Cirrus@Austlit

Mini series based on the 1953 defection of Vladimir Petrov, a minor KGB agent at the USSR's Canberra embassy, and the snatching of his wife Eva, by Australian officials, from a Russian-bound plane at Darwin. The mini-series also covers the political fallout from the Royal Commission set up to examine Petrov's claims and ASIO's treatment of the situation.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series,

The Petrov Affair is very much part of a Laborist view of Australian politics in the twentieth century. Important political movements, which might form the dramatic highlights of a conservative history -- such as Menzies' downfall at the hands of Earle Paige, the formation of the Liberal Party, the electoral triumph of 1949 and the Suez crisis -- are instead ignored in favour of a chain of narratives that sets the Labor Party and its leaders, warts and all, on centre stage.

Moran also notes that the Nine Network was cautious in its treatment of the mini-series: 'It lay on the shelf for some time after production and was finally aired without fanfare over two consecutive nights in an out of ratings period.'

A fictionalised version of the theft of somewhere between $6 million and $12 million from the Victoria Club on 21 April 1976. Although technically an unsolved crime (since the only man charged, Norman Lee, was acquitted), the details were revealed in the mid-1990s by Lee's lawyer, after all the men involved had either died or disappeared.

Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, describes the program as 'a tough action mini-series that had a drive, grittiness and ferocity seldom seen in an Australian series':

The Melbourne landscape of wet suburban streets, city skyscrapers, flyovers, passing trams, cobbled laneways and sleazy shopfronts has never looked better, and the impression of a mean, tough, merciless universe is more than reinforced by the driving complex narrative and the excellent playing of the principals.

The program aired on the Nine Network to positive reviews and strong audience figures.

Mini-series based on the best-selling autobiography by A.B. Facey, tracing his life from the late nineteenth century through Gallipoli and into marriage, fatherhood, and later life.

The mini-series was successful on Australian television, but Moran is unflattering in his appraisal: 'The mini-series was in effect a lovingly authentic visual and aural recreation of the novel. The trouble was that what was a pleasure to read on the printed page was pretty much insufferably boring to watch on screen. The narrative was far too anecdotal and the performances of brothers Dominic and Benedict Sweeney as Facey were dull.'

A television movie in which, according to MemorableTV.com., 'A friend teams up with his alcoholic mate (to try and help him out of his troubles) in the Australian Double Sculls rowing competition'.

Source: MemorableTV.com (http://www.memorabletv.com/australia/tvad2.htm). Sighted: 17/11/2011

Mini series tracing the devastation wreaked on Darwin by Cyclone Tracy during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1974.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, the mini-series fall roughly into three sections: the period immediately before the cyclone (in which the main characters are introduced), the night on which the cyclone hit, and the aftermath. As with so many disaster films and mini-series, Moran notes, Cyclone Tracy 'focuses on ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary event. The action is mostly documentary in tone and feeling, though one strand concerned with an American adventurer and a cargo of drugs is melodramatically quite out of keeping with the other stories.'

Moran notes that, American drug-runners aside, the mini-series works because of 'the low-key realism of the stories and the performances, the excellent special effects and sets, and the skilful integration of actual footage'. The program cost $4.5 million to produce.

Mini-series tracing the struggle between two sisters for control of an international fashion house.

According to Moran in his Guide to Australian TV Series:

Body Business was shot in Sydney at the relatively low cost of $3 million. The series was overseen by current PBL head, Jane Deknatel, following the departure of Ian Bradley. Like Kings, The Great Bookie Robbery and Glass Babies, Body Business continued PBL's stress on contemporary genre series, in this case offering viewers a solid piece of melodrama. However, unlike the great 1980s exercise in the genre, McElroy's Return to Eden, Body Business only achieved moderate viewing figures and has not attracted any permanent admirers.

When his son Michael and Michael's wife Sally are unable to have children, wealthy businessman John Craig arranges for them to have private in-vitro fertilisation treatment. After Michael's death, Craig tries to take Sally's child from her.

Set during the Depression, the story follows a Queensland family who uproot and move to the goldfields after the father hears of a strike.

At the end of World War II, Sister Langtry is in charge of a ward of mentally unbalanced patients. When she falls in love with a new patient, tensions arise and a patient is murdered.

'Robert, a successful novelist with writer's block, is kicked out by his wife who is tired of his laziness.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 20/5/2014)

'Dr Cadabra, an affable, eccentric magician, lives in outer space with his son, Abra, and their two pets - Stella, the star-cat and Zodiac, the space-dog. When all four are busy elsewhere, two really nasty villains, B.L. Z'Bub and Klaw, the Rat King, steal the Cosmic pipe. Can be viewed as conventional film but it is 3D if viewed through 3D glasses.'

The film is a loose version of the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 29/6/2012).

Television program focusing on a working-class family living in the western suburbs of Sydney, centred around Ed Devereaux (formerly of Skippy) as panel beater George King.

The program aimed for social realism in the presentation of working-class life, but Moran notes (in his Guide to Australian Television) that it did not attract a good initial audience, leading to, firstly, a halt to production and, secondly, an unannounced return to the screen, which also failed to attract good viewing figures.

'In the glittering world of high fashion, beauty is only skin deep! Barbara Kennedy is a successful business woman in the fashion and modelling industry. In the lead up to the Annual Fashion Designers Awards night, her boyfriend finally proposes to her. But everything else is not going well. On the evening of the awards, Barbara realises that one of her own models is her illegitimate daughter, given up for adoption years earlier. Worse than this she is about to walk into the hands of a murderer.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 28/6/2013)