Cirrus@Austlit

'Australian teenage twins Samantha and Ben Haselton discover what ‘culture shock’ is all about when they spend the summer with some eccentric, aristocratic and accident-prone relatives who live in a remote German castle.'

Three students (one Australian, one German, and one Singaporean) become close friends while studying at a Singaporean boarding school. Disappointed by their inevitable separation at the end of the school year, they are delighted when a fortuitous combination of mobile phones, computers, and a thunderstorm transports them bodily into an Internet chatroom and, from there, into each others' houses. The three spend their days moving freely between Australia, Singapore, and Germany.

The program's official website describes it as 'a vibrant, engaging, contemporary comedy-drama aimed at "tweens" throughout the world.'

Source: Official website (http://www.agurlswurld.com/about/). (Sighted: 23/2/2012)

Two girls from opposite sides of the world are forced to learn to live together on a snake farm in a remote and possibly mystical area of the Australian outback. Though superficially the program is a 'clash of cultures' narrative in which the British Skye and the Australian Tiger have to come to terms with one another and with their life on the snake farm, it incorporates such fantastic elements as the breeding of brand new species of snakes, snakes suddenly growing to enormous size, and teenage werewolves.

'Seven 15 year-old surfers have been selected from around Australia and overseas to take part in an intensive 12-month residential school program at Blue Water High. At the beachside school they join other pupils in a normal year's academic work as well as receiving special coaching in surfing. At the end of the year, two of the seven will qualify to surf the pro-circuit and win a three-year sponsorship contract. The series is a race into the finals for the wild card, a race to get through the year, and a race to grow up. The seven teens, forced to live, study and train together—at the same time become best friends and greatest competitors.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 20/8/2013)

'Set in the picture-postcard community on Sydney's northern beaches, SNOBS is the story of unlikely friends - Abby, the daughter of a wealthy, middle class traditional family and Marian, a boy from a group of modern day nomads who have come to be known as Ferals - the arrival of whom upsets the peace of the community and is the catalyst for conflict, adventure and intrigue.'

Source: Screen Australia.

'In England a recently bereaved widow and her two children discover that they've inherited a property in Australia. With some reluctance they head to Australia to claim their inheritance only to discover that the profitable sheep station they've imagined is in fact a rather out of the way wildlife park full of Australian native animals. What's more it has human occupants as well - a distantly related trio of grandchildren who have been bequeathed lifelong rights to live on the property. As well, there's an Australian born Vietnamese animal handler who's somehow the only one who has real expertise in dealing with native Australian animals.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 23/5/2014)

A live-action puppet show, Li'l Horrors followed the misadventures of the students at a school run by Morbidda Bates, a retired horror-film actress. The students included examples of key monsters from horror films: vampires, Frankenstein's monster, gorgons, mummies, zombies, werewolves, and swamp creatures.

According to December Films' press release for the series:

Li'l Horrors is a children's puppet sitcom specifically produced for the 5-8 year old age group. This is an age group who are currently not well catered for. Much programming is made for pre-schoolers and for 9 year olds and above. Li'l Horrors is created for this in between age group. It does not talk down to its audience or aim over its head. It is, however, infused with enough wit and off-the-wall humour to engage an even wider audience. Aimed well at [its] target audience, it is modern, slick, sly, funny and irreverent.

The program also focuses strongly on difference, with each of the characters quite strongly physically different from one another, as well as widely different in behavious and characteristics.

When Rodney and Jessica witness two aliens crash landing on Earth, they undertake to protect them by roping them into joining the world's most unsuccessful children's television program, Kid's Breakfast (nicknamed Pig's Breakfast). Disguised as characters on the program, Grob and Meeba (and their pilot Queegle) are forbidden to reveal their real identities: the media believe them to be eccentric actors who prefer to stay in character (and costume). But the situation is complicated by the fact that the crashed spaceship was a school bus, and Grob and Meeba, although genuine aliens, are also genuine teenagers.