Discussion of ABC’s 2026 slate of programming.
ABC Showcase will be held tomorrow Thursday 20 November at ABC’s Ultimo headquarters
Information will be posted at 3pm AEDT.
This topic was automatically opened after 17 hours.
Most of it looks OK but some of the new ‘comedy’ stuff that they’ve announced sound absolutely atrocious.
Here’s is some of what’s new on ABC TV
Urzila
Shakedown
Treasure & Dirt
Class Clowns
Always Was Tonight
The State of Man
The Matter Of Facts
Ground Up
Shaun Micallef’s Going for Broke
Judgment: Cases that Changed Australia
Goolagong
Tonight at the Museum
Dustfall
Ages of Ice
Todd Sampson’s Why?
Bad Company
Dog Park
Decent line up of dramas, comedies and documentaries.
Interesting there is no mention of a new season of Stuff the British Stole. Is Marc Fennell still filming that?
The Tampa documentary is sure to provoke conservative commentators who will criticise the ABC for wasting taxpayer’s money examining the federal government’s refugee policy over the past 25 years.
And still no televised sport.
It was already announced
And is listed as returning at the Showcase.
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No mention of a new season of Fisk plus some of their recent dramas.
Claire Hooper’s House of Games also MIA so far, thankfully.
is there anything in this article not already covered by the above in this thread?
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They might as well shut up shop if they tried to return that.
This Age article has additional comments from Robyn Butler (co-creator of Ground Up) and the ABC’s Jennifer Collins.
So much new content compared to the commercials.
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Very impressed and excited by this lineup. They’re streets ahead of the commercial networks. A strong array of diverse content with mainstream appeal.
Very excited about all the new comedies but very sad there’s no new season of Fisk
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Best line up for 2026 by a county mile. There’s still a lot of cheap dull fillers like Take 5, and Gruen etc need to be ‘rested’ permanently but I’ll take the wins. Good to see some investment in Victorian productions too - it’s been very very Sydney heavy for years. Especially for comedy, even though Melbourne was always the comedy powerhouse.
Todd Sampson is probably the only head scratcher. Can’t think of anyone who likes him - most loathe him. And that was before he was shown up as embarrassingly incompetent on the qantas board.
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Would love them to show shield cricket, but am sure there’s too many agreements with kayo etc. They should lean into overlooked Australian things like wood chop comps. Sheep dog trials. It would be a sleeper hit I reckon. A lot of public broadcasters OS also show ballroom dancing comps. Feel like the ABC used to ages ago. Would be a fun thing for a dull Saturday night. Also classical music performances on ABC2.
Read about this number in the guardian today:
Eight months into his term as ABC managing director, Hugh Marks is talking up the offering, saying the list of 60 prime-time premium television series announced on Thursday is up from 43 in 2025.
I really hope this will mean less repeats after 9PM…
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I actually don’t mind Take 5! I found myself watching a playlist of the programs back catalogue on the iview awhile ago.
The ABC has acquired animated slapstick comedy series Superbuns for ABC Kids and ABC iview, where it will launch in Q1 2026. It has also picked up tween media-literacy series Media Stamped.