ABC
This list shows all the titles currently on australianscreen that were produced by ABC. It is not a comprehensive filmography.
119 titles - sorted by title / by year
An Airman Remembers (1964)
Sir Gordon Taylor, one of the great aviation pioneers of Australia, presents this documentary. He delivers his story about the history of Australian aviation in the manner of ...
At The Movies – Series 1 Episode 55, Little Fish (2005)
Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton review the latest cinema releases including The Perfect Catch and Wallace and Grommit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. There’s also a review ...
At The Movies – Series 1 Episode 63, Wolf Creek (2005)
This week Margaret and David discuss the Australian film Wolf Creek with accompanying interviews with the director Greg McLean and actor Cassandra Magrath. There’s also a review of ...
At The Movies – Series 2 Episode 20, Ten Canoes (2006)
The man of steel is back in Superman Returns, the first film to be reviewed this week on the television magazine program presented by Margaret Pomeranz and David ...
Aunty Connie (2006)
Aunty Connie is described as a love story. It uses voice-over narration (Deborah Mailman), historical photographs and interviews with Aunty Connie McDonald, an Indigenous woman who was born ...
The Aunty Jack Show – Series One (1972)
Sketch comedy interlaced with musical sequences, featuring Aunty Jack (Grahame Bond) the self-styled queen of Wollongong and a cast of glorious misfits including Thin Arthur (Rory O’Donoghue), Aunty ...
The Aunty Jack Show – Series Two (1974)
In this second series of the sketch comedy show most of the old favourites return from the first series. These include Neil and Errol (Grahame Bond and Rory ...
Australian Story – A Man for All Seasons (1999)
Wayne Bennett was born on the wrong side of the tracks. His father was a violent and hard drinking fettler, who left his wife and kids when the ...
Australian Story – Absolute Beginner (2006)
Just over eight years ago, Marg Ward lost her husband when he died suddenly of a heart attack. Marg was 56. After two terrible years, she began again ...
Australian Story – Of Droughts and Flooding Rains (2002)
This is the story of a man so obsessed by an idea that it has consumed his life and almost destroyed his family. Peter Andrews’s idea is that ...
Australian Story – Since Adam Was a Boy (1997)
Adam Sutton is a quintessential cowboy. He’s fearless, fun-loving and homosexual. He’s a horse wrangler and rodeo rider but the biggest risk he ever took was to reveal ...
Australian Story – With This Ring (2005)
When Australian Story first recorded the life of this gutsy young couple, Gayle and Mac Shann were newly married and struggling to come to terms with the horrific ...
Australian Visit (1967)
This ABC News production covers the five-day visit of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Vietnam, Air Vice-Marshall Nguyen Cao Ky, and his wife, to Australia in ...
Australian Walkabout (1958)
In this program the Chauvels, on a filmmaking safari of Australia, are travelling through the Northern Territory. They camp outside the small town of Katherine with their filmmaking ...
Backchat, Episode 215 (1988)
On this week’s Backchat, viewers write in with praise for ABC current affairs programs The World At Six and The World Tonight, programs that copped tough criticism the ...
Backchat, Episode 216 (1988)
On Backchat, viewers of ABC television and ABC radio listeners could write or phone in their response to the weekly output of the public broadcaster, which in this ...
Backchat, Episode 217 (1988)
In this program of audience response to ABC programs on television and radio, there’s appreciation for the ABC fillers, which can be seen behind the logo, as well ...
Beyond Reasonable Doubt – Alexander McLeod Lindsey (1977)
In 1964 Alexander McLeod Lindsey was sentenced to 18 years in jail for the brutal bashing of his wife Pamela, who recovered but was severely brain damaged as ...
Beyond Reasonable Doubt – The Case of Ronald Ryan (1977)
Ronald Ryan, a convicted armed robber, was the last man to be hanged in Australia. The year was 1967. It was alleged he’d shot a warder as he ...
A Big Country – Perkins Navy (1979)
Bruce Perkins owns a fleet of flat-bottomed barges that help the people of northern Australia to inhabit some of the least accessible areas of the top end.
A Big Country – The Challenge of Lake Eyre (1978)
Lake Eyre is generally a massive environment of death or rather lifelessness, and every year for several months, John and Roma Dulhunty come to the lake to conduct ...
A Big Country – The Prices (1979)
A pioneering family has taken over a cattle station at Cape York and is trying to make a go of it.
A Big Country – The White Rose (1979)
Frank Bourke is ‘The White Rose’ – the dance band known and loved throughout country New South Wales.
Billy and Percy (1974)
This dramatised documentary is based on the diaries of Percy Deane, who became the private secretary of Prime Minister WM Hughes during one of the most controversial and ...
The Blainey View – Footprints (1982)
Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey takes us from the southernmost reaches of Tasmania to the edge of the continent in the Northern Territory to tell the extraordinary history of ...
Brides of Christ (1991)
A miniseries for television about the lives of a group of women, some of whom are part of a teaching order of nuns and some of whom are ...
Catalyst – Genius of Junk (2003)
This is a story of triumph and tragedy. Dr Malcolm Simons, an internationally recognised immunologist, has turned ‘junk DNA’ into gold. He has patented his discovery that non-coding ...
Catalyst – Nature, Nurture (2003)
Each year since 1979, the same group of people have been returning to Dunedin in New Zealand to be investigated for science. This research into whether nature or ...
Catalyst – Planet of the Rings (2005)
A ride to the outer reaches of the solar system with Dr Richard Smith. This program is about one of the greatest exploration feats of all time – ...
Catalyst – Teen Brain (2005)
In 1973, Australia lowered the age of majority to 18, the age at which you are legally responsible for your actions. New science, however, is proving that our ...
Catalyst – The Antarctic Peninsula (2006)
Fossils of southern beech trees have been found in Antarctica, which proves that this desolate area was once a huge forest and that Antarctica was once joined to ...
Catalyst – Wollemi Pine (2005)
The discovery of a tree from the Jurassic period in the National Park in the Blue Mountains of NSW in 1994, was like finding a family of dinosaurs ...
Chequerboard Revisited – Episode 5: You Can’t Have A Child That’s Ugly (2000)
In 1969, the ABC documentary program Chequerboard, made a program about child performers. Thirty-one years later, two of them agreed to be filmed for Chequerboard Revisited.
Chequerboard Revisited – Episode 6: That One Piece of Paper (2000)
The original Chequerboard program was made in black-and-white in 1972. Two boys were chosen from Liverpool Boys’ High School. Pat wants to leave school immediately at age 16 ...
Chequerboard – It’s A Big Day In Any Girl’s Life (1973)
Two very different weddings are contrasted. One of them cements the ties between a landed family and a family of high standing in the district. The other is ...
Chequerboard – It’s Amazing What You Can Do With a Pound of Mince (1969)
Three Australian families who are living on the basic wage are interviewed about what they earn, how that money is allocated and how they view their lives.
Chequerboard – Too Much For Molony (1969)
Love conquers all in this moving story about a Catholic priest who leaves his order to live outside ‘the cloisters’ with one of his young parishioners.
Come In Spinner (1989)
This is the story of women in wartime – those left behind while the men are away fighting. It’s the story of three very different women who work ...
Compass – Broken Open (2005)
Craig Hamilton was a very successful sports commentator who suffered a nervous breakdown at the peak of his career. He was about to take up a job at ...
Compass – Buddha Realms, Part 1 (2001)
Buddhism is one of the world’s oldest religions; it’s older than both Christianity and Islam and, like those faiths, its influence has spread throughout the world. This program ...
Compass – Changi Days, POW Poets (2003)
When 22,000 Australian soldiers were taken prisoner by the Japanese on the Malay Peninsula early in 1942, they disappeared into the vast prison camp called Changi on Singapore ...
Compass – Embracing the Enemy (2005)
Turkish immigrants to Australia in the 1970s immediately felt connected through the Anzac Day marches but found they were forbidden to march with the Australians. Thus began a ...
Compass – Fly on the Wall Messiah (2004)
Every year, 700 amateur singers come together to perform Handel’s Messiah at the Sydney Town Hall. It’s a Christmas tradition. They have nine rehearsals only and getting ready ...
Compass – Gallipoli Pilgrimage (2006)
Australians are making their way in increasing numbers to Anzac Cove in Turkey each year to commemorate the ANZAC landing there on April 25th, 1915. This is the ...
Compass – Islam on Parade (2005)
There are 250,000 Muslims living in Australia from vastly different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. In the wake of the terrorist bombings around the world, a young and dynamic ...
Compass – Paws For Thought (2000)
Traditional Christianity taught that humans are superior to animals. Science is rapidly changing that perception. So is non human life important and if so why?
Compass – Pregnant Pause (2006)
Four women talk about their experiences with unwanted pregnancies in the fifties, an era before abortion was readily available. One of the women already had two children, was ...
Compass – Quakers: Seeking the Light Within (2003)
This is a simple but very informative program about Quakers in Australia today. The Quakers are a protestant group that has existed for over 350 years, also called ...
Compass – Saving Claymore (2002)
Fire-bombings, stealing and vandalism were the norm in the Sydney suburb of Claymore, where residents lived in fear and isolation. Then the Catholic Church moved in and introduced ...
Compass – The Cardinal’s Cousin (2005)
Monica is a lesbian and a former nun. She rose to prominence in 2004 when she published a letter she’d sent to her cousin, Cardinal George Pell, the ...
Compass – Tomorrow’s Islam (2003)
From New York to London and Paris, this program examines how Western Muslims are taking the lead in finding new ways to deal with some of the most ...
Dancing Orpheus (1962)
A black-and-white nature program from the earliest years of ABC television featuring the unique lyrebird.
Dig A Million, Make A Million (1968)
Australia’s richest iron ore deposit has been found by Lang Hancock and his partner, Peter Wright. The mining company Hamersley Iron is developing a huge mining infrastructure in ...
Dynasties – The Murdochs (2001)
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is the last of the world’s great media empires controlled by a family dynasty. The Murdochs is a portrait of a very close-knit family. ...
Dynasties – The Rose Family (2003)
Bob Rose was a football legend and head of a sporting dynasty. He was one of seven sons rescued from poverty by Australian Rules Football and their story ...
The Fast Lane - Episode 7: The Sound of One Hand Counting (1986)
A private detective agency run by a couple of incompetents (Terry Bader and Richard Healy) is called in to shadow the wife of a wealthy factory owner. At ...
The Gillies Report – Series 1, Episode 4 (1984)
This week’s Gillies Report includes the news read by John Clarke with inserts from various politicians of the day played by Max Gillies, and a National Press Club ...
Grange (2005)
A short drama about two lawyers who attempt to bribe their way to success by paying off the magistrate with Grange, an incredibly expensive and rare wine.
I Can Jump Puddles (1981)
This is the inspirational boyhood story of the author Alan Marshall, a victim of polio. Born in rural Victoria in the early 1900s, young Alan Marshall contracted the ...
In the Wild with Harry Butler – Lake Argyle (1976)
Harry Butler is a native of Western Australia. He has returned there to explain how this massive man-made body of water, now called Lake Argyle, has changed the ...
In the Wild with Harry Butler – Scars on the Landscape (1976)
Naturalist Harry Butler is in northern Queensland, where millennia of fire stick farming by Indigenous Australians has created the grasslands of that region.
Interview with Archbishop Mannix (1962)
Dr Daniel Mannix was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne from 1913 until his death in 1963. He was a man of considerable influence in Australian public life, ...
Landline - Ethanol Special 2006 (2006)
Landline has put together a special bulletin about ethanol which presents both a history and a current snapshot of Australia’s position in relation to its use here. The ...
The Last Man Hanged (1993)
The dramatised documentary traces the events leading up to the hanging of Ronald Ryan in 1967. Ryan escaped from Pentridge prison and a warder was shot dead in ...
The Leaving of Liverpool (1992)
The story of two young lives caught up in the British child migration schemes of the 1950s. Lily (Christine Tremarco) and Bert (Kevin Jones), are transported from an ...
The Legend of Damien Parer (1964)
The life story of the legendary Australian combat cameraman Damien Parer, as seen through the eyes of those who knew him and through the amazing footage that he ...
The Man Who Stole My Mother’s Face (2003)
Laura Henkel was raped in Johannesburg in 1989. Even though Mrs Henkel identified her attacker, the South African police failed to prosecute. Thirteen years later her daughter, Cathy ...
Monday Conference – PNG (1971)
Robert Moore is the moderator and Donald Hogg and Richard Beckett are the interviewers of the impressive New Guinea politician John Guise, later to be knighted Sir John ...
Monday Conference – Rhodesia or Zimbabwe (1973)
Robert Moore interviews Senator Glen Sheil from Queensland, who has just returned from a week-long fact-finding tour of Rhodesia. His belief that Rhodesia is a fine and progressive ...
More Winners – Boy Soldiers (1990)
In 1910, the Australian government passed a law requiring all boys aged between 14 and 17 years to register for compulsory military training. Between 1911 and 1915 more ...
Mother and Son – The Clock (1991)
Maggie (Ruth Cracknell) has stolen a clock from a neighbour’s house where she’s been snooping. The house is for sale and is open for inspection. The real estate ...
Mother and Son – The Funeral (1984)
Maggie (Ruth Cracknell) and Arthur (Garry McDonald) set out with Uncle Tom (Peter Gwynne) to the funeral of another of Maggie’s brothers, Andrew. Maggie holds up the whole ...
Mother and Son – The Money (1984)
Maggie Beare (Ruth Cracknell) has been hiding her pension cheques so that the government won’t know how much money she has. Her harassed son Arthur (Garry McDonald), would ...
Mother and Son – The Ride (1993)
Maggie’s favourite son Robert (Henri Szeps) arrives with a proposal to take her for a drive. This is so out of character that Arthur (Garry McDonald) is astonished ...
Nature of Australia – A Separate Creation (1989)
This program traces the rise of the marsupial from the primeval forests of ancient Gondwanaland to their presence in Australia today, culminating in the kangaroo.
Nature of Australia – Land of Flood and Fire (1988)
This is the story of the seasonal cycle of northern Australia, where every year fierce monsoonal rains break the drought. The animals and plants must cope with the ...
Nature of Australia – The Sunburnt Country (1989)
This episode from Nature of Australia describes Australia’s arid centre, sometimes called the ‘dead heart’ or the ‘back of beyond’ or even the ‘never never’. The desert teems ...
New Inventors – Series 1 Episode 8 (2004)
The three featured inventions on this week’s program are: a pool cleaner with a difference, invented by two brothers; a masterly way of turning landfill into compost; and ...
New Inventors – Series 2 Episode 8 (2005)
This week’s New Inventors includes: a demonstration of a lock clip that replaces the standard safety clips used in rope climbing; a ‘Power-Mate’ that lets you know how ...
No Fences, No Boundaries – Walter Burley Griffin (c1976)
A biography that examines the life and work of architect Walter Burley Griffin (1876 – 1937), based on the unpublished biography by his wife, Marion Mahony (1871 – ...
Outback Opera, La Boheme Tour (2002)
Opera Australia’s OzOpera Tour took the opera La Boheme to country Victoria and South Australia. The camera follows the 22-stop tour and records the singers, musicians and technical ...
Palace of Dreams (1985)
Tom Raynor (Michael O’Neill) is a country boy with a dream to be a writer. He comes to Sydney to find work and is caught up in the ...
Peach’s Australia – Darling River (1976)
The travel journalist Bill Peach continues his wander around the continent of Australia with a stop along the banks of the Darling River at Bourke in New South ...
Peach’s Australia – Flinders Ranges (1976)
Bill Peach takes us on a folksy amble through the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. As he reveals the extraordinary beauty of this arid range he tells us ...
Peach’s Explorers – East to West (1984)
Edward John Eyre and his loyal companion Wylie, an Indigenous Australian, completed an epic journey across the terrible sand dunes of the Nullarbor Plain from South Australia to ...
Peach’s Explorers – The Prison Walls (1984)
The story of the Blue Mountains’ barrier to the expansion of the fledgling colony of NSW and its eventual crossing by Gregory Blaxland, William Wentworth and William Lawson ...
Peach’s Gold – Finders Keepers (1983)
The discovery of gold in California in 1849 started a huge rush to the goldfields of the United States, including thousands of Australians. Among them was Edward Hammond ...
Peach’s Gold – Land of Gold (1983)
From the middle to the end of the 19th century, gold strikes occurred in the most inhospitable regions of the continent, from Kiandra in the Snowy Mountains to ...
Peach’s Explorers – South to North (1984)
Inter-colony rivalry between South Australia and Victoria drove a race to the north of the continent. The race resulted in the terrible deaths of the leaders of the ...
Peach’s Explorers – The Secret of the Rivers: Captain Charles Sturt (1984)
Like so many Australian explorers of the early 19th century, Captain Charles Sturt believed there must be an inland waterway in the heart of Australia to explain why ...
Peach’s Gold – Eureka (1983)
From Clunes to Warrandyte, from Buninyong to Ballarat, men came from all over the country and from every corner of the globe to try their luck as diggers ...
The Pearl Fishers (1963)
A televised performance of The Pearl Fishers, an opera by Bizet with an improbable storyline but incomparable music. Zurga, chief of the pearl fishermen, and his great friend ...
Poetry In Australia – Judith Wright (1963)
The poet Judith Wright (1915–2000) is introduced by well-known ABC broadcaster John Thompson in an interview that covers aspects of her early life on the land, her art ...
Police Rescue – By the Book (1990)
Georgia Rattray (Sonia Todd) and Micky McClintock (Gary Sweet) are attracted to each other and drifting towards a sexual relationship. Then, while McClintock is acting boss of the ...
Police Rescue – Mates (1990)
Steve McClintock, better known as Micky (Gary Sweet) lives for his work on the police rescue squad. One day he rescues a ‘jumper’ called Bob (Philip Quast), a ...
Police State (1989)
On 26 May 1987 a Commission of Inquiry was established to investigate allegations of police corruption in Queensland. This telemovie tells the story of how the Commission’s president ...
Profiles of Power, HC Coombs (1961)
HC Coombs is interviewed about his life and work by the current affairs journalist Robert Moore. Questions cover the forty years in which he was advisor to six ...
Rachel’s Story (1997)
At sixteen, Rachel began working as a prostitute in Kings Cross and became addicted to heroin. She met Clive, who helped her recover from the addiction and give ...
Scales of Justice (1983)
When Scales of Justice was first broadcast, it created a sensation. The series presented a shattering examination of police corruption from street level through to the highest levels ...
Seven Deadly Sins - Envy (1992)
This one-hour drama is the sad and sordid story of two people eaten up with envy for what they can’t possess. The program is book-ended with iconic shots ...
Seven Deadly Sins - Pride (1992)
Roger and Jill Pascoe are a glittering couple. Both are brilliant performers and he is also a great theatre director. Their next production will be Strindberg’s The Stronger, ...
Seven Little Australians (1973)
This is the story of the Woolcot family – Captain John Woolcot (Leonard Teale) from the NSW Regiment, his young second wife Esther (Elizabeth Alexander), and his seven ...
Shifting Shelter 3 (2005)
Shifting Shelter 3 is the latest instalment in a documentary series shot over a ten year period. Reminiscent of the British 7 Up Series, the Shifting Shelter series ...
Stateline – The Transcontinental Dream (2004)
Reporter Mark Bowling travels with the Ghan on its inaugural train journey from Adelaide to Darwin, arriving in its new destination at the Northern Territory on 3 February ...
This Day Tonight – The Last Program (1978)
This last TDT program captures a unique interview with the former Governor-General Sir John Kerr, appointed by Prime Minister EG Whitlam in 1972. Kerr had dismissed the Whitlam ...
Torque – Series 1, Episode 8 (1974)
A roundtable discussion arising out of the unacceptable road toll in Australia is introduced by program presenter Peter Wherrett and convened by Four Corners (2008) journalist Jim Downes. ...
Torque – Series 4, Episode 10 (1980)
Motoring journalist and ex-racing car driver Peter Wherrett describes what not to do when driving on the road. This includes being in a hurry, which increases stress levels, ...
The Trouble With Medicine: Conceiving the Future (1993)
Since the discovery of the human genome, tests to discover the genetic basis of illness have given humankind a lot more power to decide how a pregnancy will ...
Two Tribes (1998)
Bankers and difficult kids. Both have bad reputations. This is the story of some inner-city kids at a special school who link up with a group of bankers ...
Waterfront – Episode 1 (1984)
It’s 1928 and the waterfront unions in Melbourne are gearing up for a struggle with the shipowners who are trying to take away hard-won wages and working conditions ...
Waterfront – Episode 2 (1984)
Max Woodbury (Jack Thompson) is the iconic Aussie bloke. He’d far rather spend an evening at the Tivoli with his girl (Noni Hazlehurst) than take on the responsibility ...
Weekend Magazine – Carnarvon Gorge and the Fighting Highlanders (1982)
The Carnarvon Gorge in northern Queensland has been gazetted as a national park since 1932 but this is the first time a route has been opened up so ...
What’s Your Poison? – Ecstasy (1997)
The aim of What’s Your Poison was to explain the science of recreational drugs and examine them in an atmosphere free of moral and political overtones. The program ...
With Gentle Majesty (1962)
A black-and-white documentary about the workhorse, made at a moment in history when the horse is about to disappear from Australia’s city streets forever. In 1962, the ice ...
1915 (1982)
Billy (Scott Burgess) and Walter (Scott McGregor) are mates. They’re young men from the bush always on the lookout for action and adventure. Walter is from a solid ...
The 7.30 Report - Orchestra Tunes Into Mentor Program (2005)
This edition of The 7.30 Report begins with an update from the ABC’s Indonesia correspondent, Tim Palmer, reporting from Aceh where he’s been on many occasions since the ...
The 7.30 Report – Boys Education (2005)
A current affairs program beginning and ending with death. The program covers the death of Pope John Paul II as well as the return of the bodies of ...
The 7.30 Report – Pneumococcal Vaccine (2003)
This is a good example of an effective 7.30 Report episode. The program begins with a news story from Iraq where seven weeks after the invasion, there are ...
The 7.30 Report – Tobacco Litigation (2003)
This edition of the ABC‘s prime-time current affairs program begins with an update on the war in Iraq where the two sons of former dictator Sadam Hussein have ...
