Australia in the 1980s

While on the subject of TV mini-series, there is an Australian classic that epitomises the 1980s. Does anybody remember Return to Eden (Ten, 1983)? It sort of broke the mould of the mini-series by having a contemporary setting.

A revenge tragedy saga with far-fetched storylines, Return to Eden was influenced by the lavish, melodramatic American soaps such as Dallas and Dynasty, using plot devices like nightmares, amnesia, plastic surgery, bitchiness, hysteria and rich people. The production design helped to give Return to Eden its high gloss glamour. Throw in some outback Australian imagery, some Indigenous characters (with few lines) and, with Australia regarded as flavour of the month in the US, you have an overseas hit.

It was told from a woman’s point of view through Stephanie’s voiceover. There was lots of gratuitous male flesh. Rebecca Gilling (as Stephanie) is savaged by a crocodile, then has plastic surgery and returns to avenge her evil lover (James Reyne as a kind of yuppie tennis pro) with nobody recognising her even though she looks the same.

Produced by Hanna Barbera-McElroy and McElroy, Return to Eden was a critical flop but one of the most successful mini-series of the 1980s. It became a 22-part series in 1986.

We are going to look at television culture in our 1980s exhibition and it strikes me that there is something unique about Australian TV drama in the 1980s. Towards the end of the 1970s a new narrative genre emerged — the Australian historical mini-series. The convict drama Against the Wind (Seven, 1978) was one of the first of these produced for commercial television.

Australians love to watch locally made drama but it is expensive to make. It has always been cheaper to import American programs. However the introduction of a tax concession (known as 10BA) for film and television productions encouraged investment in telemovies and mini-series. It allowed independent producers like Kennedy Miller and Crawfords to make high-budget mini-series, giving commercial networks access to prestige product for a fraction of its actual cost.

The historical mini-series became the boom TV genre of the 1980s. It brought national myths to the small screen, with quality, nation-defining drama, often about colonial settlement, the outback or war — essential aspects of Australian identity. Most of the obvious Australian historical legends, stories and themes were dramatised.

The genre is ideally suited for the screen adaptation from literary sources (think of Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South and Poor Man’s Orange), although many were written specifically for television. Some were fictionalised versions of true stories.

A preferred, but not necessary, ingredient was Sigrid Thornton. In Crawford’s 1983 adaptation of Nancy Cato’s novel All the Rivers Run, Sigrid became the captain of her own riverboat, the Philadelphia. All the Rivers Run had all the typical qualities of a mini-series – an historical, rural setting, action, romance and a heroine overcoming adversity to fulfil her destiny.

I liked John Jarratt as Ned Kelly in The Last Outlaw (1980). Nothing like his scary character in Wolf Creek!

Now let’s see, there was Sara Dane (remember the wonderful Juliet Jordan?), Waterfront (with Jack Thompson), My Brother Tom, The Cowra Breakout, Vietnam (with a young Nicole Kidman), ANZACS (starring Paul Hogan), Nancy Wake, A Fortunate Life, Water Under the Bridge, The Dismissal …and on it goes.

Can you remember any other 1980s Australian historical mini-series? What were their good and bad points?

As the 10BA tax concessions were progressively reduced, the historical mini-series was displaced in the late 1980s, exacerbated by a collapse that saw the Seven and Ten networks in receivership and Nine in great debt. Networks found that ongoing drama series were cheaper to make than lavish mini-series. Historical drama almost vanished from Australian television as program makers sought new inspiration for telling contemporary stories. Mini-series have returned only occasionally to our screens.