Cirrus@Austlit

'Karen Parsons, a dedicated and courageous American nurse, sets out with five young orphans on an epic journey from a Thai refugee camp to freedom in Australia. She is rescued by an Australian charter boat captain, Steve Hannah, and love blossoms against impossible odds.'

Source: Screen Australia.

In this mini-series, which consciously takes its name from a 1955 western by Anthony Mann, Kate Adamson, a struggling single mother living in Los Angeles, meets, falls in love with, and marries Tom Hannon, a single father who runs an outback cattle station in Australia. Not realising that her new husband has been killed in a plane crash on his way home, Kate arrives at Larapinta to face not only two shocked stepdaughters (who were unaware of their father's remarriage) but also a severe drought and the machinations of her neighbours on the enormous cattle station that borders Larapinta. Resisting her children's desire to return to the United States, Kate resolves to remain and see Larapinta through the drought.

Moran notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series that

The series was aimed directly at a network sale and to that end producer Hal McElroy not only used his writer on the great potboiler Return to Eden, but also cast both Linda Evans and Jason Robards in central roles. The series was shot in Los Angeles and Alice Springs, and even though the budget blew out from an anticipated $4.5 million to $12 million, the series achieved an American network sale to CBS, the first Australian series to do so.

The mini-series also rated well when it was screened in Australia.

The 1986 television series is set seven years after the events of the 1983 mini-series. Stephanie Harper, Australia's richest woman, is happily married to her plastic-surgeon husband. Her two children are now young adults, involved in the Harper 'empire' but with their own problems. The release of Jilly Stewart from prison starts a dramatic chain of events.

Before handsome young Wimbledon champion Greg Marsden marries wealthy, twice-divorced mother Stephanie Harper, he begins an affair with her best friend Jilly Stewart. On their honeymoon at 'Eden', the Harper family's estate in the Northern Territory, Greg pushes Stephanie into a crocodile-infested river. She amazingly survives an attack but requires plastic surgery to fix her injuries. With a new face and identity, she begins to plot her revenge. Stephanie's plan involves enticing Greg to fall in love with her. They then return to Eden, where she confronts him and Jilly, revealing her true identity. After a struggle and a murder attempt, Greg dies in a plane crash and Stephanie is re-united with her children and the plastic surgeon she has grown to love.

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.

According to Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, The Young Doctors was the result of Grundy's association with Ron McLean, who devised a pilot for a program called City Hospital at the same time as he was developing the ultimately unsuccessful King's Men.

Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, notes that

The domain of the serial was young viewers, and accordingly the emphasis was on romance and relationships at the Albert Memorial Hospital. Divorce, sex, social and medical problems were all off-limits for this deliberately lightweight serial concerning the various doctors, nurses and patients at the hospital.... However, shootings, bombings and invasions by dangerous psychotics were all permissable ways of removing regular characters and rearranging relationships.

Though less critically and commerically successful than its rival The Sullivans, The Young Doctors ran for five years, ultimately amassing more screen time than either The Sullivans or Number 96.

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.

In the course of the previous couple of episodes of The Godfathers, Pete commits himself to marrying Helen by getting engaged. However, will he go through with it? 'I Do... I Don't' begins on the day of the wedding, and Pete subsequently sends the house into chaos. The attempts by the other godfathers, Maria, and Mike to get him to the altar prove to be difficult, as he makes every effort to get out of the wedding right up to the last minute.

A comedy drama set on Sydney's north shore, The Godfathers centres on nine-year-old Mike Varga and his widowed Hungarian mother. Crippled by the car accident that killed her husband, Maria Varga is confined to a wheelchair. To help financially, she takes in three boarders: Chris (a forty-something taxi driver), Pete (a thirty-year-old commercial photographer) and Gary (a twenty-one-year-old garage attendant who has just moved to Sydney from the country). Mike is an only child and a bit introspective, but the three boarders become fond of him and Mike adopts them as his 'godfathers.' Under their influence, he becomes a happy, outgoing kid, although they are often tested by his youthful ways.

Tensions are frequently raised through the on-going presence of Elizabeth Dent, a Child Welfare Officer who is constantly checking on Mike to see that he is being well cared for. After Pete leaves the Vargases' house to get married, he is replaced by another 'godfather,' Dave.

'Red Ruby, Queen of Wooloomooloo, retired after 15 years in the 'business' when she receives an unusual inheritance - but inheritances are not always what they seem ...'

Source:

[Television guide], The Canberra Times, 25 September 1967, p.21.