Cirrus@Austlit

'There's a new wireless in the Fisher household — but there's murder on the airwaves when Dot's new favourite show is interrupted by an on air panic. The radio station's bookkeeper and budding announcer is found choked to death but when Phryne gets involved, she finds Jack already undercover as the newsreader. Dot suffers the realisation that she doesn't want to relinquish working for Miss Fisher when she marries.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 26/2/2014)

'Phryne plays host to ghostly soldiers and exotic spiritualists. Aunt Prudence is swept up in the new spiritualist fad and enlists the famed Mrs Bolkonsky to contact her dead godson, Lieutenant-Colonel Roland Claremont. The séance leaves Phryne certain there is something amiss — but it has nothing to do with the psychic realm.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 26/2/2014)

'The gothic world of the Magdalene Laundries — a halfway house for pregnant and wayward girls, run by Catholic nuns — sets the scene for the tragic death of an escaping teenager. As Phryne becomes more suspicious of the goings-on behind the convent walls, she and Jack realise the threads of this crime lead higher up and closer to home than they ever suspected.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 26/2/2014)

'Phryne's cousins and Aunt Prudence's entire household come under suspicion when a young girl is found drowned in her aunt's fountain on the eve of a lavish fancy dress party.

'Phryne and her aunt work together to investigate — until Phryne begins to doubt her own detecting skills. Was Murdoch Foyle really the man responsible for her sister's death or was it someone much closer to Phryne — someone who was also there the day Janey disappeared from the circus all those years ago.

When Foyle finally shows his hand, Phryne recovers her confidence — only to have it replaced by terror when she fears Foyle now has Jane in his sights.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 24/5/2013)

'Phryne enters the publishing world when she investigates the puzzling death of a magazine columnist and author of fairy stories. To get to the truth, she must unearth the deceptions and rampant rivalries of the magazine's thoroughly modern working women — and dig into the past of their token male employee. Meanwhile, Phryne rekindles her affair with the sensuous Lin Chung — whose arranged marriage has stalled in a mire of family politics and intrigue.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 24/5/2013)

'As a young woman in Paris after the war, Phryne posed for the famous artist Pierre Sarcelle. Now, ten years later, Sarcelle's widow arrives in Melbourne asking for her late husband's paintings.

'When the widow suddenly disappears, Phryne discovers the connection between Mme Sarcelle and the death of an Australian war veteran who witnessed the 'accidental' death of Sarcelle at Montparnasse train station.

'As Phryne delves into this investigation, she remembers her own days in Paris and her first love. The two worlds collide as Phryne tracks down the murderer — but Jack is the man who gives her the courage to confront her past.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 24/5/2013)

'Based on the novels of Australian author Kerry Greenwood. Our lady sleuth sashays through the back lanes and jazz clubs of late 1920s Melbourne, fighting injustice with her pearl handled pistol and her dagger-sharp wit. Leaving a trail of admirers in her wake, our thoroughly modern heroine makes sure she enjoys every moment of her lucky life.'

Source: Inside Film and Television website

Guinevere Jones is a Canadian/Australian fantasy television series that revolves around the adventures of the title character. Gwen Jones and her mother flee from Canada to Melbourne, where Gwen's mother is committed to an asylum, Gwen enters foster care, and Merlin turns up to teach Gwen her destiny (to fight evil).

Although the program is billed as a co-production between Australia and Canada, the involvement of Australian script-writers is relatively minimal (though other crew members, including the directors, were also Australian). Only four episodes in season one were written by Australians, and all thirteen episodes of season two were written by Canadian script-writers. However, the Australian writers did invest the essentially European Arthurian legends on which the program is based with something of an Australian flavour: Piers Hobson's episode 'Warwe and Mineer', for example, involves mysterious Indigenous Australian rock paintings.

Guinevere Jones has never been released on DVD.

Chuck Finn follows Charles 'Chuck' Finn, a Canadian boy whose parents move from Toronto to the Australian country town of Tingalla. At first, he longs desperately to return to Toronto, but he soon finds the decommissioned and derelict paddle steamer the Tingalla Rose. Soon, he and his friends--some of whom are ghostly, rather than mortal--are enchanted by the possibility of getting the Tingalla Rose running again and seduced by life on the Murray River.

Unfortunately for Chuck Finn, Barron Entertainment declared bankruptcy during the production of season two. A truncated season of six episodes was completed and released, but the production was abandoned at that point.

A teen drama set in a school divided between mainstream high-school students and students with the potential to compete in sports at an Olympic level.

The two series had distinct storylines.

Series one:

The first day at any new school is always tough but when your schoolmates can run 100 metres in 11 seconds, clear 1.8 metres in the highjump and include the national junior champions in ten Olympic sports...you have to be a winner. (Via Screen Australia)

Series two:

The second series follows the fortunes of the soccer team as they strive for a place in the league play-offs. The team's problems on the field are complicated by problems off the field as allegiances and alliances between the kids (divided into Book Worms and Sports Freaks) shift and develop. (Via Screen Australia)

The gift has the power to grant you anything you desire, but once you realise what it does, you must pass it on.

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.'

Children's adventure television series about children who live on fictional Circe Island, a fishing community and communications base off the coast of Western Australia. The first series featured episodes in which the children outwitted adults, particularly the character Hermes Endakis. The series later emphasised environmental issues, particularly in the second series, where the children try to stop a big corporation from destroying their island.

A 'second-generation' Skippy, with Ranger Hammond's younger son Sonny grown up and running an animal-based theme park, Habitat, on Australia's Gold Coast, in company with his ten-year-old twins, Jerry and Lou. The theme park is adjacent to a national park, bringing in Ranger Dave as a character, along with Sonny Hammond's housekeeper Thelma and assistant Kate.

The first television program from prolific children's television producer Jonathan M. Shiff, Kelly follows the adventures of a police dog who, after being injured at work, is sent to recuperate in the country; here, Kelly becomes the constant companion of Jo Patterson and her friend Danny Foster, and manages to ferret out some criminals even in the country.

'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.)

'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.

Home and Away is a television serial created by Alan Bateman and produced by the Seven Network. The idea for the series came to Bateman (then head of drama at Seven) after he stopped to buy ice-creams in a small country town in southern NSW. While chatting to some locals, he learned that the town was unhappy about plans to build a home for foster kids from the city. At that time, Channel Seven was still smarting from its decision to let Neighbours go to the Ten Network, where it had become hugely popular, and was looking to create another series to rival its success. Bateman saw in the idea that became Home and Away the potential for plenty of storylines and conflict by having streetwise city kids being relocated to a small regional environment,

In the beginning, the series focused on Pippa and Tom Fletcher, who, being unable to have children of their own, decide to become foster parents. When Tom is retrenched from his city job, the couple buy the rundown Summer Bay Caravan Park and move there with their five foster children. Soon after arriving, they also take in troublesome Bobby Simpson.

The series debuted in January 1988 with an hour-long telemovie. Although this rated well, the series itself took some while to develop an audience. Having learned their lesson from the Neighbours debacle, Network Seven gave its new show time, and its ratings gradually increased. As with Neighbours, the Home and Away series and performers became very popular in the United Kingdom.