This bold and provocative four-part series asks the question – What is the idea of Australia and how might we learn from the past to make it stronger in the 21st century?
Social & External
The people behind it
Head of the family before his time, Odin Freeburn is being pulled in all directions. Can he let go of his past in time to save the future?
Fred Brophy is a fourth generation traveling showman and heads the last surviving tent boxing troupe in the world. To many, Fred is an outback hero. He is friend, counselor and savior to the rural unemployed and destitute. He invites drifters into his troupe and employs and mentors young people to keep them off drugs. He helps out communities and donates much of his income to local causes and charities. In 2010 Fred will embark on his final boxing tour of Queensland before retiring. An 80-year iconic Australian tradition will come to an end. But Fred wants to go out with a bang. He plans to make the last tour his best ever and an unforgettable experience for both his boxers and the audiences in the towns he visits.
The Chaser boys take on Australia's 2010 election.
Miriam Margolyes is back on the road, heading west along the bottom of Australia, to understand what the Fair Go means in Australia today and how it is playing out in the diverse lives of her fellow citizens.
The Games was an Australian mockumentary television series about the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. The series was originally broadcast on the ABC and had two seasons of 13 episodes each, the first in 1998 and the second in 2000. 'The Games' starred satirists John Clarke and Bryan Dawe along with Australian comedian Gina Riley and actor Nicholas Bell. It was written by John Clarke and Ross Stevenson. The series centred on the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and satirised corruption and cronyism in the Olympic movement, bureaucratic ineptness in the New South Wales public service, and unethical behaviour within politics and the media. An unusual feature of the show was that the characters shared the same name as the actors who played them, to enhance the illusion of a documentary on the Sydney Games.
The Howard Years was a documentary series about the prime ministership of John Howard produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It was divided into four one-hour episodes - one episode for each term Howard served as Prime Minister of Australia - and originally broadcast on ABC1 from 17 November to 8 December 2008.
An unconventional team of homicide detectives face various cases, as led by Tessa Vance and Steve Hayden. Hayden is an often light-hearted 'man's man' who is moving up the career hierarchy, while Vance is more introspective and no-nonsense, and often solves the murder with intuition and insight. Their team includes boss Inspector Malcolm Thorne, Constable Dee Suzeraine, forensic services expert Lance Fisk, and unorthodox doctor Imogen 'Tootsie' Soames.
The Young Doctors is an Australian early evening soap opera. The series was set in the fictional Albert Memorial hospital and primarily concerned with romances between younger members of the hospital staff, rather than typical medical issues and procedures. It screened on the Nine Network from Monday, 8 November 1976 until Wednesday, 30 March 1983.
Blue Water High is an Australian television drama series, broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on ABC1 and on Austar/Foxtel Nickelodeon channel in Australia and on various channels in many other countries. Each season follows the lives of a young group of students at Solar Blue, a high-performance surf academy where several lucky 16-year-olds are selected for a 12-month-long surfing program on Sydney's northern beaches. There are three series in Blue Water High. The first two series were screened in 2005 and 2006 and the producers did not intend to create a third series. However, due to popular demand by fans, they relented and made one more series with only Kate Bell returning in a main role. Series three ended with the closure of Solar Blue, indicating that the show would most likely not continue.
This landmark aerial series will focus on The Great Barrier Reef, the Outback, Western Australia, and Sydney and New South Wales. Beyond the breath-taking scenery and dramatic landscape, the series will also focus on human activity, whether it’s an indigenous dance ceremony, tourists swimming with whales or a camel road train across the desert.
From the Great War onwards, combining the stories of veterans and their families, with commentary from leading academics and experts. A thought-provoking exploration of one of the most important icons in Australian life.
Restraunteer Bill Granger travels around Australia to get back in touch with the country and it's changing ingredients.
The making of modern Australia through the eyes of competing media moguls Sir Frank Packer and a young Rupert Murdoch.
Bill Peach explains the stories of the great 18th and 19th century explorers of Australia, complete with full-cast re-enactments.
The ABC Of... an interview series, revisits the pasts of famous Australians delving deep to uncover hidden archival gems, exploring how they changed Australia and how Australia changed them.
The story of an English aristocrat, Lady Sarah Ashley, who inherits a large cattle ranch in Australia after her husband dies. When Australian cattle barons plot to take her land, she joins forces with a cattle drover to protect her ranch.
Diane, a young woman growing up in Australia in the mid 1960s, walks away from her fiancé to join a convent after being sure she has a calling to the faith. The Catholic Church and its followers are struggling with huge changes. The Pope has died, there is war in Vietnam and mandatory conscription, there is the Vatican controversy on abortion and contraception, and the changing face of the Church as a whole. Told in six parts, Diane faces her own demons and has to finally decide if she can teach what the Church preaches, or if it's simply impossible for her to reconcile all the contradictions of the faith and uphold her vow of obedience.
Railway adventures across Australia follows the exploits of Scott McGregor on his quest to find the famous, unusual and unique trains and stories at the end of the line.
Underbelly is an Australian television true crime-drama series, each series is a stand alone story based on real-life events.
Beneath the placid facade of Canberra, amidst rising tension between China and America, senior political journalist Harriet Dunkley uncovers a secret city of interlocked conspiracies, putting innocent lives in danger including her own.
Rebellious Brooklyn teen Summer Torres is sent to live with family friends in the tiny town of Shorehaven on the Great Ocean Road, Victoria, AUS. Despite her best efforts, Summer falls in love with the town, the people and the surf.
An epic romantic adventure series based on the life of famous American outlaw Billy the Kid — from his humble Irish roots, to his early days as a cowboy and gunslinger in the American frontier, to his pivotal role in the Lincoln County War and beyond.
Jessica Day is an offbeat and adorable girl in her late 20s who, after a bad breakup, moves in with three single guys. Goofy, positive, vulnerable and honest to a fault, Jess has faith in people, even when she shouldn't. Although she's dorky and awkward, she's comfortable in her own skin. More prone to friendships with women, she's not used to hanging with the boys—especially at home.
I gathered 1,000 people to fight for $5,000,000, the LARGEST cash prize in TV history! We're also giving away a private island, Lamborghinis, and millions more in cash throughout the competition! Go watch to see the greatest show ever made!
A local Indigenous politician is recruited to the senate by the Australian Prime Minister after a contentious video goes viral.
The pirate adventures of Captain Flint and his men twenty years prior to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic “Treasure Island.” Flint, the most brilliant and most feared pirate captain of his day, takes on a fast-talking young addition to his crew who goes by the name John Silver. Threatened with extinction on all sides, they fight for the survival of New Providence Island, the most notorious criminal haven of its day – a debauched paradise teeming with pirates, prostitutes, thieves and fortune seekers, a place defined by both its enlightened ideals and its stunning brutality.
Inspired by the award-winning documentary, this medical drama is set in the busiest and most notorious ER in the nation where the extraordinary staff confront a challenged system in order to protect their ideals and the patients who need them the most.
When thirty-year-old Miki Anderson returns to her home town in rural Victoria after fifteen years in prison, she wants nothing more than to put her life back together. To figure out who she is on the outside. But her presence dredges up long-held secrets from the past and Miki realizes everything she thought she knew was wrong. And it is far from over.
The journey of a book smart teen whose life is forever transformed when he moves from the streets of west Philadelphia to live with his relatives in one of LA’s wealthiest suburbs.
A young boy growing up in the suburbs of 1980s Brisbane faces the harsh realities of life — and the looming dangers that threaten his family.
From Nobel Laureate William Golding's (Lord of the Flies) epic sea-voyage trilogy comes the story of an ambitious British aristocrat, humbled by the lives of his fellow passengers, as he embarks on an ocean voyage for Australia where he is to be an official in the colonial government.
Life, death and drama at 20,000 feet. The series weaves together intense character journeys and high-stakes medical rescues, as we follow the triumphs, heartbreaks and tribulations of budding nurses and pilots flying air ambulances in remote Northern Canada. They’re all in over their heads, and on their own, with no one to rely on but each other.
Lifelong best friends Alexa and Katie are eagerly anticipating the start of their freshman year of high school. The pals confront a crisis that leaves them feeling like outsiders at a time when what seems to matter most is fitting in.
Follow the lives of a group of young adults living in a brownstone apartment complex on Melrose Place, in Los Angeles, California.
Frustrated at a new moderate Conservative government and deprived of a promotion to a senior position, chief whip Francis Urquhart prepares a meticulous plot to bring down the Prime Minister then to take his place.
Christina Hawthorne is a compassionate and headstrong Chief Nursing Officer heading up a group of dedicated nurses at Richmond Trinity Hospital on the hospital's front lines. She does everything in her power to help her patients. When necessary, she takes on doctors and administrators who are overworked, distracted or just unable to see the human being behind the hospital chart. But the long days at the hospital and Hawthorne’s intense focus on helping others take a toll on her personal life.
Three "good girl" suburban wives and mothers suddenly find themselves in desperate circumstances and decide to stop playing it safe and risk everything to take their power back.
An exuberant drama set in Melbourne's Fitzroy, centering on Nina Proudman and her struggle to deal with her fabulously messy family, her hunt for a decent love life and her tendency to overthink and fly off into fantasy.