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So what’s been your summer gem?
The other week a journalist asked me for some quotes on how our TV summer season was faring and I pointed out that historically, the 09 / 10 season has offered an abundance of choice -at least compared to when we had just 5 channels, half of which were stuck on sport.
This year the amount of content has boomed, thanks to our extra digital channels.
But when the article appeared in print, readers hit back saying summer is still a dead zone. I got slammed. Well, it is if you stick with …
Bush Slam
Public broadcasters continue to upstage commercial Free to Air Networks over summer by providing first-run local content, that is also of a high quality.
Joining the ranks of SBS’ The Circuit and Secrets and Lives comes the ABC’s Bush Slam -a new six part series in which H.G. Nelson plays host to an original poetry contest in regional towns across Australia.
It doesn’t get much more Australian than this. In the first episode, set in Cowra, NSW, we learn about the town’s history during WW II when hundreds of Japanese soldiers broke free …
Scales of injustice
When the first series of SBS drama The Circuit hit screens in mid-2007 little did co-creator and writer Kelly Lefever realise it would do so in the midst of a storm over sexual abuse of Indigenous children in the Northern Territory.
Given abuse was also part of the storyline, the report propelled the drama to centrestage, despite the fact it had finished shooting some six months earlier.
“That’s the sort of thing that you can’t anticipate,” Lefever told TV Tonight. “In our minds it was never meant to be an expose. It was …
2008-09 Production Report
Screen Australia has released the findings of its annual Production Report on the state of film and television.
Never wanting to paint a bleak picture, it manages to find optimism with a healthy state of production, if boosted by the big investment of George Miller’s Happy Feet 2 and the $100m Hollywood animation Guardians of Ga’Hoole in Sydney.
TV Tonight has taken a look at the television sector separately, and the results are still very good. While series / serials were down, mini-series (which also includes telemovies) were up.
The …
Top Gear loss “not the be-all and end-all”
TV Tonight continues its interviews with key executives in television. Following on from last week’s interviews with Seven, ABC, TEN and Nine, today the spotlight turns to SBS Director of Content Matt Campbell.
The last two weeks have not been without their challenges for Campbell, who learned the fate of Top Gear, a programme he had taken a punt on many years ago when no other network would touch it.
Having spent a lot of time trying to convince the BBC it should be staying at its natural home, he admits the loss …
Returning: The Circuit
SBS drama The Circuit returns to screen for its second series in December.
Aaron Pedersen returns as city lawyer Drew Ellis tackles the legal system of the remote Kimberley.
But his new sense of belonging comes at a cost, and fitting into his Aboriginal family is not going to be an easy task. Clerk of Courts, Bella Noble (Tammy Clarkson) suffers a personal tragedy, and Drew helps her back from a dark place, as their friendship turns into something more.
Meanwhile, Peter Lockhart’s (Gary Sweet) tenure as Magistrate is threatened, and Sam …
More love for Big Love soon
SBS has some enticing titles coming up in its last quarter and into 2010.
It includes the second season of local drama The Circuit starring Aaron Pedersen, to begin in the first week of December. The long-awaited third series of Big Love will return over summer. The network also has the free to air rights to the award-winning miniseries John Adams, about the second US president.
There’s also a second season for Paul Fenech’s Swift & Shift Couriers.
Supernatural series, True Horror, explores vampires, demons, witches and exorcism and James May has his own …
SBS wins at AWGIE Awards
Updated: SBS picked up three awards at last night’s AWGIE Awards in Sydney, the annual gongs for the country’s best writing in media and performance.
The Circuit was awarded best original TV mini-series. The second series, by writer Kelly Lefever, is yet to air on SBS.
Saved by Belinda Chayko won Best Telemovie.
The landmark series First Australians Episode 1 by Louis Nowra and Rachel Perkins took out the documentary award. The series took up to seven years to complete.
In other wins awarded by the Australian Writer’s Guild, Rush won the Television …
Cameras roll on Underbelly
Underbelly begins filming its third series in Sydney tomorrow.
Underbelly: The Golden Mile is centered on Kings Cross beginning around 1989 and will feature “the excesses of the empire, the collapse of the empire, the chaos that followed, and the ultimate victory of strong and honest police…seen through the eyes of some of the most sexy, charming, corrupt and deadly people of the time,”
As well as ‘bent cops’ it is dotted with strippers, gamblers, gunmen, dealers, bouncers and bagmen.
The characters feature policewoman and former prostitute Kim Hollingsworth, teenage Kings Cross identity Johnny …
AWGIE Awards: 2009 Nominees
The Australian Writers’ Guild has announced the nominees for the 42nd annual AWGIE Awards.
Contenders in the drama series category include Rush, Satisfaction and Carla Cametti PD, while the serials will be fought between Home and Away, Neighbours and Out of the Blue. Saved and Scorched go head to head for the telemovie award while the miniseries nominees are East West 101, The Circuit and False Witness.
Titles competing in comedy include Newstopia, Good News Week and Review with Myles Barlow. ABC kid’s series Zigby has landed all 5 nominations in the P …
Top cast for My Place, ABC children’s drama
The ABC has assembled an impressive cast for My Place, its new 13-part, half hour children’s drama series, which started shooting yesterday in Sydney.
Joining a line up of child actors is a cast that includes: Susie Porter (East of Everything and Little Fish), Dan Wyllie (Love My Way, Underbelly), Sacha Horler (Love My Way, Grass Roots), Dan Spielman (Mary Bryant, Tom White), Russell Dykstra (Clubland, Romulus, My Father), Leon Ford (All Saints, Changi) and Hayley McElhinney (Blue Heelers, Young Lions.)
Based on the award-winning book by Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins, it …
Seven censors Home & Away same-sex kiss
The Seven Network has censored a same sex kiss in its soapie Home and Away.
A scene involving a kiss between Joey (Kate Bell) and Charlie (Esther Anderson) has been censored following media stories with lobby groups criticising the storyline in a ‘family’ show.
The plotline involves the arrival of a young lesbian who has become attracted to one of the show’s regular characters. As the two grow more intimate they were set to share an on-screen kiss. In last night’s episode (pictured) the two girls finished a dance with an awkward and …