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Stars to Sweat once more on ABC3

ABC3 is set to replay 1996 drama Sweat with young stars including Health Ledger, Martin Henderson and Simon Baker.

sweatHere’s a blast from the past –Sweat is about to get a rerun on ABC3.

The 1996 teen drama set at the fictional Sports West Academy (SWA) was a launching pad for the careers of some now famous Australian actors including Health Ledger, who plays a gay cyclist Snowy Bowles, Martin Henderson (Tom Nash) and Simon Baker (Paul Stedman).

The gruelling routine, the temptations, the intense competition, the frantic action and the euphoria of a personal best provide an exciting and dynamic visual backdrop. The everyday relationships, disappointments, families, school and rivalries of these talented young athletes are in sharp contrast to the tremendous pressures and unique demands of the international sporting world.

Episode one: Saturday Jan 30 at 11.45am on ABC3 Tom (Martin Henderson), the swimmer who never loses, has to come to terms with the fact that over-confidence lost him the race. He learns his lesson, but it damages his relationship with his girlfriend Tats (Inge Hornstra).

Episode two: Saturday Jan 30 at 12.15pm on ABC3 Tom (Martin Henderson) challenges new boy Noodle (Tai Nguyen) to a race. He wins and his honour is restored. What he doesn’t realise is that Noodle deliberately threw the race, knowing that Tom needed to win more than he did.

21 Responses

  1. Charlie:
    You do realize that it still costs money, to license older series, for repeats. Money which would be much better spent on new series. The ABC2 and ABC3 still don’t even run for 24 hours a day either.

    In the case of the ABC, less and less new series for kids are been shown each year. The ABC3 fails to provide a real increase in new series so far, with no sign of more new series for kids as ratings return (TV Guide is up to 13th February 2010) . And it looks like the ABC1 will simply be used for repeats from the ABC3, which reduces new series for kids even more.

  2. Although I think it could have been put in a better time-slot, I am very happy for repeats of shows, especially ones not on DVD. Heck, I’m hoping the rumoured 10-TWO will repeat some Aussie shows from the last 40 years and that GO! follows suit. WIN already plays old Crawford shows at 2am which, again, is a bad timeslot but I’ll take that over nothing – which is what Channel 9 plays at that time.

    To all the people complaining about the constant repeats, what do you expect from the extra channels? All the networks are now expected to provide 48 hours of shows per day. Sure, they might have increased revenue from advertising but they then need to use their income to add more shows. Mind you, I’d love for telemall shopping to disappear and instead have even more reruns in their timeslot so that there can be more space on the schedule for new shows in prime-time. But could the networks afford to do this?

    @JohnR I am sorry to hear that Barron Films went kaput. None-the-less, I am also hoping for a repeat of “Ship To Shore” on ABC3 as I enjoyed that show a lot even though none of my friends gave it a second look.

  3. As the series creator of Sweat I’m obviously delighted that it will be screened again on ABC3. Since the tragic bankruptcy of Barron Entertainment in 2000 the show has been tied up in the hands of the Receiver until just recently. Prior to that it was broadcast around the world. Apart from the novelty of being the first major role for Heath Ledger, it was also the launchpad for other terrific Australian actors such as Paul Tassone (All Saint’s, Underbelly) and Heath Bergersen (Rabbit Proof Fence, The Circuit).
    ABC 3 has only been on the air since December 4th after an historic decision by thee government to fund a dedicated children’s channel as well as properly funding adult drama which had shrunk, over the previous 11 years to less than 10 hours per year. This is in comparison to the commercial channels who are required to produce over 200 hours per year as a condition of their license.
    ABC3 is committed to broadcasting 50% Australian content between the hours of 6 am and 9.00 pm. Of course they are buying the rights to many programs that have been favourites over the years including Round the Twist, Bluewater High and Heartbreak High. But they are also commissioning new material, both drama and non-drama from all across the country. This is great news for the Australian production industry and a fantastic use of ‘the taxpayer’s dollar. My dream is that there will be 1 hour of Australian drama in prime time every day of the week, every day of the year.

  4. blame the beancounters over at the ABCfor why there is no new generation Degrassi or OC type programmes things that todays generation want not some outdated Australian Programmes going back to the nineties.
    If they can’t do the right thing by todays generation who are now thirty somethings and were teenagers back in the nineties just sell the whole idea off to ten australia.
    What would Tori Spelling think of Australian Drama Today If they tried to sell it to her late fathers FOX Network she would be most disgusted.

  5. Oh the naysayers are alive and kicking in 2010! May you one day take a chill pill and find happiness rather than knock every single decision made by a programmer! Sure Sweat is old, but…oh forget it…you are all correct. The Networks are evil. Yes the ABC is wasting our taxpayer dollars. Programmers should listen to what is said on this blog. The networks hate the viewers. There’s no quality shows around. We should all download cos’ then the Networks will have to listen to us (except that they’ll go out of business because the shows won’t rate and won’t pay the studios for content…) Must get tiresome bagging others all the time.

  6. Hope they repeat the series Head Start. I never saw Sweat however one persons rubbish is treasure for another. It shouldn’t matter if it’s old, someone might like it and that I think is a good premise for multi-channeling.

  7. It will be interesting to see if there is any reaction to the gay storyline involving Heath Ledger. After all look what happened with the ‘outrage’ over the gay storyline in Home and Away. Won’t someone think of the children!

  8. ABC3 should start playing some more current kids drama. How about Kyle XY, Secret Life of the American Teenager, or even Greek? Would fit perfectly once a week or so. They could also show new degrassi….I honestly can’t see kiddies watching shows 10 years old…i really can’t! If it doesn’t have reference to modern technologies it will literally bore them.

  9. The ABC3 continues to use repeats of older Australian kids series, to increase their overall Australian content, just as I expected. Don’t Blame The Koalas is another older series, that recently started been repeated on the ABC3. I wonder how many other old Australian series will be repeated again, in order to continue this Australian bias.

    Meanwhile the ABC3 still suffers from endless repeats, and could really use some new decent content.

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