Just incase anyone was wondering why there’s a double-episode finale of Love On The Spectrum next week - from the ABC’s Documentary Manager/Commissioning Editor/Filmmaker:
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Week commencing 13 June 2021
Sunday 13 June
7:40pm Spicks And Specks Guests: Gordi, Jess Harris, Sensible J & Lloyd Langford
8:30pm Jack IrishSeason 3 Premiere
9:20pm Smother
10:15pm Unforgotten Rpt
11:00pm Glitch Rpt
Monday 14 June
8:00pm Australian Story
8:30pm Four Corners
9:15pm Media Watch
9:35pm Murder 24/7 Series Premiere
10:30pm ABC Late News
11:00pm Love On The Spectrum x 2 Rpt
Tuesday 15 June
8:00pm Anh’s Brush With Fame: Marcia Hines
8:30pm Finding The Archibald Series Premiere
09:30 pm Fightback Farmers
10:30pm China Tonight Rpt
11:00pm ABC Late News
11:30pm Q+A Rpt
Wednesday 16 June
8:00pm Hard Quiz Season Final
8:30pm Shaun Micallef’s MAD AS HELL
9:00pm You Can’t Ask That Virgins
9:35pm Superwog Season Premiere
10:00pm Adam Hills: The Last Leg
10:40pm The Set Rpt
11:15pm ABC Late News
11:45pm Four Corners Rpt
Thursday 17 June
8:00pm Foreign Correspondent
8:30pm Q+A
9:35pm A Life in Ten Pictures Season Final
10:35pm ABC Late News
11:10pm Movie: Another Year
Friday 18 June
7:30pm Gardening Australia
8:30pm Vera: Blood Will Tell Rpt
10:00pm Doc Martin Rpt
10:50pm ABC Late News
11:05pm The Vaccine Rpt
11:20pm Shaun Micallef’s MAD AS HELL Rpt
11:50pm You Can’t Ask That Rpt
Saturday 19 June
7:30pm The Durrells
8:20pm Sanditon
9:05pm Jack Irish Rpt
10:00pm MotherFatherSon Rpt
11:00pm Delicious Rpt
11:45pm rage Guest Programmer
Why do they put out a schedule that has Spicks and Specks starting at 7:30 on Sunday nights? It has been 7:40 for ages with the extended 7pm News. Maybe no one in programming actually watches the station!
Not to be confused with the old Spicks and Specks episodes airing at 7:30 on ABC TV Plus…
Ha! At the same time. What genius programmed that?!
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Adam Hills: The Last Leg - Season 22
From Wednesday 9 June at 10:05 pm
Adam Hills, Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker return for another season, joined by special guests Rob Beckett and Maya Jama for an entertaining look at the events of the week.
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This is a 5-part murder investigation documentary which premiered on the BBC in late February and March last year.
Filmed with Essex Police, Murder 24/7 follows critical murder investigations in real time, following every decision and every lead, minute by minute, from the critical first few days right through to arrest and conviction.
More info:
Reef Live, which aired on ABC TV last year, has been repackaged as documentary Great Barrier Reef: The Next Generation. ITV Studios has acquired international distribution rights.
Fightback Farmers
Tuesday 15 June at 9:30pm
An innovative new documentary celebrating and showcasing Australian co-operative farmers and fishers is set to hit TV screens soon.
Fightback Farmers: Feeding Australia Together follows the fascinating journey of Aussie primary producers as they battle to save their businesses from the brink of disaster.
The ABC documentary features three innovative co-operatives who have been supported by the Business council of Co-operatives and Mutuals (BCCM) through the Co-operative Farming project. These inspirational co-operatives are using a new and successful take on an old way of working collaboratively, in order to save their farms.
BCCM CEO Melina Morrison said: “We are thrilled the public broadcaster is screening such an important and heart-warming documentary about co-operative farming. The ABC is committed to telling interesting stories about everyday Australians and we are expecting viewers to enjoy and appreciate Fightback Farmers: Feeding Australia Together.
“At a time of unprecedented upheaval, Fightback Farmers is the story we need to hear about communities and families who keep striving to overcome adversity, and demonstrates why the co-op model is the right fit for these farmers.”
Screening on the ABC on June 15, Fightback Farmers: Feeding Australia Together follows co-operative farmers and fishers as they face the triumphs and tragedies of trying to stay on the land and keep operating through trade disruptions, climate disasters and even complete industry restructuring. Long cherished as the backbone of a nation, family farms and co-operatives are also the heart of local communities and it is important to tell their stories.
“We’re a bunch of farmers one day, and the next we’re all coming together to form a co-op,” says dairy farmer Stuart Crosthwaite in the documentary, discussing how the co-operative farming model saved them after the collapse of dairy giant, Murray Goulburn.
Crosthwaite is joined by fellow dairy farmers Teresa Hicks and Scott Mackillop, winemaker Fred Pizzini, pasta maker Silvana Micheli and lobster fisherman Craig ‘Slim’ Reilly in revealing their fascinating co-operative journeys. There are also interviews with TAFCO’s Tony Vaccaro and Lachlan Campbell, who talk about having to completely reinvent their businesses after the tobacco industry suddenly closed.
Executive Producer Steve Bibb, from Barking Mad Productions, said: “I’ve long admired the Australian families who dedicate their lives to living on the land – farming, feeding and clothing our nation – generation after generation. As a city boy, I also know that most of us don’t appreciate what is actually happening, that small family farms are disappearing. It begs the question: why?
“In Fightback Farmers, I wanted to meet some of these small farming families – the great characters – who are going back to the future. These farmers and fishers are turning back the clock in a new take on an old away of working together. As we discover, they’re trying to stand strong in the face of adversity for their farms, the future generations, their local communities and a way of life.”
Fightback Farmers: Feeding Australia Together was funded with the assistance of the Co-operative Farming project supported by the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment through funding from the Australian Government’s Starting Farm Co-operatives Program.
Week commencing 20 June 2021
Sunday 20 June
7:40pm Spicks And Specks Missy Higgins, Dave O’Neil, Yeo & Judith Lucy Season Final
8:30pm Jack Irish
9:25pm Movie: Hunger
11:00pm Unforgotten Rpt
11:45pm Glitch Rpt
Monday 21 June
8:00pm Australia Talks
9:35pm Media Watch
9:50pm Murder 24/7
10:50pm ABC Late News
11:20pm Finding The Archibald Rpt
Tuesday 22 June
8:00pm Anh’s Brush With Fame: Gai Waterhouse
8:30pm Finding The Archibald
9:30pm What Are We Feeding Our Kids?
10:25pm China Tonight Rpt
10:55pm ABC Late News
11:25pm Q+A Rpt
Wednesday 23 June
8:00pm Win The Week Series Premiere
8:30pm Shaun Micallef’s MAD AS HELL
9:00pm Starstruck Series Premiere
9:35pm Superwog
9:55pm Adam Hills: The Last Leg
10:35pm The Set Rpt
11:10pm ABC Late News
11:40pm Australia Talks Rpt
Thursday 24 June
8:00pm Foreign Correspondent
8:30pm Q+A
9:35pm Chicken People Rpt
10:55pm ABC Late News
11:30pm Movie: Becoming Jane
Friday 25 June
7:30pm Gardening Australia Fire Special
8:30pm Vera: Parent Not Expected Rpt
10:00pm Doc Martin Rpt
10:50pm ABC Late News
11:05pm The Vaccine Rpt
11:20pm Shaun Micallef’s MAD AS HELL Rpt
11:50pm Starstruck Rpt
Saturday 26 June
7:30pm The Durrells
8:20pm Sanditon
9:10pm Jack Irish Rpt
10:05pm MotherFatherSon Rpt
11:00pm Delicious Rpt
11:45pm rage Guest Programmer
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Starstruck has been renewed for a second season by the BBC.
Midsomer Murders - Season 22
From Friday 16 July at 8:30pm
Ep 1: After a local photographer wins an urban myth competition with his creation of The Wolf Hunter, it unexpectedly gains a cult following. However, when a man is killed, Barnaby must investigate if this myth has become murderous reality.
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Firestarter: The Story of Bangarra
Tuesday 6 July at 8:30pm
Firestarter marks Bangarra Dance Theatre’s 30th anniversary. Taking us through Bangarra’s birth and spectacular growth, the film recognises Bangarra’s founders and tells the story of how three young Aboriginal brothers - Stephen, David and Russell Page - turned the newly born dance group into a First Nations cultural powerhouse. Through the eyes of the brothers and company alumni, Firestarter explores the loss and reclaiming of culture, the burden of intergenerational trauma, and - crucially - the power of art as a messenger for social change and healing.
“As the 20ᵗʰ century turns into the 21ˢᵗ , you can’t tell the story of Aboriginal Australia without featuring Bangarra - indeed they tell the story. And at the core of it there are these three beautiful boys. The holy trinity.” - Hetti Perkins, Art Curator, author.Hetti Perkins sums it up perfectly. Bangarra Dance Theatre, which is celebrating its 30 th anniversary, is Australia’s only Indigenous major performing arts company. Its development from a small dance group in Glebe, Sydney, in the late 80s to a company of international renown, was and is driven in large part by its Artistic director Stephen Page and his brothers composer David Page and lead dancer Russell Page.
Firestarter takes Bangarra’s anniversary year as its launch pad but takes us right back to the
world in which the Page brothers grew up as youngsters - Queensland in the 70s and 80s, a world
in which racism and suppression of Aboriginal identity was still rife, with “one law for whites and another for blacks.” ‘It was tough,’ says Stephen. ‘I was born three years before the referendum that constitutionalised Aboriginal people being respected as humans.’Never before seen home video, shot by David as a child, and rare archive takes us through the boys’
younger years, interweaving their story with the late 80s/early 90s rise of black ‘artivism’ and the start of Bangarra. The company, an offshoot from the National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA), was founded by visionary Carole Johnston and NAISDA graduates, all playing a vital role. After two years, Stephen Page is appointed Artistic Director, age 24. Bangarra perform at Paul Keating’s delivery of the ‘Redfern Address.’As the film tracks the rise of Bangarra, culminating in its era defining work Ochres and a spectacularly triumphant contribution to the 2000 Sydney Olympics opening ceremony, we start to realise what commentator Hetti Perkins means at the start of the film when saying: 'once you pick up the torch, you never get to put it down. And that sort of thing comes at a cost." The ghosts of the past haunt the Page family.
Art imitates life. Stephen’s work starts dealing with social-political issues. Firestarter unpicks the tragedy of colonialization, the intergenerational trauma it caused and the devastating effect it has on the Page family. Theirs is a story that tells of a much greater issue. ‘This sort of thing is bloody everywhere in Australia’ says Stephen. Graeme Murphy, at whose Sydney Dance Company Stephen performed, says: "Great artists are all releasing that dark matter from that big black hole in your brain.‘’
Driven by grief and unresolved pain we see Stephen create Bennelong, his darkest but most evocative work yet. The story of an Aboriginal man who befriends the first governor of New South Wales, Arthur Philip, and struggles to ‘live in two worlds,’ is not just a dance work. ‘The scale was exceptional,’ says Frances Rings, a former Bangarra soloist who was recently appointed Associate Artistic Director. ‘It was an Opera. It was our opera.’
As Stephen becomes a grandfather and a new generation of dancers takes us into the future, Firestarter is ultimately not a story of tragedy. It’s the story of art as medicine, and its role as the messenger of social change and pride. It’s a story of resilience, of overcoming obstacles and the embrace and re-birth of a 65,000-year-old culture, the longest continuously surviving culture in the world. A culture that white Australia once tried to wipe out. In vain. Bangarra is Australia’s greatest culture treasure.
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Do we know why the Trooping or the Colour weren’t broadcasted?
Cracking COVID
Tuesday 13 July at 8:30pm
Cracking Covid tracks the real-time story of Australia’s scientific response to the pandemic, told by researchers, clinicians, and patients.
A surprisingly tender tale of hard science.
By definition they are universal, but pandemics can also be intensely personal things.
Cracking Covid, a new documentary from Emmy Award-winning Melbourne filmmakers Genepool Productions, delivers powerful and penetrating insights into the emotional and physical responses of Australia’s coronavirus victims, clinicians, vaccine researchers - and even musicians.
Recorded in real time over the past year, we see the fear, the challenges, the tragedies and joys of ordinary Aussies as their lives are profoundly changed, and sometimes ended, by a virus that is both strange and a stranger to medical science.
Filmmaker and narrator Sonya Pemberton joins Professor Peter Doherty-who won a Nobel Prize for his discoveries about the human immune system -in a series of Zoom chats across many months.
Professor Doherty, warm and witty, provides immediate and informed commentary as Melbourne, Australia and the world struggles to control rising case numbers.
In the Melbourne institute that bears Doherty’s name, as well as in research labs in other parts of the countries, scientists race to understand the virus, to find its weaknesses, and to develop a vaccine against it.
Pemberton is a fly on the wall- or, at least, an eye on the Zoom meetings - as the teams work to build a defence in a high-stakes, ultra-competitive contest to defeat SARS-C0V-2. We see determination, concern, soaring optimism and crushing defeat, as Australia’s best hope for a vaccine fails at final fence.
As the numbers rise, Cracking Covid never forgets that each case is an individual- unique, connected and loved.
We meet Michael Rojales, whose life hangs in the balance as he’s placed into an induced coma in ICU. Why is he so unwell? Tracking the body’s immune response to C0VID-19, alongside the journey of Michael’s surrounding family, we gain deeper understanding.
Then there is Leila Sawenko and her three children. She develops symptoms, but her kids do not.
Does their apparent immunity hold a vital clue? Researchers are anxious to find out.And then there is Mirabai Nicholson-McKellar, whose initial infection is mild, but who then develops the crippling and debilitating symptoms of “long Covid”. Doctors struggle to understand why this formerly vibrant young woman is dragged ever lower by a virus that for most people resolves in just a few weeks.
Pemberton -whose previous award-winning documentaries include Vitamania, Uranium: twisting the dragon’s tail, and Jabbed: love fear and vaccines- suddenly finds herself a player in her own show when her hometown of Melbourne enters strict lockdown for lll days. Like the other five million people in the city, she experiences a profound sense of dislocation, unease and -when the lockdown at last ends - fear and gratitude.
The effects of the pandemic extend far beyond the laboratories and clinics of the world. It is also challenge to artists of all types as they grapple with how to respond to a threat that is simultaneously ubiquitous and intensely personal.
Among them is Melbourne composer Dale Cornelius, who responded by launching a project called ‘52 Fridays’, which found him filming his improvisations on piano and other instruments, reaching to provide an aural ode to the outbreak. Dale’s music provides a telling and deeply emotional soundtrack to Cracking Covid.
Cracking Covid is the surprisingly intimate story of Australia’s race against the virus- as it happened, in the moment, and on the fly. This is not a history. It’s a race-call.
Production credits: A Genepool Production. Produced in association with the ABC, with the assistance of Film Victoria. Executive Producer, Genepool Productions: Sonya Pemberton. Commissioning Editor ABC: Stephen Oliver.
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Week commencing 27 June 2021
Sunday 27 June
7:40pm Grand Designs Season 18 Premiere
8:30pm Jack Irish
9:25pm Movie: Cheri
10:55pm Unforgotten Rpt
11:50pm Line Of Duty Rpt
Monday 28 June
8:00pm Courtney Act’s One Plus One: Lisa Origliasso Season Premiere
8:30pm Four Corners
9:15pm Media Watch
9:35pm Murder 24/7
10:35pm ABC Late News
11:05pm Finding The Archibald Rpt
Tuesday 29 June
8:00pm Anh’s Brush With Fame: Dr Harry Cooper
8:30pm Finding The Archibald Season Final
9:30pm The Real Diana
10:30pm China Tonight Rpt
11:00pm ABC Late News
11:30pm Q+A
Wednesday 30 June
8:00pm Win The Week
8:30pm Shaun Micallef’s MAD AS HELL
9:00pm Starstruck
9:25pm Superwog: The Magpie
9:50pm Adam Hills: The Last Leg
10:35pm The Set: Peking Duk, Jesswar and The Amity Affliction Rpt
11:05pm ABC Late News
11:40pm Four Corners Rpt
Thursday 1 July
8:00pm Foreign Correspondent
8:30pm Q+A
9:35pm Australia Debates: Are Pets Better Than People? Rpt
10:25pm ABC Late News
10:55pm Barrenjoey Road Rpt
11:55pm Movie: Cheri
Friday 2 July
7:30pm Movin’ To The Country: Orana, NSW Series Premiere
8:00pm Dream Gardens: Woodend Series Premiere
8:30pm Vera: Dirty Rpt
10:05pm Doc Martin Rpt
10:50pm ABC Late News
11:05pm The Vaccine Rpt
11:25pm Shaun Micallef’s MAD AS HELL Rpt
11:55pm Starstruck: Spring Rpt
Saturday 3 July
7:30pm The Durrells
8:20pm Sanditon Series Final
9:05pm Jack Irish Rpt
10:05pm MotherFatherSon Rpt
11:05pm Delicious Rpt
11:50pm rage Guest Programmer
My Name is Gulpilil
Sunday 11 July at 8:30pm
In what is very likely his final film, the great Australian actor David Gulpilil faces his own mortality: he is dying of lung cancer.
Holding the camera figuratively in the palm of his hand, David performs directly for whoever might be out there in the future looking at him, to what is for him his final audience. He talks about what it is to stare down death, and what it was to live a life such as he did, a dizzying mix of traditional Aboriginal ways and modern Hollywood excess, and everything in between. It is pure, unmediated and unvarnished David Gulpilil, finally able to say in a film exactly what he wants to say.
He reminisces about his films, and his fame, and the effects of both on a tribal boy from Arnhem Land. He talks about acting, and how his dancing in his own culture is really the basis of what made him famous. And now he looks toward going home, to his own funeral, the specifications of which he’s very particular about.
But life interferes with David’s march towards his personal end…in his words, “I should have been dead long time ago!” Despite the diagnoses and the prognostications of finality, birthdays pass and David resolutely refuses to die. In this, his final film although it may not be, the great Australian actor David Gulpilil shows what a survivor he is, and how he came to be the living legend we know him to be.
PRODUCTION CREDIT: Presented by Screen Australia, South Australian Film Corporation and Australian Broadcasting Corporation in association with Adelaide Film Festival. A Vertigo Productions Film. Music and sound design: Tom Heuzenroeder. Cinematographers: Maxx Corkindale and Miles Rowland. Editor: Tania M. Nehme. Producers: Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr, Molly Reynolds and David Gulpilil. Director: Molly Reynolds
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Australia Talks methodology
It’s an understandable misconception that Australia Talks only reflects the views of existing ABC audiences – but that isn’t the case.
Australia Talks is in fact probably the most comprehensive and representative poll of the attitudes of all Australians on this variety of topics that has ever been conducted.
The 2021 Australia Talks National Survey included more than 60,000 Australians from every federal electorate in every State and Territory, comprising a diverse cross-section of Australians that is fully representative of modern Australia.
Participants were drawn from people who have completed the interactive online application Vote Compass – this is a broad group, and one that we know reaches beyond traditional ABC audiences due to the way Vote Compass reaches different audience segments on social media.
A series of pre- and post-stratification statistical weights were then applied to the sample in order to model inferences that are representative of the entire Australian population.
The weights control for sample selection effects using census and other population-level estimates for sex, age, education, language, geography and partisanship (based on vote choice in the 2019 federal election).
More information on the methodology can be found by clicking the FAQ link at the bottom of the Australia Talks online tool Australia Talks - Find out where you fit, and how you compare to other Australians in 2021 - ABC
Grand Designs - Season 18
From Sunday 27 June at 7:40pm
The brand-new series of Grand Designs is as inspiring and engaging as ever. Self-builds this series include a radical barn reconstruction for a remarkable young couple defying illness to build a new life near Sevenoaks. There’s a risk taking, sky diving couple breathing new life into a centuries old Cornish mill on the verge of collapse. In South West London an ex-soldier builds a giant subterranean extension to a listed lodge within the boundary of a cemetery, and in South Lincolnshire a local builder creates an enormous Dutch influenced tile-skinned home at breakneck speed. That’s not forgetting the pioneering couple near Bletchley defying logic to create the UK’s first self-heating house. Kevin McCloud is once again on hand to monitor progress, analyse the architecture and guide us through the emotional rollercoaster that comes with risking everything to create an extraordinary new place to live.
Here in New Zealand it changed channels from Three to TVNZ 1 for the curtain raiser to NZ series which is due next year.
One of my favourite shows I’ve enjoyed for 15+ years, but its run should’ve ended by now IMO, last few seasons especially have been not up to scratch. It peaked I reckon around the start of the ‘DS Jones’ (played by Jason Hughes) side-kick era (mid-2000s), but the best eps were definitely the first number of seasons (late 90s / early 2000s the ‘DS Troy’ era played by Daniel Casey). Show didn’t quite recover from ‘DCI Barnaby’ played by the great John Nettles departing. That opening theme though, still chillingly creepy every time.
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