Cirrus@Austlit

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.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, c/o The Bartons was based on a sixteen-minute student film written and directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse while she was studying at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.

Says Moran, 'Entitled The Siege of the Bartons' Bathroom, the film was in effect a kind of pilot for the series and became the basis of the first episode'. Moorhouse also contributed nearly half the scripts for the series. To quote Moran, 'The various episodes both comic and serious dealt with their family life and that of their community'.

'An action adventure story in which a storm isolates a group of children from their families and devastates the small town of Hills End. The children are forced to face adversity and hardship and confront the problem of survival.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 16/4/2014)

Another of the ABC's now-obscure anthology programs, Premiere ran to only four short episodes. The program combined experienced script-writers with directors who had never worked on television before: at least two of the directors (Mary Lancaster and Peter Fisk) went on to work more extensively in television.

According to Moran in this Guide to Australian TV Series, the four episodes were 'Partners', 'Friends of the Family', 'Mr Elvey's Friday Nights', and 'And the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth'. Of these, only the latter is speculative fiction: it covers, according to Moran, 'the future faced by a wealthy industrialist who is cryogenically brought back to life after his death'.

'ABC-produced serial about the adventures of three youngsters managing their own household. The Parkes children are to stay with relatives while their mother is overseas, but Sam, Janny and Daniel have other ideas.'

Source:

[Television guide], Canberra Times, 7 July 1980, p.17.

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

'Laurie needs the peace and leisure of life in the country - but she finds only terror.'

Source: Radio Times, 12 November 1970, p.43.

A faithful adaptation of Hal Porter's The Tower. 

Synopsis of the original play:

"The Tower takes place in 1850s Hobart, in the mansion of wealthy Sir Rodney de Havilland. Members of Sir Rodney’s household include his spinster sister Hester, his wheelchair-bound step-daughter Amy, his new 19 year-old-wife Selina, and creepy 14 year old son Edwin. Amy falls off the new tower being built on top of the house and signs point to it not being an accident. Was it suicide? Was she pushed? There are lots of twists and memorable characters (including a hunky ex-convict and dodgy maid), and the house is a wonderfully creepy setting in the style of Thornfield Hall or Manderley."

Source

A country doctor at the end of the nineteenth century enters a closed community (The Community), whose members are forbidden contact with the outside world, to treat a dying girl and finds himself in conflict with their elder.