AustLit

'The day of Bianca's wedding has arrived, Vittorio waits nervously at the alter as his stunning bride walks down the aisle towards him. They say their vows but Bianca hesitates for a moment and then tells Vittorio that she can't marry him. In front of all her friends and family she rushes back down the aisle and into the arms of her true love, Liam Murphy. In shock, Vittorio tries to drag Bianca away from Liam, but Romeo steps in and lands a punch that knocks him out cold. Bianca and Liam ride off into the sunset on his Harley Davidson. In the meantime, John and Gina save the day. Not being one to waste a good opportunity, John is prompted by Gina into telling everyone that there will still be a wedding today between himself and the beautiful Gina Austin. Colleen is quick to offer her services as Matron of Honour and Xavier happily steps in as best man. All seems to be going well until Xavier sees April's tear streaked face. She is being taken back to Europe by Joanne and has no idea if she will ever return to Summer Bay. There are more tears from Nicole when she confesses to Marilyn that she is pregnant to Penn Graham! Detective Robertson really spoils the party when he arrives with Graves to arrest Alf for Penn's murder. The residents of Summer Bay watch as Alf is taken away in handcuffs!'

Source: Home and Away homepage, www.au.tv.yahoo.com/home-and-away/ (sighted 08/11/2011)

'Dean Gallagher, 34, and Chase, 26, are brothers. Competitive alpha males, they argue over everything, agree on nothing, but defend each other from outsiders no matter what. They’re members of Rescue Special Ops. Experienced paramedics in peak physical condition, they're skilled in abseiling, rock climbing, surf and sea rescue, 4WD driving and fire brigade procedures. They're the first to be called in for any natural or man-made disaster, salvage or rescue operation.'

Source: Screen Australia.

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.

'Staff in an emergency department of a large Australian hospital have become addicted to the adrenalin rush they experience while dealing with life and death emergencies.'

Source: Screen Australia.

'FALLEN ANGELS focuses on and around a community legal centre in Endeavour Park, a fictional suburb in the sprawling outer west of Sydney.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 25/6/2013)

Water Rats is an Australian police television series which was broadcast on the Nine Network between 1996 and 2001. The series was based around the men and women of the Sydney Water Police who fight crime across Sydney Harbour and surrounding locales. The show was set on and around Goat Island in Sydney Harbour.

An American/Australian co-production, this series was a revival of the original 1964 - 1967 series Flipper.

The show's production is sharply divided between seasons one and two on one side and seasons three and four on the other.

Seasons one and two aired in first-run syndication in the US, as American television networks turned away from funding comparatively expensive one-hour dramas in the late 1980s and 1990s. These two seasons were made in Australia and took advantage of local directors and other crew, but, notably, the script-writers were exclusively American (as far as they have been traced).

For seasons three and four, Flipper left first-run syndication and aired in the US on the new network PAX TV (now Ion Television). These two seasons were also made in Australia and directed by Australians, but for the first time, they also used Australian script-writers: of the writers who have been traced for seasons three and four, all of the season three writers and the majority of the season four writers are Australian.

For full information on the script-writers, see the list of episodes on the film details page of this record.

'Stamford and Carla attend the wedding of a longtime friend of Stamford's, Lee Cheng. When the wedding toast is drunk, chaos ensues when an entire table of guests is poisoned. Only four, including Stamford, survive. The six victims are a mixed bunch, from a major industrialist to a gossip columnist. How can you find the murderer when you don't even know who the target was? Stamford works his way through the false leads and learns much about the underside of the lives of the rich and famous before he uncovers the bizarre truth.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 27/6/2013)

'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 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.'

Children's adventure television series about children who live on fictional Circe Island, a fishing community and communications base off the coast of Western Australia. The first series featured episodes in which the children outwitted adults, particularly the character Hermes Endakis. The series later emphasised environmental issues, particularly in the second series, where the children try to stop a big corporation from destroying their island.

'Maryam Zahedi, an immigrant woman originally from the Middle East, loses her job at the hospital. She and her daughter Zozan are getting a rough time from people in the community, and when Tom comes by to see them, Maryam's daughter runs away in fear of him, or more accurately, his uniform. A farmer leaves his barking dog with Anna when his neighbours start complaining but it doesn't take long for the incessant noise to get to Harry either. The dog it turns out, can only be soothed by the music the farmer's recently deceased wife used to play. Maryam's application for residency is rejected. The new clinic receptionist is fired for smoking on the job.

'Hugo finds Zozan hiding out at at the lodge and takes her back to her mother. Bernice consults Harry, the resident golf expert, about putting in a golf course in at Rainbow Farm, while at the same time, Darcy is undertaking a plan to revegetate the land. Maryam receives notice that her husband has been executed. She is sent the bill for the bullet which provides the evidence she needs to claim refugee status. A party for Terence's 50th birthday is held at the club.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 21/6/2013)

'Drama series set in and around an Australian embassy in the fictional Islamic country of Ragaan, where day to day diplomacy is the stuff of danger and news headlines rather than privilege and cocktails.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 10/4/2014)

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

An Australian television series which deals with the New South Wales Police Rescue Squad and its work attending to various incidents from road accidents to train crashes.

G.P. is an Australian television series that ran for eight seasons. Set in and around a fictional general medical practice in an inner-city suburb, the storylines explore the professional and personal lives of the doctors and staff who worked there.

A period drama based on the character created by Henry Lawson, the narrative is set sometime around 1900. A couple attempt to make a go of their lives despite having to contend with many hardships.

Three sisters find their fortunes suddenly and dramatically changed. By agreement with their father, if the three manage living together and running a hotel in the Bondi region of Sydney for a year, the hotel will be theirs.

The series was not a success with reviewers or viewers, and the Canberra Times later described it as 'acclaimed almost universally as a disaster of epic proportions' (David Vine, 'Fact, Fantasy, and the TV Hype-artist', Canberra Times, 22 August 1988, p.6).

A made-for-television film, scripted by Louis Nowra. According to Veronica Kelly, it is 'a story of a mother's obsessive search for her son lost in the desert. This beautiful-looking film with its red expanses of landscape was screened in February 1988, and interestingly contains a brief theatrical travesty of Nowra's favourite image of perfect but impermanent love--Watteau's eighteenth-century pastoral canvas L'îsle de Cythère. The author as bit player can be glimpsed in the background of this scene'.

Source: Veronica Kelly, The Theatre of Louis Nowra. Sydney: Currency, 1998, p.30.