AustLit

'They came from worlds apart to live together to find love on Wog Street. Miki Mavros, a 26-year-old Greek, alternative arty type, is on a serious losing streak and has to retreat back home to Wog Street. There she meets Doctor Joe, a 25 year old Maori with a straight girlfriend and a yuppie dream. Miki and Joe are living proof that opposites attract. Will Miki answer the call of the road or will she be able to commit to the love she gradually discovers in the old neighbourhood?'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 11/10/2012)

Trapped in a dangerous underground (both literally and metaphorically) game, the players must find a way to protect themselves not only from one another but also from the game's dangerous, remote-controlled, robot players.

When Rodney and Jessica witness two aliens crash landing on Earth, they undertake to protect them by roping them into joining the world's most unsuccessful children's television program, Kid's Breakfast (nicknamed Pig's Breakfast). Disguised as characters on the program, Grob and Meeba (and their pilot Queegle) are forbidden to reveal their real identities: the media believe them to be eccentric actors who prefer to stay in character (and costume). But the situation is complicated by the fact that the crashed spaceship was a school bus, and Grob and Meeba, although genuine aliens, are also genuine teenagers.

The president of Catalyst software company hires five high-school whiz-kids to help save her failing business.

The program's interest in artifical intelligence, the Internet, and the video-game industry was comparatively unusual for the time. As with other Australian Children's Television Foundation programs, the focus was on the child protagonists, all Melbourne high-school students with a keen interest in video gaming, who are recruited as games testers by Alexandra Davis, president of Catalyst, in the hopes that they will be able to revitalise her failing business.

Produced in association with the Disney Channel, Crash Zone was successful in Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as Australia.

Thrown out of a gold Cadillac in a guitar case one night (strongly suggesting that he is the illegitimate child of Elvis Presley, as well as casting Presley in a rather unfortunate light), Li'l Elvis is raised by Grace and Len, fervent Elvis fans who run an outback diner in the small town of Wannapoo. The problems arise when the world's 'nicest billionaire' W.C. Moore decides to turn Wannapoo into a 1950s' theme town called Li'l Memphis. Every day, L'il Elvis and his Truckstoppers play sets that knock the audience dead, but L'il Elvis secretly wishes he could be a normal kid. But if they stop playing, the tourists stop coming, and Moore calls in everyone's outstanding loans ...

A young English girl, Penelope Townes, finds an opal pendant in her attic and, in playing with it, releases two Australian genies (father Bruce and son Baz). When Penelope inherits a property in Australia, the genies are delighted to be able to return home. But they are still under Penelope's control and subject to her whims–a situation complicated by Penelope's neighbour, Otto von Meister, insisting that the opal is really his by rights and by Bruce falling in love with Penelope's mother, Lady Diana.

'Life in the suburbs as seen through the eyes of the family dog.'

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.'

'After a shoot-out goes wrong, rule-bending Sydney undercover cop Tony Burke (Jerome Elders) is banished to the outback town of Yabbabri to tidy up a controversial investigation into the death in police custody of an aboriginal [sic] man. The boys at the local cop shop are confident there’s nothing to see. Local Indigenous community elders long ago stopped expecting them to do anything. Yet Bourke might be a rule-bender, but a not a rule-breaker; he senses a cover-up, and his loyalties shift from the force and fellow officers to the dead boy’s family. Esben Storm’s entry in the 1980s cycle of Australian neo-noir thrillers effectively borrowed elements of the crime writings of Arthur Upfield and Peter Corris, and from Australian cinema’s outback Gothic tradition, via smart illusions to Wake in Fright and especially via Frank Gallacher’s chilling performance as Sergeant Thornton. However it’s most timely point of reference was to the national community outrage swirling around the 1987-91 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.'

Source: NFSA Calendar (http://www.nfsa.gov.au/calendar/event/3786-deadly/). (Sighted: 11/10/2012)

Tony Twist and his three children (thirteen-year-old twins Pete and Linda and nine-year-old Bronson) move to an old lighthouse on the rugged Australian coast. They soon discover that the lighthouse and the outhouse are haunted.

'Prince Wilton from the Enchanted Realm of the Faeries has been sent to Earth to dispose of seven wishes in the human world before sundown. If Prince Wilton doesn't give away these wishes, the Faeries will lose their powers. Fortunately he meets Christopher Walter Pratt (C.W.) who believes in him and his wishes. C.W doesn't realise, however, that the last wish lasts forever.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive (http://www.australiantelevision.net/more_winners.html). Sighted: 10/11/2011

Twelve-year-old Ben Guthrie appears to have a good life. His family are well off and his father is a successful and ambitious butcher. However, there are some things that Ben doesn't understand. His father attempts to explain the facts of life, but Ben is more interested in the bigger life picture, such as why some people are starving. When both his parents fail to provide answers, Ben begins an inspired crusade to make the world right. He becomes a neighbourhood nuisance and an embarrassment to his family, constantly and publicly challenging their values. His parents seek the help of friends and experts, to no avail. When Ben meets Esme, an elderly animal liberationist, and they end up in the hands of the police, his parents resort to faking family illnesses to distract Ben from the larger troubles of the world. But it is not until his work-obsessed father suffers a genuine heart attack that Ben is able to focus his energies on a problem he can do something about: helping his family.

(Source: Australian Screen)

The cossetted son of a rich businessman, fearing that his family plan to commit him to a psychiatric institution (again), runs away from hom in search of a 'normal' family and the attempt to live a middle-class life.