Cirrus@Austlit

'Tells the story of Jack Dawkins, introduced in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist as the Artful Dodger, the fastest-talking, nimblest-fingered young pick-pocket in London. As he side-steps and ducks his way from one disaster to another, the Dodger comes to realise that his voyage to Australia may be a real escape from his old life, an opportunity to be not a crook, but a hero.'

Source: Screen Australia.

Seven people are shipwrecked on the 'Treasure Island' of which Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, and need to find a way to escape the island. Unfortunately, the island is isolated by a ferocious storm called the Maelstrom. The island itself, as the shipwrecked newcomers find, is divided into three tribes (the Samurai, the Traders, and the Horselords), who feud fiercely among themselves. Looming over all is the sinister figure of Dante, who fears the newcomers are a threat to his control over the island.

Search for Treasure Island was another production from Roger Mirams, responsible for such Australian television programs as The Terrific Adventures of the Terrible Ten, The Magic Boomerang, Adventures of the Seaspray, The Lost Islands, Runaway Island, Secret Valley, Professor Poopsnagle's Steam Zeppelin, and Mission Top Secret.

The two seasons of Search for Treasure Island aired two years apart, the first in 1998 and the second in 2000.

'Deborah Carter (Rachel Blakely) a married prison officer, is seduced by convicted criminal Mick Webb (Peter Phelps), and persuaded to help him, and his friend Bertie Freeman, to escape. Inspired by real events in the life of prison officer Heather Parker who assisted in the escape of Peter Gibb and Archie Butterly.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 26/6/2013)

When twelve-year-old Jemma accidentally taps into a disused telecommunications satellite, she uses her new network to form a worldwide crime-fighting syndicate.

Mission Top Secret was another production by New Zealand-born television producer Roger Mirams, whose previous contributions to Australian children's television included The Terrific Adventures of the Terrible Ten, The Magic Boomerang, Adventures of the Seaspray, The Lost Islands, Secret Valley, Professor Poopsnagle's Steam Zeppelin, and Runaway Island.

Typically for a Roger Mirams' production, Mission Top Secret focuses on the independence and capability of the child protagonists, with adults limited to the roles of either advisor (Sir Joshua Cranberry) or villain (Neville Savage).

Although the program is listed in certain places (e.g., the Internet Movie Database) as an Australia/Spain/United Kingdom/New Zealand/The Netherlands co-production, the scripts were all by Australian writers, with the exception of the four episodes scripted by French television script-writers Jean-Jacques Gaffie and Benjamin Legrand.

A television series ostensibly based on Arthur Upfield's series of detective novels, and stemming from a telemovie aired two years earlier.

After protests from Indigenous groups about the casting of a white actor as a descendant of Detective Napoleon Bonaparte, the production was altered to make the character a white man who had once lived with Indigenous Australians. As such, it bears little real connection to Upfield's novels.

The series was not a success, and was cancelled after the first thirteen episodes.

'Drama series set in and around an Australian embassy in the fictional Islamic country of Ragaan, where day to day diplomacy is the stuff of danger and news headlines rather than privilege and cocktails.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 10/4/2014)

'THE PHANTOM HORSEMEN is an adventure set in early Sydney. A mysterious masked horseman is the only defence the colonists have against corrupt officials and marauding soldiery at the time of the Rum Rebellion'.

Source: Screen Australia.

'PIRATE'S ISLAND is a fantasy. A group of children are swept away in a hot air balloon and land on an island out of time - an island where a group of Spanish pirates have been marooned for a hundred years or more.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 8/6/2012.)

The telemovie that, two years later, spawned a television series.

The telemovie is ostensibly based on Arthur Upfield's character, Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. The protagonist is initially presented as a descendant of the original Upfield character but, following protests from Indigenous Australian groups, the role was modified and he became simply a white man who once lived with Indigenous Australians.

Neither the telemovie nor the series have any strong connection to Upfield's novels.

'Young Anna and her mother arrive in New Zealand after her father is killed in a tragic accident in Australia. Anna dreams of owning a horse but her mother is afraid to let her as it was a horse that killed her father. A wild brumby terrorises the mean-minded landholder, Garrett, and despite all his attempts to kill the horse, it continually outsmarts him. The horse, declared untameable and possessed, meets young Anna and together they make Garrett realise he cannot be the ruler of everything.'

Source: Screen Australia.

'A story of forbidden love set in Singapore before, during and after World War II.'

Source: Screen Australia.

Like previous Grundy production Waterloo Station, Richmond Hill was an attempt to replicate Crawford Productions' success with the police-drama/soap-opera fusion that was Cop Shop. But like Waterloo Station, it was unsuccessful, limping through a year's worth of poor ratings before being cancelled.

Moran notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series that the program was

designed to fit on the other side of the main evening news, thus hopefully holding viewers already hooked by Neighbours. Although the program had its share of younger characters, it is chiefly remembered for its older players, including the monumental Maggie Kirkpatrick as the pretentious butt of much of the comedy, veteran Gwen Plumb as the caring owner of a boarding house, and Ross Higgins as the police sergeant trying to hold it all together.

Moran also notes that the serial cost $8 million to produce.

Another Roger Mirams production, Professor Poopsnagle's Steam Zeppelin was a spin-off from Mirams's previous series, Secret Valley. In this series, Professor Poopsnagle, grandfather of one of the Secret Valley children, is kidnapped while working on a means of stopping air pollution. The children, in an effort to save him, complete his half-built steam zeppelin (a combination of an old bus and a hot-air balloon) and set off in pursuit of six golden salamanders: each salamander contains the name of a mineral, and the six minerals combined will complete the professor's formula.

The children are aided by the professor's friend, Doctor García, and opposed by the sinister Count Sator, a retired local land magnate. In the figure of the latter and in the concern with environmental destruction, Professor Poopsnagle's Steam Zeppelin (like Secret Valley) echoes the concerns of other children's programs such as Falcon Island and series one of The Henderson Kids.

The program also touches on the iconography of the then nascent genre of steampunk: though the program does not borrow the British Victorian or American Wild West settings associated with steampunk, the zeppelin itself is a distinctly steampunk device. Moran notes, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, that 'The effect of the flying bus was achieved through a combination of front projection photography, a double set of models, and front shots and interiors of a real bus hoisted on a crane'.

The program was successful on Australian television, and also aired in Switzerland, Finland, Spain, Greece, The Netherlands, France, Vietnam, and the United Kingdom (where, unlike Secret Valley, it was immensely popular).

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.

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).