Cirrus@Austlit

'A Workingman's Cemetery unearths the contents of a small bone orchard in 41 short, fictional biographies. The histories of the interred, from a Hunter coalmining village now gone, are connected by the spectacularly unkempt life of Ronald Borthwick, the village gravedigger, who, over time, buried almost everyone he knew until, betrayed by a best mate in a village where solidarity is crucial, he was driven finally, murder-suicide. In the cemetery.'  (Publication summary)

'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.'

Troy, living in 2008, meets Wiremu Love, the teenage navigator of timeship The Chronos, who has travelled back in time. Together, they travel further back and meet Carmen, a cavegirl. The three teenagers combine forces to combat time-viruses that could wipe out history's greatest inventions.

The program, which only ran to thirteen episodes, was created by Paula Boock and Donna Malane, and was a co-production between Taylor Media Pty Ltd (Australia) and Gibson Group (New Zealand).

Animated series for children based on the Gasp! series of pictue books by Terry Denton. The program explores family relationships through the medium of the family pets, who are left alone each day as their family goes out to work and school.

Mortified follows the trevails of eleven-year-old Taylor Fry, as she copes with the general embarrassment of having parents, as well as being annoyed by her sister, jealous of her neighbour, and completely oblivious to her best friend's crush on her. The program inserts some fantasy elements into the otherwise straight comedy-drama by having Taylor speak directly to the camera, using elaborate fantasy sequences to explore her daydreams, and showing her over-active imagination as bringing seemingly inanimate objects to life.

Mortified was the last major work of television producer and screenwriter Angela Webber before her early death in 2007.

A short-lived television series about idealistic young police officers in an inner-city Sydney area, Young Lions did not rate well, and was not renewed for a second season.

'Bad cops Detective Red Lilywhite and Lou Knutt are plain clothes detectives based at a southern Sydney beachside suburb and part of a police force that is still the best money can buy! They are masters of their domain, giving the greenlight to all the criminal activity in their area for a ten percent piece of the action, all the while dispensing their own particular and often ludicrous brand of justice as they see fit.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 24/5/2013)

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.

'Inspired by true events, Stingers reveals the shadowy and ambiguous world of undercover cops — people with covert lives and constantly changing identities. They are police who defeat crime from within the criminal world — always without a badge and frequently without protection. The series follows the lives of the operatives as they befriend and betray those on the other side of the law. For these select few, it is a deadly way of life.The undercover cops of Stingers are a unique breed. They must juggle their own lives — love, laughter, family and humanity — with the tension of the criminal personas they adopt in their passion for justice.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 7/6/2013)

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.

'Fast-paced series spin-off of the hit feature film. Filmed at an abandoned school in Sydney's Maroubra, this program was about an ethnically diverse group of students attending Hartley High School.'

Source: National Film and Sound Archive record.

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.'

Three sisters find their fortunes suddenly and dramatically changed. By agreement with their father, if the three manage living together and running a hotel in the Bondi region of Sydney for a year, the hotel will be theirs.

The series was not a success with reviewers or viewers, and the Canberra Times later described it as 'acclaimed almost universally as a disaster of epic proportions' (David Vine, 'Fact, Fantasy, and the TV Hype-artist', Canberra Times, 22 August 1988, p.6).

The central character of the series is Michael Rafferty, a stipendiary magistrate in the small suburban court of the Sydney seaside suburb of Manly. The main business of the court is minor offences. Rafferty's personal life is also a feature.

Source: Moran's Guide to Australian TV Series

'Series based around the fortunes of the fictional rock band The Takeaways.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 3/12/2013)

The film shows the experiences of three school leavers, two of whom actively seek work: Nicole suffers the indignity of sexual harassment; Nick lies to get a job and is later caught out; Eddie seems destined to be permanently unemployed.

A suspense thriller set in the building industry, Heatwave is about a woman who cares too much about people, their lives, and their homes and a man who has a job evicting squatters from their homes and won't be swayed by emotions.