sergeant Bogong. Help will also come from a studio audience who are able to quiz the characters about their movements and their alibis.'

Source: Crawford Productions publicity material (held in the Crawford Collection at the AFI Research Collection).

'RATBAG HERO takes place around the picturesque towns of the Murray River during the 1930s. Set against the colourful background of loggers and bargees, the mini-series revolves around the Kelsall family and a generation not only coming to grips with their environment but of the ties that bind a family. We experience a young man's coming to terms with his father's expectations and his own destiny.'

Source: Screen Australia.

Set in the 1850s, Golden Pennies concerns a struggling family who move to the goldfield town of Jericho to try and make their fortune.

'A look at a day in the life of an Armenian electrician.'

Source:

[Television guide], Canberra Times, 20 October 1986, p.3S.

Series of television plays based on the short stories of Henry Lawson, featuring a number of different, but intertwined, narratives.

Television play, dealing with nuclear energy, national and political survival, and the threat that nuclear conflict offers to peace and freedom. When a nuclear disaster occurs in Scotland, it throw the whole question of uranium mining in Australia open to impassioned debate. The government is divided and, against a background of community protest and public discord, the Prime Minister has to make the most serious decision of his career.

'A story of rural hardship based around a sheep property that is owned and run by Paul and Betty Graham and Tom, a farmhand who has been with the family property for 17 years.'

Source:

[TV guide], Canberra Times, 21 October 1977, p.26. (View via Trove.)

Episode one of the adaptation of Frank Hardy's novel.

One of Australia's earliest television dramatisations of its gold-rush era, Rush is, as Don Storey points out in his Classic Australian Television, in many ways two entirely separate programs: between series one and series two, the setting shifts from the Victorian goldfields to a New South Wales mining town, and jumps forward from the 1850s to the early 1860s. However, both series take place in the same universe, use the same chronology, and have a clear internal coherence, centred on the continuing character of Sergeant Robert McKellar. Therefore, they are generally treated as two separate series of a single program.

(The differences in cast, crew, writers, and directors between the two series are given in detail in the film details section below.)

With its enormous, intricate, expensive, and accurate sets, costumes, and props, Rush proved extremely popular with viewers, despite series one airing in an awkward weeknight 8pm slot (which, as Storey notes, put it against the second half of the highly successful Homicide in Melbourne). Series one did, however, attract some criticism for being filmed in black-and-white when colour programming was only a matter of months away in Australia.

Series two (which drew on foreign financing to cover its cost, an extremely high--for a domestically produced program--$24,000 an episode) was made in colour. Following Sergeant McKellar (the only character to carry over from series one), series two pushed the character forward through two disillusioning events (the Eureka Stockade, which prompted McKellar's resignation from the Victoria Police, and the death of his wife Sarah) and dropped him into the conflicts of a small New South Wales mining town.

Series two was also extremely popular but, according to Storey, plans for series three were shelved when the new Fraser government instituted (among other things) a hefty budget cut to the ABC.

Series one gained renewed prominence in the 1990s when, like police procedural Bluey, it was re-dubbed and sent up on The Late Show (as The Olden Days).

Based on Cliff Green's AWGIE Award-winning script, Marion follows the tribulations of a World War II-era schoolteacher working in the rural Gippsland area. As Moran notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series, 'she finds that the local townpeople resent her being single. She settles down to teach, putting up with insolence from one schoolboy, befriending another with a record of truancy, and trying to help an illiterate country girl. She becomes attracted to an Italian prisoner of war. The series highlights the different values of the country and the city and the difficulties Marion encounters because she is young, female and single.'

An anthology series produced at the ABC studios in Melbourne. Ten episodes aired in 1972.

A television play based on Tony Morphett's 1967 novel, the narrative sees inventor Jim Richards seeking financial backing from the Mason Corporation for a revolutionary new machine. With different parts of the empire competing for capital and different members of the Mason family competing for control, Richards finds himself in the middle of a power struggle.

'The cuckold is a young university lecturer whose academic career is headed for brilliant success as surely as his marital relationship with a lovely, sexual wife is headed for disaster. What makes for comedy is first the husband's inversion of his academic and marital duties and finally their equation in a sophisticated battle of the sexes.'

Source: Mayhead, Gerald. 'Chance of a Winner'. The Age 27/12/1968: p.2

Three middle-aged sisters are repressed by their mother, but how long can this last?

A contemporary newspaper report offers the following synopsis: 'The story deals with a crew which deserts a ship to find a fortune on the NSW goldfields of the 1850s and the efforts of the captain to lure them back on board.'

Source: '"Combat" Private in a Ballad', Canberra Times, 2 August 1965, p.1.