Cirrus@Austlit

Television mini-series that traces the political concerns and upheavals of the immediate post-war period in Australia.

Moran notes, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, that the program, in addition to the three political leaders that are its focus, introduces such historical figures as B.A. Santamaria, Edgar Ross, Lloyd Ross, Dr H.C. Coombes, Frank Packer, and Arthur Calwell.

Moran suggests that the program's weakness lies in its treatment of the central figures: 'Menzies is a one-dimensional unprincipled villain, ambitious for power. Evatt, too, seeks power and is personally vain even to the point of eccentricity. Chifley, on the other hand, is a saintly avuncular figure who struggles to bring alive his vision of 'the light on the hill'. This leads to drama which is too black and white and simple-minded.'

A mini-series tracing the history of the Australian Women's Weekly during World War II.

According to Albert Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, the program contained a great deal of documentary footage: 'The main sources of the material are archival footages from depositories such as the Australian War Memorial, wartime newsreels, especially that of Movietone, and still material such as feature articles and illustrations taken from the pages of the Australian Women's Weekly during World War II'.

Moran emphasises that the daily lives of the characters are not the primary focus of the program:

The great bulk of The Weekly's War is instead given over to a recreation/recalling (the series begins with V Day in Sydney in 1945) of the public events of the war. Yet this is more than just history from the top as there are at least three voices or outlooks commenting on the incidents of the war. War footage recalls the events covered by the official cinematographers such as Damien Parer (who appears on screen) while the Movietone newsreels tended to be glib and sexist. Although the point of view of the Weekly was not feminist, it did nevertheless consistently offer a women's perspective that on some issues at least (such as employment of women in the postwar period) was often oppositional. The result is an interesting and complex recreation that consistently moves between the public and the personal and succeeds in transforming the audience's perception of many of the events of the war and how they have been reported.