Cirrus@Austlit

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, 'This hybrid series revolves around a company of opera singers (incarnated as puppets) who live in a disused theatre. They are found by two children who are their only audience as they proceed through thirteen different operas'.

The program was designed by Marcia Hatfield as a way of introducing child viewers to opera, and ran through such productions as Il Trovatore, Carmen, Aida, and I Pagliacci.

Moran notes that SBS, which purchased the series, ran it in an early evening timeslot during the traditionally poor summer season, but that the series did sell well to overseas markets.

Divorce Court was based on a long-running American documentary series, which, though it marketed itself as presenting real-life divorce cases to audiences, actually presented re-enactments of real-life divorces using actors. Though Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, doesn't specify and information on the program is scarce, the Australian version presumably followed the same model.

According to Moran,

Each episode was hosted by a narrator and fully scripted, with speed and efficiency vital to producers working to network deadlines. Shot in sequence at TCN-9 studios, Divorce Court was tightly scripted in order to avoid reshoots and video editing. This was due in part to the lack of video sophistication at the time. The series was produced on average at a rate of around five episodes per week, which were usually shot in one day. At one stage producers even managed to come up with twenty fully scripted episodes in eight working days.