ABC TV

Sugar and Spice

In 1920s Australia, Pixie Robinson and Molly Wilson, two eleven-year-old girls from the bush, are sent to live with Pixie's grandmother to attend the same private high-school in the city.

TUGS

TUGS is a British children's television series first broadcast in 1988. It was created by the producers of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, Robert D. Cardona and David Mitton. The series dealt with the adventures of two anthropomorphized tugboat fleets, the Star Fleet and the Z-Stacks, who compete against each other in the fictional Bigg City Port. The series was set in the Roaring Twenties, and was produced by TUGS Ltd., for TVS and Clearwater Features Ltd. Music was composed by Junior Campbell and Mike O'Donnell, who also wrote the music for Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. Due to the bankruptcy of production company TVS, the series did not continue production past 13 episodes. Following the initial airing of the series throughout 1988, television rights were sold to an unknown party, while all models and sets from the series sold to Britt Allcroft. Modified set props and tugboat models were used in Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends from 1991 onwards.

G.P.

G.P. is an Australian television series produced by Roadshow, Coote & Carroll for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, with the series being made between 1989 and 1996.

Nature of Australia: A Portrait of the Island Continent

The series explores the diversity of Australia's landscapes, from the seas to the arid interior; the effects of the extremes of flood, drought and bushfire; and examines the impact of 200 years of European settlement on the land, its plants and animals.

Act of Betrayal

An IRA informer and his family are given new identities and new lives in Australia but the IRA are still determined to track them down.

Bush Tucker Man

Major Les Hiddins of the Australian Army was born in Queensland and was always interested in Aboriginal customs and practices and how those practices helped a people survive in a hostile environment for thousands of years. When he joined the Army he developed this interest into a skill and put it to good use. Learning how to survive in the Australian bush and then to teach others the same skills. He wrote various survival manuals for the Australian Armed forces and added survival notes to the back of maps used by pilots flying over the Australian bush. In this series of programmes Les shares that knowledge with us, teaching us some of his survival skills and his great respect for the Aboriginal people that taught him.

The True Believers

The True Believers is a 1988 Australian mini series which looks at the history of the Australian Labor Party from the end of World War Two up to the Australian Labor Party split of 1955. It was co-written by Bob Ellis who focused on three characters "Chifley, the unlettered man of great dignity; Menzies, who used to stand for something but eventually stood only for Menzies; and Evatt, the grand idealist... It's almost like Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1. It's a chunk of national history during Australia's great era of change after the war."

Stringer

War correspondent Frank Buchanan returns to Sydney expecting an easy life; instead he is caught up with Yannis Moustakas, a young Greek taxi driver, would-be rock 'n' roll star, would-be in anything if there's a buck in it.

The Alien Years

The Alien Years is a three-part miniseries that first aired on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on 19 April 1988. It was directed by Donald Crombie and written by Peter Yeldham. It stars Victoria Longley, John Hargreaves and Academy Award-winner, Christoph Waltz. Yeldham later adapted his screenplay into a novel of the same name.

Captain James Cook

Based on Captain James Cook's three voyages. It was on his first voyage, in 1770 (while in the South Pacific region to observe the transit of Venus), that Captain Cook discovered the east coast of Australia. He later recommended Australia as a future British colony. The series was financed by $5 million from Revcom France, $2.25 million from the ABC and the rest from 10BA tax money.

Touch the Sun

Touch the Sun was a television series commissioned by the Australian Children's Television Foundation in 1988 as part of the Australian Bicentenary celebrations. It may have been intended that seven feature-length episodes were produced, one for each State, plus the Northern Territory, but only six were completed. Executive producer was Patricia Edgar in association with the ABC and production company Revcom.

Alterations

Drama series dealing with adultery between middle-class Australians in Canberra.

Rage

Rage is a popular all-night Australian music video program broadcast on ABC1 on Friday nights, Saturday mornings and Saturday nights. It was first screened on the weekend of Friday, 17 April 1987. With Soul Train and Video Hits no longer being produced, it is the oldest music television program currently still in production as of 9 November 2012. Rage starts anywhere between 11pm and 1am, the program is classified 'M' or 'MA 15+' through until 6am Saturdays and finishes at 11 am on Saturdays and at 6:30 am on Sundays. Rage is also broadcast on the international satellite channel Australia Network on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Tall Poppies

The D-Generation

The D-Generation was a popular and influential Australian TV sketch comedy show, produced and broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for two series, between 1986 and 1987. A further four specials were broadcast on the Seven Network between 1988 and 1989.

The Telebugs

The Telebugs is a cartoon from the 1980s about the adventures of three robots with televisions for heads.

Beyond Tomorrow

Beyond Tomorrow is an Australian television series produced by Beyond Television Productions. It began airing in 1981 as Towards 2000, then in 1985 was renamed Beyond 2000, a name the show kept until its cancellation in 1999. It then started airing again in 2005 with the name Beyond Tomorrow.

Flug in die Hölle

The true account of two young German aviators, Captain Hans Bertram and Adolph Klausmann, who had to survive six weeks in the Kimberley region in Autralia after they were blown off course on a reckless flight from Koepang in the Dutch East Indies across the Timor Sea to Darwin in 1932.

The Gillies Report

The Gillies Report was an Australian satirical television series that was broadcast on the ABC between 1984 and 1985. The program was notorious for sending up politicians and media personalities of the day such as Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Opposition Leader Andrew Peacock. The show starred Max Gillies, John Clarke, Wendy Harmer, Phillip Scott, Tracy Harvey, Patrick Cook, Marcus Eyre, Geoff Kelso and Peter Moon. The Gillies Report was followed by sequels The Gillies Republic and Gillies and Company. Cook, Scott and Kelso would go on to make a similar program for the ABC called The Dingo Principle.

Sweet and Sour

Sweet and Sour was an Australian television series that screened on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1984. It was created by Tim Gooding and Johanna Pigott and was produced internally for the ABC by Jan Chapman. The main storyline of the series followed the efforts of a fictional band, The Takeaways, to break into the Sydney music scene. "The Takeaways have so far eluded commercial success. However, negotiations are presently underway for the band to sell their story to a prominent TV station, and really clean up."