AustLit

'The series is based on a national park ranger, her two children, their friends and how they form the Bush Patrol to help protect the park and its native inhabitants. There's plenty of adventure and fun featuring Australia's unique flora and fauna and modern family relationships.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 3/12/2013)

When fourteen-year-old Jo Tiegan is given an antique mirror by a mysterious antique-shop owner in 1995, she finds she can travel through the mirror's surface into her bedroom as it was in 1919. She and the house's previous occupant, Louise Iredale, become firm friends, but find themselves caught up in two interlocking mysteries: the presence of a container of toxic chemicals in Louise's neighbour's well (which seriously injures two of Jo's classmates during an archaeological excavation in 1995) and the entrapment of Nicholas Romanov (the Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich) by Louise's neighbour, who has smuggled him out of Russia in the hopes of selling him to the highest bidder.

Mirror, Mirror was a co-production between Australian-based Millennium Pictures (founded five years earlier by show creator Posie- Graeme-Evans) and New Zealand-based Gibson Group.

The program was successful and highly awarded, and was followed two years later by a loose sequel, which shares nothing with the original series but the basic premise of time travel through a mirror.

A 'second-generation' Skippy, with Ranger Hammond's younger son Sonny grown up and running an animal-based theme park, Habitat, on Australia's Gold Coast, in company with his ten-year-old twins, Jerry and Lou. The theme park is adjacent to a national park, bringing in Ranger Dave as a character, along with Sonny Hammond's housekeeper Thelma and assistant Kate.

'The story of Errol Flynn's early years, depicting his childhood in Tasmania and his wild teenage years in New Guinea. Before he was 21, he stood trial for murder. He was a thief, a liar, a gigolo, a gambler, a sailor, a streetfighter, a soldier of fortune. He was Errol Flynn.'

Source: Screen Australia.

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.

The Miraculous Mellops centred on the curious adventures of the Mellop children who, after the death of their mother, live at the Lazy Daisy Nursery with their father and aunt, but manage to get caught up in events of intergalactic significance. Series one centred on the search for the new Grand Baby, leader of the Moon, after the former Grand Baby's powers were accidentally fractured into ordinary objects in the Mellops' home. Series two concerned the intergalactic threat offered by the Grubs, who turn anything into their path into toffee before devouring it.

When Jools Trevaller's parents announce that the city is becoming too dangerous and that they're moving to a rundown former staging inn in the small town of Waterloo Creek, Jools is furious. But the house is already occupied by the ghost of a girl called Elly Lockett, who died mysteriously in the nineteenth century. Only Jools can see Elly, and they form a strong friendship as they seek to understand exactly how and why Elly died and where her body lies. Neither realises that once the mystery is solved, they'll be parted forever.

Home and Away is a television serial created by Alan Bateman and produced by the Seven Network. The idea for the series came to Bateman (then head of drama at Seven) after he stopped to buy ice-creams in a small country town in southern NSW. While chatting to some locals, he learned that the town was unhappy about plans to build a home for foster kids from the city. At that time, Channel Seven was still smarting from its decision to let Neighbours go to the Ten Network, where it had become hugely popular, and was looking to create another series to rival its success. Bateman saw in the idea that became Home and Away the potential for plenty of storylines and conflict by having streetwise city kids being relocated to a small regional environment,

In the beginning, the series focused on Pippa and Tom Fletcher, who, being unable to have children of their own, decide to become foster parents. When Tom is retrenched from his city job, the couple buy the rundown Summer Bay Caravan Park and move there with their five foster children. Soon after arriving, they also take in troublesome Bobby Simpson.

The series debuted in January 1988 with an hour-long telemovie. Although this rated well, the series itself took some while to develop an audience. Having learned their lesson from the Neighbours debacle, Network Seven gave its new show time, and its ratings gradually increased. As with Neighbours, the Home and Away series and performers became very popular in the United Kingdom.

Set in a small, fictional, New South Wales country town called Wandin Valley, A Country Practice focused on the staffs of the town's medical practice and local hospital and on the families of the doctors, nurses, and patients. Many of the episodes also featured guest characters (frequently patients served by the practice) through whom various social and medical problems were explored. Although often considered a soap opera, the series was not built around an open-ended narrative; instead, the two one-hour episodes screened per week formed a self-contained narrative block, though many of the storylines were developed as sub-plots for several episodes before becoming the focus of a particular week's storyline. While the focus was on topical issues such as youth unemployment, suicide, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, and terminal illness, the program did sometimes explore culturally sensitive issues, including, for example, the Aboriginal community and their place in modern Australian society.

Among the show's principal characters were Dr Terence Elliott, local policeman Sergeant Frank Gilroy, Esme Watson, Shirley Dean Gilroy, Bob Hatfield, Vernon 'Cookie' Locke, and Matron Margaret 'Maggie' Sloan. In addition to its regularly rotating cast of characters, A Country Practice also had a cast of semi-regulars who would make appearances as the storylines permitted. Interestingly, while the series initially targeted the adult and older youth demographic, it became increasingly popular with children over the years.

Sons and Daughters explores the dramatic incidents in the lives of the wealthy Hamilton family and the working-class Palmer family. The premise that underpinned the show's early years concerned the character John Palmer, on the run from the Melbourne police, who suspect him of murder. He travels to Sydney and falls in love with the wealthy Angela Hamilton, but they are later revealed to be twins who were separated at birth and raised separately: John raised by the wise former prostitute Fiona Thompson before returning to live with his father and Angela raised by her mother, who subsequently married into money. More wealth later arrives through the introduction of the Morrell clan, who have managed to marry their way into the Hamilton family.