Cirrus@Austlit

A sequel to the 1983 mini-series All the Rivers Run, this series takes place in 1903. Brenton Edwards continues to pilot the riverboat Philadelphia around Echuca, one of the biggest inland ports in Australia at that time. After Edwards makes the acquaintance of Cyrus James, an expatriate American, the pair become partners in the riverboat business. Things don't go well for them, however. First the shipping and tourism industries in Echuca go into a downturn, and then Edwards is sent to jail for a crime he didn't commit. James rallies to keep their business afloat and Edwards's family together, as they all search for a way to prove Edwards is innocent.

During a tabloid television show Iya Zetnick exposes Joe Mueller as the Nazi war criminal who killed her family. Mueller is arrested and taken to trial but eventually declared innocent of the charge. Distraught, Iya breaks into his house and kills herself in front of his family. Although Mueller's daughter has stood by her father she becomes increasingly suspicious, and eventually begins to realise that the allegations might be true. When she confronts her father he admits his role in the murders and she rejects him.

'A story of forbidden love set in Singapore before, during and after World War II.'

Source: Screen Australia.

Family saga tracing fifty years of the Eastwick family, beginning when Richard Eastwick flees the industrial pressures of the late nineteenth-century English Midlands to pursue a life as a drover and land-owner in the Australian outback, only to face a succession of losses: the death of his first wife in childbirth, the death of his eldest son in World War I, the kidnapping of his daughter by her deranged maternal grandfather, the death of his second son in World War II, the accidental drowning of his third son and eldest grandson on the family property, his youngest grandson's (and son-in-law's) death as a prisoner of war in World War II, and the eventual destruction of his dynastic hopes when his only remaining grandchild becomes a nun and devotes herself to a life of celibacy and poverty.

Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, notes that

The Dirtwater Dynasty has been variously likened to a morality tale from the Bible, a western, an epic tragedy; an adventure story; and much else -- and certainly, as hybrid, The Dirtwater Dynasty is variously all or none of these things. In fact, The Dirtwater Dynasty, despite containing all kinds of richnesses in the shape of idea, characterisations, incidents and narrative subtexts, is finally much less than the sum of its parts. Indeed with The Cowra Breakout, it is finally the least interesting and rewarding of the Kennedy Miller mini-series.

A comedic adventure series that follows two men (Abel Moore and Charles Willing) living and working on a houseboat on Sydney Harbour, particularly their attempts to keep up payments on the boat. Also living on the house boat are aspiring actress Angela and the young, streetwise Parramatta.

Moran notes, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, that while the series reprised the ABC's The Fast Lane, it was nowhere near as successful a production:

there was little difference between the principal characters, both looking for the main chance. In addition the playing-off of Shane Withington and Grant Dodwell against each other (mildly tolerable in A Country Practice where the two had become fictional bachelors and odd-couple house companions after the departure from the series of their fictional wives) was decidedly threadbare.

Moran notes that this was the first series that Lynn Bayonas produced after leaving A Country Practice, and she had brought with her to the production not only the two main actors but also a number of writers.

After the theft of an opal necklace intended for the visiting Queen Elizabeth II goes badly wrong, the two remaining thieves hide the loot in the luggage of a young nurse on her way to a job in central Australia. After co-opting the Birdsville mail-truck and dragging three hostages along with them, the two thieves fall out: at the Diamantina River, Johnny kills his partner, but is himself trapped in the truck's cabin and drowned, while hostages Barbara and Dave survive.

Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, describes the program as 'a surprisingly touching, suspenseful mini-series', and suggests it 'had the drive, pace and nervous involvement of a good American feature film by a classic director such as Raoul Walsh or Nicholas Ray rather than the kind of meandering narratives so common in the Australian mini-series.'

A single woman in her thirties decides to have a child.

'Two Perth brothers penetrated one of Australia's most brilliant and ingenious con tricks by having the Perth mint deliver them gold bullion worth $650,000. The perfect crime...but for one fatal flaw.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 5/4/2013)

An attempt to re-invoke the popularity that police procedurals had enjoyed a decade earlier, Special Squad was the most expensive program produced in Australia up to 1985 (at $150,000 per episode), yet received such lukewarm ratings that Channel Ten chose not to commission a second series.

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

it was good to watch, with expert stunt work and special effects. With well-paced narratives, intelligently and nicely worked out situations and plenty of emphasis on the villains and victims, Special Squad was just as watchable and entertaining as Homicide had been in its last series.

According to Moran, the failure of Special Squad lay both in its difference from and its similarity to Homicide. The novelty (of Australian accents and Australian locations) that had helped make Homicide so successful was no longer in play, and 'the sight of tough men (on both sides of the law) made the program [Special Squad] seem very old-fashioned. In addition, the plethora of other Australian dramas on air at the time gave viewers more than enough alternatives.'

Dramatisation of the political events leading up to the dismissal of the Whitlam government on November 11th 1975.

Made a part of a series of three telemovies by the South Australian Film Corporation, The Sound of Love follows the falling in love of two people with physical disabilities: race-car driver Dave and street-girl Eileen.

'In the 1920s Mr Pym, his son and his pianist travel the backroads to bring the excitement and sophistication of the silver screen to small country towns. Pym is an old-fashioned showman who comes into conflict with an American rival trying to take over his territory.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 1/4/2014)

'A minor case of vandalism brings two lonely people together. Single parents Martin and Kay meet when their sons Joe and Stephen appear in the Children's Court on a delinquency charge. As their relationship deepens Martin tells Kay that he used to like being best in everything he did. But now, as a council worker in Sydney, living with his ageing mother, he has little ambition except for his greyhound which may win the money he needs to return to the country. Kay's marriage was a failure, breaking up shortly after her son was born.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 5/2/2014)

Much like its predecessors The Rovers and Barrier Reef, The Outsiders was predicated on the conceit that the central characters (Pete Jarrett and his grandfather Charlie Cole) were nomadic protagonists: travelling across Australia, they spent each episode in a new location with a new guest cast.

Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, says of the concept that 'They are in effect fictional tourists, a perfect foil for a series that starred a German and a British actor in the lead roles, carried overseas as well as local crew, and British and German investment.'

A co-production with a German production company, The Outsiders had two non-Australian actors in the lead roles: German actor Sascha Hehn as Pete and Scottish actor Andrew Keir as Charlie. Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, notes that Hehn's dialogue was over-dubbed by Andrew Harwood, because Hehn's English was deemed to be too heavily accented. Storey concludes that

In most episodes, The Outsiders has a storyline that is effective in its simplicity. There is plenty of action and stunt work, but it's the interplay between the characters and the understated atmosphere of the series which gives it depth. Technically, the series is excellent, with superb camera work, skilful writing, good direction and competent acting. The only minor criticism is the dubbed voices of the German actors.

A 'dramatised documentary' of the controversy behind the Fall of Singapore in World War II.

Dramatisation of the diaries of Percy Dean, secretary to Prime Minister Billy Hughes.