AustLit

The life of an Indigenous part-time country pub singer undergoes a radical change after she meets a wealthy Sydney hotelier.

'The series looks at the lives of four best friends bound together by their shared experience of being 'the losers' in high school. Now ten years later the women are about to become winners, but at what cost?'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 2/12/2013)

'Bed of Roses is about Louisa Atherton (Kerry Armstrong) handling her life after she discovers her husband has died in the arms of another woman, leaving her broke. She returns to her home town of Rainbow's End to live with her feisty mother, Minna (Julia Blake). Rainbow's End is in a 'growth corridor' with neighbouring town of Indigo. Besides problems with Minna, Louisa encounters trouble with her teenage daughter Holly (Hanna Mangan-Lawrence) and local residents. Louisa has few financial assets except "Mary Kelly's Shack" she inherited from her father. Louisa decides to demolish the shack and build a new house to sell. Holly has taken the death of her father very hard and insists on carrying around his ashes. Louisa's irresponsible driving results in numerous traffic offences, which she can ill afford.' (Production summary)

'Set in the homicide squad of a large metropolitan city, this is a punchy one hour drama series about murder mystery and a group of young committed cops, focused on justice for the deceased. Jennifer Mapplethorpe, ambitious and intelligent; Simon Joyner, keen, cool, self-assured; Duncan Freeman, living high, ready to fall; and Matt Ryan, intense and driven. In Homicide, it's not always crooks and low-lives, most murders are committed by ordinary people - a moment of madness, a failure of communication, a desperate act. These Detectives follow a profession that makes blood, grief and drama just part of their normal day. Their day begins when your day ends.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive.

Mortified follows the trevails of eleven-year-old Taylor Fry, as she copes with the general embarrassment of having parents, as well as being annoyed by her sister, jealous of her neighbour, and completely oblivious to her best friend's crush on her. The program inserts some fantasy elements into the otherwise straight comedy-drama by having Taylor speak directly to the camera, using elaborate fantasy sequences to explore her daydreams, and showing her over-active imagination as bringing seemingly inanimate objects to life.

Mortified was the last major work of television producer and screenwriter Angela Webber before her early death in 2007.

Silversun follows the journey of the titular spacecraft, two years into a ninety-year journey to a distant, Earth-like planet, intended for colonisation. The colonists are in cryogenic status, and the ship's crew is largely teenagers, who will take over the primary roles as the adult crew ages.

The program's focus was a combination of the coming-of-age/interpersonal relationship storylines typical of a teenage show and the type of ethical dilemmas common to science-fiction story-telling. Among the latter were such issues as whether or not a crew member's clone was human, and what effect long-distance interstellar travel would have on the human mind and emotions.

Season two of the program ended on a cliffhanger, and no plans have been made to revive the program.

'An overgrown boy from a spoiled generation, becomes a man through fraternising with an older, wiser — and very daggy — generation.'

Source: Australian Screen.

'Could it be that Jane Halifax has finally got it wrong? It would seem so when she is asked to deliver a pre-sentencing report on a stalker who has been harassing a woman in her early 30s.'

Source: Screen Australia

'Jane Halifax is called in to analyse death threats made against Simon Laser, a well known gossip columnist for a weekly magazine after his gay lover is found murdered.'

Source: Screen Australia

'Harry Bowman, the old Dogman has gone missing. Margaret O'Halloran, the legendary Dogwoman returns to her old home town of Jindarup to find out what's happened to her friend and mentor.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 13/6/2013)

'Inspired by true events, Stingers reveals the shadowy and ambiguous world of undercover cops — people with covert lives and constantly changing identities. They are police who defeat crime from within the criminal world — always without a badge and frequently without protection. The series follows the lives of the operatives as they befriend and betray those on the other side of the law. For these select few, it is a deadly way of life.The undercover cops of Stingers are a unique breed. They must juggle their own lives — love, laughter, family and humanity — with the tension of the criminal personas they adopt in their passion for justice.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 7/6/2013)

'Jane Halifax is called out of semi-retirement to advise in the murder trial of a former patient who is accused of burning his parents to death. Realising the accused may not be guilty, Jane begins to suspect his brother, who seems to be living a bizarre double life.'

Source: Screen Australia

'A fast-paced television drama set within the fascinating environment of a State Coroner's office complex. Each day a team of highly trained professionals deal with the questions of deaths, murders, accidents, suicides, fires, drownings and even the odd natural cause. We see their battles with grieving families, slow or meddling authorities and organized crime, from the initial inquiry through to the courtroom appearances and the Coroner's final verdict and recommendations for trial or reform.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive (http://www.australiantelevision.net/statecoroner/statecoroner.html). (Sighted: 8/3/2013)

An edgy and off-beat crime series that relies heavily on humour, contemporary music, and a touch of the bizarre, centring on the character of Elvis Maginnis. An ex-cop from the wrong side of the tracks, Maginnis now runs his own dry-cleaning business but still finds himself drawn into the shady side of life.

'After the death of her child, a mother is arrested for the murder. Jane Halifax, forensic psychiatrist, suspects post-natal depression. But as the mother's story unravels Jane doubts that she is guilty. But who is the mother protecting, her child or her lover?'

Source: Screen Australia

'Jane Halifax, forensic psychiatrist, tries to help a fellow psychiatrist prove his innocence when he is suspected of murdering one of his patients with whom he had been having an affair.'

Source: Screen Australia

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.'

A television series ostensibly based on Arthur Upfield's series of detective novels, and stemming from a telemovie aired two years earlier.

After protests from Indigenous groups about the casting of a white actor as a descendant of Detective Napoleon Bonaparte, the production was altered to make the character a white man who had once lived with Indigenous Australians. As such, it bears little real connection to Upfield's novels.

The series was not a success, and was cancelled after the first thirteen episodes.