Cirrus@Austlit

'MARRIAGE ACTS is the story of David McKinnon, a family court judge, and the impact his decisions have on people in court as well as on his personal life.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 19/9/2012)

'The story [of] Ikey Soloman (the inspiration for Charles Dicken's Fagin in Oliver Twist), his mistress Mary Abacus and Ikey's wife Hannah. Set in London and Van Dieman's [sic] Land (Tasmania) in the mid-19th century'.

Source: NFSA. (Sighted: 11/11/2013)

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.

'Sixteen years after returning home, three disillusioned Australian Vietnam conscripts use their army skills to successfully plan and execute the country's biggest bank robbery. Seven years pass, and a petty criminal convicted as the driver in the heist is released from gaol. When his body is fished out of the harbour, the grim murder reignites the case.'

Source: Screen Australia.

Six-part drama series about a fourteen-year-old German immigrant, Bruno Gunther, growing up in a small wheat-farming community in Australia during the 1930s. Based on Colin Thiele's novels The Valley Between, Sun on the Stubble, Uncle Gustav's Ghosts, and The Shadow on the Hills.

'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 scruffy detective, on the trail of fake perfume makers, meets a past lover on the trail of medicine counterfeiters. Together, they expose the people behind the bogus, deadly drugs.'

Source: National Film and Sound Archive. (Sighted: 27/6/2013)

The Harrisons are a perfectly ordinary couple--except that their daughter is destined to become empress of the galaxy. The Harrisons aren't aware of her origins: Sally was implanted in Mrs Harrison's womb (alongside the Harrisons' biological son, Bobby) during an electrical storm, to protect the infant from the war raging between the Empire and the Confederacy. Now it's time for Sally to return home and take her place as ruler. But when she's taken to the hospital after a bike accident and her alien origins are discovered, the government becomes involved. Now neither her biological family nor her adopted family can get close enough to Sally to help her fulfil her destiny.

'Sydney in 1944, the tide is turning in the Pacific War and American forces have made Sydney a gaudy, hectic garrison town. The gamblers and "good time charlies" converge on the South Pacific Hotel, one of Sydney's finest.

The heart of the hotel is the bustling beauty salon run by the cool professional Claire (Lisa Harrow), who hides a guilty secret; Deb (Kerry Armstrong,) who has a pre-war marriage and a wartime alternative; and Guinea (Rebecca Gibney), whose 'good war' is not what it seems.

Come in Spinner is the story of one week in their lives, as they play the game of chance for the highest stakes...survival, security and the opportunity for happiness and love.'

Source: ABC Commercial website http://www.abc.net.au/abccontentsales/s1475926.htm (Sighted 27/03/12)

In this third instalment of the Fields of Fire series, Kate, now widowed, 'is a wealthy woman owning many cane farms. She is attracted to Rinaldo, a newly arrived Italian cane-cutter. The referendum to outlaw the Australian Communist Party splits the town. A big flood draws the community back together and brings the saga to a close.'

Source: Moran's Guide to Australian TV Series.

'George Oppenheimer's life needs improving so he has just had a brilliant new computer invented...only now it wants to take over completely and it has something no other computer has - personality'.

Source: Screen Australia (Sighted: 8/6/2012).

Inspired by Robert Donaldson's novel Cane, this sequel to the 1987 mini-series Fields of Fire begins in 1946. Following the marriage of WWII, British expatriate Bluey and Dusty, one of his co-workers in the Australian cane fields, the focus shifts to a pair of new characters - Gina, an Italian refugee, and Franco, her black-marketeer husband.

The first part of a trilogy that dramatises the recurring 'new chum' theme in Australian storytelling and also touches on racism, wartime propaganda, and the mateship and community that exists in a small town dependent on one industry to survive. The narrative begins in the late thirties, with the arrival of a young Englishman in the Queensland sugar cane town of Silkwood. When he is not accepted by the Australian cane cutters, the Italian workers take him under their wing. As the story progresses, he has several love affairs, goes to war, and eventually returns to the canefields.

An anthology series of children's stories, mixing live-action episodes with animation, clay animation, and puppetry. The stories, aimed specifically at the under 10s, are drawn from a variety of sources, including children's books, fairy tales, myths, and original ideas. Some of the episodes have involved, for example, Snow White as a punk bikie and the seven dwarves as a motorcycle gang; a pet stegosaurus; a boy with wheels instead of toes; and Trevor the glider-plane-catching cat.

According to Patricia Edgar,

Thirty separate self-contained dramas of differing lengths were to be packaged into half-hour episodes. The project was designed to showcase new, creative talent in the television industry. Competitions were run at the Australian Film and Television School and Swinburne Institute of Technology for the best concepts suitable for inclusion in the Kaboodle package, with prizes of $1000 awarded. The Foundation sought promising but inexperienced writers, would-be producers, directors and even accountants who wanted to earn their first credit to enable them to find a future in the industry.

Source: Patricia Edgar, Bloodbath: A Memoir of Australian Television, Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2006, pp.175-76.

Kaboodle was produced in two series, the first of which included some live-action segements, but the second of which was entirely animated.

For a full list of episodes, see Film Details.

Episode listing for Kaboodle series two courtesy of the Australian Children's Television Foundation.