Cirrus@Austlit

'When Jane Halifax's best friend dies mysteriously, Jane must unmask the murderer before she too becomes a victim.'

Source: Screen Australia.

'All Saints is thrown into emergency status when an explosion creates chaos and carnage. The disaster becomes personal when the staff realise that Von is missing. Steph has to put aside her fears about her own pregnancy while Ben and Bron fight to save the life of a pregnant woman and her unborn child.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 25/6/2013)

One of Australia's highest rating dramas, All Saints is a Logie Award-winning Australian medical drama set in the fictional All Saints Western General Hospital in suburban Sydney. The stories originally focused on the nursing staff of Ward 17 run by Nursing Unit Manager Terri Sullivan. It was sometimes referred to as the 'garbage ward' because it took the overflow of patients.

In 2004 Network Seven producers overhauled the series in an effort to increase the show's gradually dwindling audience. They achieved this by closing down Ward 17 and transferring some of the staff to the Emergency Department managed by Frank Campion. Several other new lead characters were also introduced. The changes also saw the storylines begin to focus more on the lives of the doctors and nurses.

Another significant change to the series came in early 2009 when the producers introduced the Medical Response Unit. Central to this development was the helicopter which took doctors to rescue situations outside the hopsital and which in turn brought patients to the All Saints Emergency Department. The show's name was also changed at this time to All Saints: Medical Response Unit. The increased production costs created by having scenes shot on location played a part, however, in the series being cancelled mid-year. The series ended with the Emergency Department and Medical Response Unit teams having a dinner to farewell the last remaining original character, Von Ryan on her final day at All Saints.

All Saints was popular in many countries including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium and Iran.

A brother and sister enter Ward 17 for a kidney transplant/donation, and an elite athlete copes with the amputation of her arm as treatment for bone cancer.

'Murder is the ultimate crime. It touches the lives of ordinary people, casting its long shadow over the glossy cityscape and glamorous haunts of the sprawling metropolis. For homicide detectives Steve Hayden and Tessa Vance, solving a murder is a journey from darkness into light. An urgent, vicious confrontation with evil, a walk through the devil's own world.

'Tessa and Steve are the elite new face of homicide. She is young and brilliant, he is logical. She is instinctive, he goes by the book. She's complicated, he's down to earth. Together this powerful partnership must confront and overcome the intrigue, fear and shattered lives which murder leaves in its wake.'

Source: McElroy All Media (http://www.mcelroyallmedia.com.au/index.php?page=murder-call). (Sighted: 19/4/2013)

The authors above are those credited as script-writers for the series. A number of other authors were also credited with 'story': Jennifer Rowe is the most frequently credited, but other authors credited with 'story' are Leanne Williams, Duncan Ball, Kel Richards, Jenny Pausacker, Kerry Greenwood, Richard Hall, Peter Gawler, John Banas, Jean Bedford, Karen Petersen, and Helen Robinson.

Water Rats is an Australian police television series which was broadcast on the Nine Network between 1996 and 2001. The series was based around the men and women of the Sydney Water Police who fight crime across Sydney Harbour and surrounding locales. The show was set on and around Goat Island in Sydney Harbour.

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.'

A one-hour soap opera focusing on life in a gritty inner-city suburb.

'When Kostas Stephanidis came to this country 23 years ago with 20 pounds in his pocket, one suitcase and his father's pants, he opened a small Greek café, Acropolis, where old men played cards and drank coffee. Now he has decided to retreat to an idyllic lifestyle in the Greek islands, leaving his one and only son, Jim, to uphold the café and family tradition. After careful thought, however, rather than entrust his beloved Acropolis café to his only son, Jim, Kostas insists on putting someone more sensible in charge. Jim's pal, Ricky, he has brains - he's been a college student! Amid cultures clashing - and crockery smashing - Jim and Ricky generate riches all right. But strictly in the form of laughs. The key writers of "Acropolis Now" are also in the cast. Nick Giannopolis, George Kapiniaris and Simon Palomares. The unique trio who were responsible for having staged Australia's longest running stage comedy, "Wogs Out Of Work".'

Source: http://www.australiantelevision.net/acropolis_now/index.html Sighted 04/07/12

G.P. is an Australian television series that ran for eight seasons. Set in and around a fictional general medical practice in an inner-city suburb, the storylines explore the professional and personal lives of the doctors and staff who worked there.

Set in a small, fictional, New South Wales country town called Wandin Valley, A Country Practice focused on the staffs of the town's medical practice and local hospital and on the families of the doctors, nurses, and patients. Many of the episodes also featured guest characters (frequently patients served by the practice) through whom various social and medical problems were explored. Although often considered a soap opera, the series was not built around an open-ended narrative; instead, the two one-hour episodes screened per week formed a self-contained narrative block, though many of the storylines were developed as sub-plots for several episodes before becoming the focus of a particular week's storyline. While the focus was on topical issues such as youth unemployment, suicide, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, and terminal illness, the program did sometimes explore culturally sensitive issues, including, for example, the Aboriginal community and their place in modern Australian society.

Among the show's principal characters were Dr Terence Elliott, local policeman Sergeant Frank Gilroy, Esme Watson, Shirley Dean Gilroy, Bob Hatfield, Vernon 'Cookie' Locke, and Matron Margaret 'Maggie' Sloan. In addition to its regularly rotating cast of characters, A Country Practice also had a cast of semi-regulars who would make appearances as the storylines permitted. Interestingly, while the series initially targeted the adult and older youth demographic, it became increasingly popular with children over the years.