Cirrus@Austlit

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.'

Catwalk was spun off from an episode of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's drama Dynasty (an episode also called 'Catwalk'), which had featured a fictional woman's fashion magazine called Lilith. Unlike Dynasty, however, it was not produced for the ABC (which was uninterested in the projected spin-off), but for ATN-7.

According to Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, compared to Dynasty, 'Catwalk is not as intense. The setting of a top women's fashion magazine provides plenty of intrigue and tension, but it is a lighter drama with touches of comedy and more of a human-interest approach'. Albert Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, suggests that the program 'was a kind of fictional version of a then very popular ATN daytime chat series, Beauty and the Beast.'

The program focuses on the relatively small staff of the magazine (now named Catwalk): Saxon Wells (owner and publisher), Ricky Novak (photographer), Cornelia Heyson (model), Jenkins (secretary), and Paula Healy (editor).

According to Storey, 'As there was little or no 'soap' content, and the established characters did not develop over such a short run, the episodes were screened mostly in random order with no detrimental effect'. Though the series rated moderately well, ATN-7 did not choose to produce a second series.

The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) produced the critically acclaimed, award-winning series Dynasty between 1970 and 1971. Dynasty--which bears no relation to the 1980s' American series of the same name--was developed from Tony Morphett's novel and later television play.

The series explores the intrigues and conflicts of powerful media family the Masons who, through the Mason Corporation Board, publish The Standard newspaper and own the television station MSN Channel 6. Head of the family and chairman of the board Jack Mason is a newspaperman like his father. And, again like his father, he is an old-style autocratic owner-publisher, determined to retain control of all aspects of his empire.