We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year is an Australian mockumentary miniseries starring and created and co-written by Chris Lilley and Ryan Shelton and directed by Matthew Saville.
Christopher Daniel Lilley is an Australian comedian, actor, and writer. He is known for his creation and portrayal of several characters in the mockumentary television series We Can Be Heroes: Finding The Australian of the Year (2005), Summer Heights High (2007), Angry Boys (2011), Ja'mie: Private School Girl (2013), Jonah from Tonga (2014), and Lunatics (2019). He is a two-time winner of the Logie Award for Most Popular Actor.
Jane Claire Allsop is an Australian actress, best known for her role as Jo Parrish on Blue Heelers.
Asher Keddie is an Australian actress. Beginning her career in the television series Five Mile Creek in the mid 1980s, Keddie received wide recognition for her role in the television series Offspring. Her significant repertoire in television has led to her being dubbed as the 'Golden Girl of Australian Television'. Keddie also had a small role in the film X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as Dr. Carol Frost. Aside from television and film work, she has several theatre credits, including in the Melbourne Theatre Company production of Les Liaisons dangereuses as Madame de Tourvel.
Summer Heights High is an Australian television mockumentary sitcom written by and starring Chris Lilley. Set in the fictional Summer Heights High School in an outer suburb of Sydney, it revolves around high school experiences from the viewpoints of three individuals: "Director of Performing Arts" Mr G; private-school exchange student Ja'mie King; and disobedient, vulgar Tongan-Australian student Jonah Takalua. The series lampoons Australian high-school life and many aspects of the human condition and is filmed as a documentary with non-actors playing supporting characters. As he did in a previous series, We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year, Lilley plays multiple characters, including the aforementioned Mr G, Ja'mie and Jonah. The series premiered on 5 September 2007 at 9:30 pm on ABC TV and ended on 24 October 2007, only lasting eight episodes.
Susie Porter is an Australian television, film and theatre actress. She made her debut in the 1996 film Idiot Box, before rising to prominence in films including Paradise Road (1997), Welcome to Woop Woop (1997), Two Hands (1999), Better Than Sex (2000), The Monkey's Mask (2000), Mullet (2001), Teesh and Trude (2002), and The Caterpillar Wish (2006). Porter is also highly recognised for her roles in television series, most notably, as Patricia Wright in East West 101, Eve Pritchard in East of Everything, as Kay Parker in Sisters of War, and as Marie Winter in the prison drama, Wentworth.
Jonah Takalua is a fictional character in the Australian mockumentary series Summer Heights High, and the titular character in the six-part Jonah from Tonga. He is portrayed in brownface by Chris Lilley, who also created the two shows. In 2007, referring to the character's appearances in Summer Heights High, Sydney Morning Herald television critic Michael Idato wrote that "Jonah Takalua is well on the way to becoming the voice of his generation."
Jamie Louise "Ja'mie" King is a fictional character portrayed by actor Chris Lilley in the Australian comedy series We Can Be Heroes: Finding The Australian of the Year (2005), Summer Heights High (2007), Ja'mie: Private School Girl (2013), and the podcast series Ja'miezing (2021). Ja'mie was born in South Africa but lives in Kirribilli in the upper class North Shore region of Sydney, New South Wales.
Angry Boys is an Australian television mockumentary sitcom miniseries written by and starring Chris Lilley, continuing the mockumentary style of his previous series. In Angry Boys, Lilley plays multiple characters: S.mouse, an American rapper; Jen, a manipulative Japanese mother; Blake Oakfield, a champion surfer; Ruth "Gran" Sims, a guard at a juvenile detention facility; and her teenage grandsons, South Australian twins Daniel and Nathan Sims.
Jane Harber is an Australian actress who is known from her role as Zara Perkich in the television series Offspring.
The AACTA Award for Best Performance in a Television Comedy is an accolade given by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA), a non-profit organisation whose aim is to "identify, award, promote and celebrate Australia's greatest achievements in film and television." The award is handed out at the annual AACTA Awards, which rewards achievements in Australian feature film, television, documentaries and short films. From 1986 to 2010, the category was presented by the Australian Film Institute (AFI), the Academy's parent organisation, at the annual Australian Film Institute Awards. When the AFI launched the Academy in 2011, it changed the annual ceremony to the AACTA Awards, with the current prize being a continuum of the AFI Award for Best Performance in a Television Comedy.
Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell is an Australian comedy news television program hosted by Shaun Micallef. The show first aired on ABC at 8:00 pm on Friday 25 May 2012. The show was named as Most Outstanding Comedy Program at the Logie Awards of 2016. Its title is a reference to the 1976 American satirical black comedy-drama film Network.
Nowhere Boys is an Australian teen drama television series created by Tony Ayres. It was first broadcast on ABC3 on 7 November 2013. The first two series follow the adventures of four mismatched teenage boys – goth Felix Ferne, nerd Andrew "Andy" Lau, golden child Sam Conte, and alpha jock Jake Riles. Nowhere Boys was renewed for a second series which began airing from 23 November 2014. An 80-minute feature-length movie based on the show, titled Nowhere Boys: The Book of Shadows, premiered in selected Australian movie theatres on 1 January 2016. A third series of Nowhere Boys, titled Two Moons Rising, started airing in 2016 with a new cast and characters, replacing the original cast members. The fourth and final series, titled Battle For Negative Space, started airing on 3 December 2018.
The Bachelor is an Australian reality dating show, adapted from the popular American Bachelor franchise. The first season of The Bachelor premiered on 8 September 2013. The season follows Tim Robards, a 30-year-old Sydney based chiropractor originally from Newcastle, as he romantically pursues a cast of 25 women, with the goal of finding his wife.
Jonah from Tonga is an Australian television mockumentary sitcom miniseries that is written by and starring comedian Chris Lilley. The mockumentary series follows Jonah Takalua, a rebellious 14-year-old Australian boy of Tongan descent portrayed by Lilley. The character had been introduced in Lilley's 2007 series Summer Heights High. At the conclusion of that series, Jonah was expelled from Summer Heights High School. In this series, his father, Rocky Takalua, has sent him back to his homeland of Tonga to live with his uncle and their family in order to get Jonah's life back on track. The series was highly controversial for its use of brownface and ethnic stereotypes.
Miranda Tapsell is a Larrakia Aboriginal Australian actress of both stage and screen, best known for her role as Cynthia in the Wayne Blair film The Sapphires and her 2015 performance as Martha Tennant in the Nine Network drama series Love Child. In 2016, she portrayed Fatima in the Stan series Wolf Creek.
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 international premiere on Disney Junior in the United States and is released widely on Disney+.
Frayed is an Australian-British comedy-drama television series on ABC TV and Sky UK. It premiered in the United Kingdom on 26 September 2019 and in Australia on 16 October. The series was created and written by Australian comedian Sarah Kendall, who also stars in it. The first series of six episodes is set in 1988 London and Newcastle, New South Wales. Kendall portrays Sammy, who is an affluent Australian-born British resident with two teenage children. After her husband dies disgracefully and leaves a bankrupt estate, Sammy returns home to live with her mother Jean and younger brother Jim. She encounters former boyfriend Dan and works for politician Chris, while fending off Jim's abrasive girlfriend Bev.
First Day is an Australian drama television series which premiered on ABC Me on 30 March 2020. The series originated as a short film of the same title which aired in 2017. The series retells elements of the short film. The series was filmed in Adelaide, South Australia including on location at Marryatville High School and Mercedes College.
