Cirrus@Austlit

A live-action puppet show, Li'l Horrors followed the misadventures of the students at a school run by Morbidda Bates, a retired horror-film actress. The students included examples of key monsters from horror films: vampires, Frankenstein's monster, gorgons, mummies, zombies, werewolves, and swamp creatures.

According to December Films' press release for the series:

Li'l Horrors is a children's puppet sitcom specifically produced for the 5-8 year old age group. This is an age group who are currently not well catered for. Much programming is made for pre-schoolers and for 9 year olds and above. Li'l Horrors is created for this in between age group. It does not talk down to its audience or aim over its head. It is, however, infused with enough wit and off-the-wall humour to engage an even wider audience. Aimed well at [its] target audience, it is modern, slick, sly, funny and irreverent.

The program also focuses strongly on difference, with each of the characters quite strongly physically different from one another, as well as widely different in behavious and characteristics.

Seven people are shipwrecked on the 'Treasure Island' of which Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, and need to find a way to escape the island. Unfortunately, the island is isolated by a ferocious storm called the Maelstrom. The island itself, as the shipwrecked newcomers find, is divided into three tribes (the Samurai, the Traders, and the Horselords), who feud fiercely among themselves. Looming over all is the sinister figure of Dante, who fears the newcomers are a threat to his control over the island.

Search for Treasure Island was another production from Roger Mirams, responsible for such Australian television programs as The Terrific Adventures of the Terrible Ten, The Magic Boomerang, Adventures of the Seaspray, The Lost Islands, Runaway Island, Secret Valley, Professor Poopsnagle's Steam Zeppelin, and Mission Top Secret.

The two seasons of Search for Treasure Island aired two years apart, the first in 1998 and the second in 2000.

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.'

An avant-garde painter steals a Picasso from a local gallery to protest extravagant spending, but finds herself caught up in a complicated double cross.

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

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.

A daily television drama series set in the fictional Melbourne suburb of Erinsborough, Neighbours chronicles the lives of the residents of Ramsay Street. The series initially revolved around three families: the Ramsays (at number 24 Ramsay Street), the Robinsons (at number 26), and the Clarkes (at number 28). The scope of the series has since broadened to include new Ramsay Street familes.

'The stock squad, investigators of rural crime, find huge quantities of grain missing from a Government operated silo. Detective Santana discovers corruption runs deep, especially when the town 'ratbag' goes missing.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 10/2/2014)

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.

A sitcom centred on the culture clashes between an immigrant Italian taxi driver and his wife (both determined to preserve the traditions of their homeland) and their children (all distinctly Australian in their outlook).

For a detailed, episode-by-episode synopsis, see Film Details.

A relatively short-lived drama series based in a secondary school in one of Sydney's more impoverished suburbs, Glenview High focused on teacher Greg Walker, dividing its attention between his work with his students and his homelife with his brother and two flatmates.

Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, notes that 'Glenview High frequently looked at the problems faced by city kids preparing for a world of uncertainty, with less opportunity and high unemployment. It also dealt with the frustration of the education system from the point of view of both teachers and students.' Albert Moran, conversely, notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series that 'Glenview High was mildly concerned with social issues in and around school, kids, teachers and parents but with each episode needing to tie its stories up inside the hour, social problems were mostly solvable and social issues were raised but not explored.'

Storey summarises the program as follows:

Grundy's claimed that Glenview High could not be compared to Class of 74/75, a valid statement with which the critics agreed. Glenview was a better product than Class, but it could not be considered an outstanding series: the scripts sometimes lapse into melodrama, with corny and contrived endings, and being produced entirely on video gives it a cheap look.

(Note: Moran mistakenly lists Ken James and Rebecca Gilling as playing teachers, rather than their actual roles of Greg Walker's brother Tom and flatmate/air hostess Robbie Dean.)

Another soap opera from Grundy's, The Restless Years followed a group of teenagers from the end of school to early adulthood: the 'restless years' of the title.

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

On paper, The Restless Years should not have worked because the central idea of a group of teenagers and adults variously involved with a kids' refuge was not a particularly strong one. Nevertheless, the series did click with audiences and the program built up a loyal band of viewers who tuned in each evening to watch this tale of lost, confused teenagers and adults. Chief among the latter was the essentially castrating mother played by June Salter.

Mimicking the title of Lesley Stern's article (below), Moran sums up The Restless Years as 'this most Freudian of serials'.

'A diverting comedy caper that takes place on a resort called Sea Island. It concerns an officious manager who is constantly trying to seduce his voluptuous secretary, an assistant manager and his mates with devious schemes for making money, a beautiful blonde not above taking tips for her favours, a pompous politician and his wife and a sex-mad thief.'

Source:

[Television guide], Canberra Times, 13 January 1978, p.16.

Archie Andrews, ventriloquist's dummy, and his 'mentor', Peter Brough, had been behind BBC radio series Educating Archie since 1950. In 1957, they made a visit to Australia, including live performances at the Tivoli, and the ABC radio serial Archie in Australia.

British sources describe Archie in Australia as a single work, and it does appear to have been broadcast in the UK as a single radio play, broadcast first on the Light Programme on 18 September 1957 at 7:30pm (Radio Times, 13 September 1957, p.45) and then repeated, again on the Light Programme, on 22 September 1957, at 2:30pm (Radio Times, 20 September 1957, p.29). There is no indication in either The Times or the Radio Times that the program ever ran as a series in the UK.

Australian newspapers, on the other hand, clearly identify the program as a series. The Australian Women's Weekly, for example, describes the program as 'the A.B.C. series "Archie in Australia"', and the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

The A.B.C. so far plans to use ventriloquist Peter Brough and his doll, Archie, on radio only, beginning its "Archie in Australia sessions early in May. Harmonica-player Robert [Ronald] Chesney and script-writer Ronald Wolfe are accompanying the pair to Australia. They plan to use a cast of Australians in this series, which may be sent back to Britain for transmission over the B.B.C.

Radio listings show that Archie in Australia was broadcast at 7:15am every Tuesday morning between 28 May 1957 and 10 September 1957.

See:

'Just a Living Doll', Australian Women's Weekly, 5 June 1957, p.29.

'Television News', Sydney Morning Herald, 27 May 1957, p.5.