The Coral Island | |
---|---|
Genre | adventure |
Written by | James Andrew Hall |
Directed by | Chris Thomson Ray Brown Ray Alchin |
Starring | Nicholas Bond-Owen Gerard Kennedy |
Composer | Bruce Smeaton |
Country of origin | Australia United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
No. of episodes | 4 |
Production | |
Running time | 40 mins |
Original release | |
Network | ABC |
Release | 1983 |
The Coral Island is a children's television series, adapted from the 19th-century novel The Coral Island by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. [1] The series of 4 episodes was a joint production of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Thames Television. [2] It was filmed on location in the western Samoan village of Salamumu and then on the Whitsunday Islands off the Queensland coast in 1981. [3] [4]
The series was first broadcast in Australia on ABC-TV on 6 January 1983. [5]
The story, set in 1840, centres on 3 boys from Australia and their struggle for survival when they are shipwrecked on a remote Pacific island. Jack (played by Scott McGregor), Peterkin (played by Nicholas Bond-Owen) and Ralph (played by Richard Gibson) must learn to survive on their own on the island, despite their very different characters and backgrounds. After befriending two natives on the island, they are rescued by an English missionary, and the three boys return to Australia. [5]
Franklin James Schaffner was an American film, television, and stage director. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Patton (1970), and is known for the films Planet of the Apes (1968), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), Papillon (1973), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). He served as president of the Directors Guild of America between 1987 and 1989.
Lord of the Flies is the 1954 debut novel of British author William Golding. The plot concerns a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves. The novel's themes include morality, leadership, and the tension between civility and chaos.
Rodney Sturt Taylor was an Australian actor. He appeared in more than 50 feature films, including Young Cassidy (1965), Nobody Runs Forever (1968), The Train Robbers (1973) and A Matter of Wife... and Death (1975).
The Irish Rovers is a group of Irish musicians that formed in Toronto, Canada in 1963 and named after the traditional song "The Irish Rover". They are best known for their international television series, contributing to the popularization of Irish Music in North America, and for the songs "The Unicorn", "Drunken Sailor", "Wasn't That a Party", "The Orange and the Green", "Whiskey on a Sunday", "Lily the Pink", "Finnegan's Wake" and "The Black Velvet Band".
The Big Gig was a popular Australian television sketch comedy music/variety series based on the British TV series Saturday Live. It was produced and broadcast on ABC TV in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was produced and directed by Ted Robinson, who started his career as the director of the second series of the acclaimed The Aunty Jack Show in the early 1970s, and Neil Wilson.
The Aunty Jack Show is a Logie Award-winning Australian television comedy series that ran from 1972 to 1973. Produced by and broadcast on ABC-TV, the series attained an instant cult status that persists to the present day.
What the Butler Saw is a two-act farce written by the English playwright Joe Orton. He began work on the play in 1966 and completed it in July 1967, one month before his death. It opened at the Queen's Theatre in London on 5 March 1969. Orton's final play, it was the second to be performed after his death, following Funeral Games in 1968.
Punishment is an Australian television soap opera made by the Reg Grundy Organisation for Network Ten in 1981.
Colin Friels is a Scottish-born Australian actor of theatre, TV, film and presenter.
Grahame John Bond AM is an Australian actor, writer, director, musician and composer, known primarily for his role as Aunty Jack.
The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean is an 1857 novel written by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. One of the first works of juvenile fiction to feature exclusively juvenile heroes, the story relates the adventures of three boys marooned on a South Pacific island, the only survivors of a shipwreck.
Five Mile Creek is a western television drama series adapted from Louis L'Amour's novel The Cherokee Trail and produced in Australia. It starred Liz Burch, Louise Caire Clark, Rod Mullinar, Jay Kerr, Michael Caton, Peter Carroll, Gus Mercurio, Martin Lewis, Priscilla Weems and Nicole Kidman. It also featured a then-unknown Asher Keddie in her film debut. Jonathan Frakes was a guest star as Maggie's estranged husband, Adam Scott. The series aired on the Disney Channel in the US in the 1980s.
The Hotspur was a British boys' paper published by D. C. Thomson & Co. From 1933 to 1959, it was a boys' story paper; it was relaunched as a comic in October 1959, initially called The New Hotspur, and ceased publication in January 1981.
The Challenge is a 1986 Australian mini series based on the 1983 America's Cup.
All the Green Year is a 1980 Australian television series based on a novel about three boys growing up near Melbourne on the eve of the Great Depression.
Ben Hall is a 1975 Australian TV series based on the bush ranger Ben Hall. It stars Jon Finch as Ben Hall, Evin Crowley as Biddy Hall, John Castle as bushranger Frank Gardiner, Brian Blain as Sir Frederick Pottinger, Jack Charles as Billy Dargin and John Orcsik as John Gilbert. Neil McCallum was the creator-producer and the series editor was Colin Free.
The Passing Bells is a five-part British-Polish television drama that was first broadcast on BBC One in 2014. The series is set during World War I and was a part of the BBC First World War centenary season.
Rory O'Donoghue was an Australian actor, composer and musician, best known for playing the character "Thin Arthur" in the 1970s ABC Television sketch comedy series The Aunty Jack Show, and for playing the guitar solo on Kevin Johnson's biggest hit "Rock 'N' Roll ". The Aunty Jack Show featured O'Donoghue's long-time creative partner Grahame Bond as the title character.
Nicholas Bond-Owen is a child actor of the 1970s and 1980s best known for playing Tristram Fourmile in all five series of the popular comedy George and Mildred and in the film of the same name.
The Gorilla Hunters: A Tale of the Wilds of Africa (1861) is a boys' adventure novel by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. A sequel to his hugely successful 1858 novel The Coral Island and set in "darkest Africa", its main characters are the earlier novel's three boys: Ralph, Peterkin and Jack. The book's themes are similar to those of The Coral Island, in which the boys testify to the positive influence of missionary work among the natives. Central in the novel is the hunt for gorillas, an animal until recently unknown to the Western world, which came to play an important role in contemporary debates on evolution and the relation between white Westerners and Africans.