AustLit

'The Time of Our Lives follows the lives of the Tivolli clan, a typical extended Australian family, set in a moody inner city Melbourne.

'In their thirties and forties, contemporary life is filled with kids, career advancement, home ownership and the variations of love: settling in with the one you love; still trying to find the one you love; getting away from the one you used to love.' (Source: ABC TV website)

'Delving into the extraordinary world of the Office of the Department of Public Prosecution and its young eager lawyers, who know the law backwards, but who have a lot to learn about life, Crownies, is a 22 x 1 hour drama, produced by Screentime Australia for ABC TV.

Crownies follows five young solicitors, fresh out of law school, as they face the pressures and endearing madness of modern single life - in a fast-paced workplace that highlights the moral dilemmas and big issues facing an apparently civilised society.

In a world that exists solely to see 'wrong-doers' brought to justice, and where the average age of the solicitors is 27, there is a big divide between these young solicitors and the barristers at the top. Yet they are the initial point of contact with the police, and it is they who do most of the liaising with the victims and the witnesses - and recommend what goes to court. They are hungry, committed, idealistic and hard-working, but their lives away from the office are riddled with aspirations, explorations, fragile relationships and partying.'

Source: ABC website

A thirteen-part television series about the exploits of Northern Territory policeman Detective Dusty Buchanon.

The series began pre-production in 2009 and was set to be broadcast on SBS Television in late 2010.

It was cancelled in September 2011 due to lack of funds.

Source: David Knox, 'Cash-Strapped SBS Cancels Upcoming Drama series', TV Tonight blog, www.tvtonight.com.au. (Sighted 15/11/2011)

Based on the novel The Sheep-Pig by British writer Dick King-Smith, Babe follows the adventures of a plucky piglet who is separated from his mother, brought to Farmer Hoggett's farm, and adopted by Fly, a kindly sheep-dog. His desire to emulate her and her mate, Rex, leads to farmer Hoggett training him as a 'sheep-pig' and entering him in the local sheep-dog trails, despite the derision of the other farmers.

'Police State is the story of the development of corruption in the Queensland police force and body politic as revealed during the Royal Commission conducted by Tony Fitzgerald, QC in 1987/88. Police State opens with the dramatic early days of the Commission hearings and the evidence of Assistant Commissioner Graeme Parker. Parker was the first senior officer to admit his corruption and seek an indemnity from prosecution. His evidence exposed the testimony of earlier witnesses and implicated those at "the top and higher".'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive (http://www.australiantelevision.net/telemovies/1989.html). (Sighted: 3/5/2013)

A fictionalised account of the crash of a light plane in the dense foliage of the Great Dividing Range in 1937, and the location of the crash and rescue of the survivors by a local bushman.

Historical mini-series following a single family through eight years of Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War: Douglas Goddard, a senior public servant working in Canberra; his dillusioned wife Evelyn; his son Phil, who is first conscripted to Vietnam and then returns as a regular soldier; and his daughter Megan, whose love for the son of a migrant worker leads her to Sydney and the anti-Vietnam movement.

Moran argues, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, that 'Vietnam has a wonderful complexity, majesty and sweep in its treatment of the years 1964-72'. While praising the compexity and elegiac nature of the program's treatment of inter-personal relationships, he adds,

The sweep of Vietnam is equally impressive -- the ability to narratively marshall a long series of events into a chain that connects history and the personal, a chain that begins in 1964 behind closed doors but increasingly could not be contained there, bursting out into the public arena of the media, the streets, the judges and finally the ballot box. And equally, Vietnam is a majestic document that fills an important space in the Laborist view of Australian politics created by the mini-series in the 1980s.

The mini series enjoyed enormous popularity when it was screened on Australian television.

Mini-series dramatising the breakout of Japanese prisoners of war from a camp in the New South Wales town of Cowra, which led to the deaths of 231 Japanese prisoners. Moran notes, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, that it 'became a Bridge on the River Kwai in reverse, with the strategy of the mini-series being to stress heroism, as well as stupidity and cowardice, both on the Japanese and the Australian side.'

Moran notes that this mini-series employed the same approach as previous Kennedy Miller productions (including 'intensive workshops for actors, directors and parts of the crew'), but was 'the least dramatically successful of the Kennedy Miller series'. Nevertheless, it was sold to both Great Britain and Japan.

A made-for-television film, in which a film maker returns to Australia, but struggles to readjust to her old life.

Source: Memorable TV (http://www.memorabletv.com/australia/tvac.htm). Sighted: 24/11/2011)