Bordertown (Australian TV series)

Last updated

Bordertown
Genre Drama
Starring
Music by Guy Gross
Country of originAustralia
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons1

Bordertown is a 1995 Australian TV miniseries set in 1952 in a refugee camp located in a dusty, remote Australian town called Baringa. The story depicts a year in the lives of the camp residents, displaced persons from World War II who are learning English and awaiting jobs and new lives in Australia. [1] The series stars Hugo Weaving as an English teacher and also features Cate Blanchett in a smaller role as an albino Italian migrant. [2]

Contents

Reception

The series was somewhat controversial for its depiction of life in the migrant camps, and its ratings were not high. [1] Commenting on the 2002 video release, Video Store magazine noted the "inconsistent tone" of the episodes but thought that ultimately, the viewer would become "accustomed to, and fond of, these characters and their microcosm in the middle of nowhere". [3] DVD Talk noted the series' "original setting and generally solid acting" but found the show only "mildly interesting". [2]

The miniseries received the AWGIE Award for Mini-Series Original in 1996. [4]

Cast and characters

Related Research Articles

<i>Band of Brothers</i> (miniseries) American TV mini-series

Band of Brothers is a 2001 American war drama miniseries based on historian Stephen E. Ambrose's 1992 non-fiction book of the same name. It was created by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who also served as executive producers, and who had collaborated on the 1998 World War II film Saving Private Ryan. Episodes first aired on HBO starting on September 9, 2001. Critically acclaimed, the series won the Emmy and Golden Globe awards for best miniseries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hugo Weaving</span> British actor (born 1960)

Hugo Wallace Weaving is a British actor. He is the recipient of six Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards (AACTA) and has been recognised as an Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia. Born in Colonial Nigeria to English parents, he has resided in Australia for the entirety of his career.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Moffat</span> Scottish television writer and producer

Steven William Moffat is a Scottish television writer, television producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his work as the second showrunner and head writer of the 2005 revival of the BBC sci-fi television series Doctor Who (2010–2017) and co-creating and co-writing the contemporary crime drama television series Sherlock, based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories (2010–2017). In the 2015 Birthday Honours, Moffat was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to drama.

<i>Dinotopia</i> Fantasy book series

Dinotopia is a series of illustrated fantasy books, created by author and illustrator James Gurney. It is set in the titular Dinotopia, an isolated island inhabited by shipwrecked humans and sapient dinosaurs who have learned to coexist peacefully as a single symbiotic society. The first book was published in 1992 and has "appeared in 18 languages in more than 30 countries and sold two million copies." Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time and Dinotopia: The World Beneath both won Hugo awards for best original artwork.

John Patrick Doyle AM is an Australian actor, writer, radio presenter and comedian best known for his character Rampaging Roy Slaven.

<i>Cloudstreet</i> Novel by Tim Winton

Cloudstreet is a novel by Australian writer Tim Winton published in 1991. It chronicles the lives of two working-class families, the Pickles and the Lambs, who come to live together in a large house called Cloudstreet in Perth, Western Australia, over a period of twenty years, 1943 to 1963. The novel received several awards, including a Miles Franklin Award in 1992, and has been adapted into various forms, including a stage play and a television miniseries.

<i>Shōgun</i> (1980 miniseries) 1980 American television miniseries

Shōgun is a 1980 American historical drama television miniseries based on James Clavell's 1975 novel of the same name. The series was produced by Paramount Television and first broadcast in the United States on NBC over five nights between September 15 and September 19, 1980. It was written by Eric Bercovici and directed by Jerry London, and stars Richard Chamberlain, Toshiro Mifune, and Yoko Shimada, with a large supporting cast. Clavell served as executive producer. To date, it is the only American television production to be filmed on-location entirely in Japan, with additional soundstage filming also taking place in Japan at the Toho studio.

<i>Everything Goes</i> (film) 2004 Australian film

Everything Goes is a 2004 short film directed by Andrew Kotatko. It is based on the 1978 short story Why Don't You Dance? from Raymond Carver's 1981 collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The film stars Hugo Weaving, Abbie Cornish and Sullivan Stapleton. Everything Goes won the award for Best Short Film at the 2004 Inside Film Awards and was the only Australian film selected for the prestigious Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in 2005.

<i>Little Fish</i> (2005 film) 2005 Australian film by Rowan Woods

Little Fish is a 2005 Australian film directed by Rowan Woods and written by Jacquelin Perske. Starring Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, and Sam Neill, the film is about a heroin addict who is desperately trying to escape her past to achieve her goals. It was developed and produced by Vincent Sheehan and Liz Watts of Porchlight Films, with Cate Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton's production company Dirty Films receiving an Associate Producer credit.

The AWGIE Awards are annual awards given by the Australian Writers' Guild (AWG), for excellence in screen, television, stage, and radio writing. The 56th Annual AWGIE Awards ceremony is being held in Sydney on 15 February 2024.

<i>Noah and Saskia</i> Australian childrens television series

Noah and Saskia is a 13-episode TV program initiated, developed and produced by Patricia Edgar for the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF) and the BBC as she stepped down after 20 years as Founding Director of the ACTF. The 13 x 24-minute drama series involves an Australian teenage girl, Saskia, and her internet-based relationship with Noah, a teenage boy living in the United Kingdom. The two characters project their ideal selves to each other in a virtual world, and in the process get a little closer to reaching their ideals in the real one. The show is about the power of someone's essence and how someone can touch you from 10,000 miles away, and change your whole life. Noah & Saskia speaks directly to today's young people about the technologies which are changing the way we communicate.

"I wanted one more crack at producing the type of television I had always believed in; not a formulaic soap-style series; not a co-produced mid-Pacific blancmange, but something that really spoke to adolescents about the issues that were on their minds," Patricia Edgar, Bloodbath: a memoir of Australian Television, pg.399. "The Internet was the place to set much of the action as this allowed for a modern, contemporary story, which would be new territory for drama. The other appeal of online chat spaces was that they give the characters opportunities to express themselves in multiple ways. The Net is a space where young people are much more at home than their parents and increasingly it will be their world", Patricia Edgar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gregory Nava</span> American film director, producer and screenwriter

Gregory James Nava is an American film director, producer and screenwriter.

<i>The Grapes of Wrath</i> (film) 1940 film by John Ford

The Grapes of Wrath is a 1940 American drama film directed by John Ford. It was based on John Steinbeck's 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F. Zanuck.

Tommy Murphy is an Australian playwright, screenwriter, adaptor and director. He created and was head writer for the 2022 TV series Significant Others. He is best known for his stage and screen adaptation of Timothy Conigrave's memoir Holding the Man. His most recent plays are a stage adaptation of Nevil Shute’s On The Beach, Mark Colvin's Kidney and Packer & Sons.

<i>Kermits Swamp Years</i> 2002 American film

Kermit's Swamp Years is a 2002 American direct-to-video buddy comedy-drama road adventure film, directed by David Gumpel, featuring Jim Henson's Muppets, including a young Kermit and his best friends Goggles and Croaker, who travel outside their homes in the swamps of the Deep South to do something extraordinary with their lives.

Matthew Le Nevez is an Australian actor. He is best known for his roles as Doctor Patrick Reid in the TV series Offspring, Detective Brian Dutch in the Tasmanian Gothic sci-fi television show The Kettering Incident and Agent Cal Isaac in the thriller drama series Absentia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samara Weaving</span> Australian actress (born 1992)

Samara Weaving is an Australian actress and model. She began her career in her home country, playing Kirsten Mulroney on the drama series Out of the Blue (2008). She came to prominence with her portrayal of Indi Walker on the soap opera Home and Away (2009–2013), for which she received an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) nomination for Best Female Performance.

<i>Stakes</i> (miniseries) 2015 Adventure Time miniseries

Stakes is an American animated television miniseries comprising eight episodes from the television show Adventure Time, created by Pendleton Ward. It aired as part of the show's seventh season from November 16, 2015 to November 19, 2015 on Cartoon Network. Adventure Time follows the adventures of Finn, a human boy, and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake, a dog with magical powers to change shape, grow and shrink at will. In this limited event series, Princess Bubblegum removes the vampiric essence from Marceline the Vampire Queen, which unleashes five recently resurrected vampires into The Land of Ooo. Marceline, Bubblegum, Finn, Jake, and Peppermint Butler are forced to deal with the fallout.

After the Deluge is a 2003 Australian television miniseries starring Ray Barrett, David Wenham, Hugo Weaving and Samuel Johnson. It was first broadcast by Channel Ten in two parts in June 2003.

<i>Bluey</i> (2018 TV series) Australian animated preschool television series

Bluey is an Australian animated preschool television series which premiered on ABC Kids on 1 October 2018. The program was created by Joe Brumm and is produced by Queensland-based company Ludo Studio. It was commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the British Broadcasting Corporation, with BBC Studios holding global distribution and merchandising rights. The series made its premiere on Disney Junior in the United States and is released internationally on Disney+.

References

  1. 1 2 Ina Bertrand, "Borders and Boundaries: History and Television in a Post-Modern World" inTony Barta (1998). Screening the Past: Film and the Representation of History. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 189–203. ISBN   978-0-275-95402-4.
  2. 1 2 Holly Ordway, "Bordertown" (review), DVD Talk , 7 October 2002.
  3. Laura Tiffany, "Bordertown (new video release)", Video Store, 30 July 2002.
  4. "Past AWGIE Award Winners 1968-2016" (PDF). Australian Writers Guild. Retrieved 19 February 2017.