The inside story of three Liberal prime ministers and a tumultuous Coalition government is the focus of a landmark ABC documentary series, and one of the highlights of the public broadcaster’s television offering for 2024.
Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison sat down with the multi-award winning journalist Mark Willacy for the three-part series, which producers say is in the tradition of Labor in Power, The Howard Years and The Killing Season.
The comedian who mocked many of these shenanigans over the nine years with his unique brand of political satire, Shaun Micallef, is returning to the ABC with a new entertainment show a year after he walked away from Mad As Hell after 15 years.
Micallef’s ITV Studios production does not have a name yet but the man himself did give a hint of what it was not: “Suffice to say, it will not feature cooking, home renovations, marriage, singing, sport, RBT units, dogs, wilderness survival, quiz questions, news clips, stock footage, wearing masks, border security, amazing races, Lego, sitting on a panel or being marooned on an island in your underwear.”
Over at ABC Kids, perhaps Australia’s most successful cultural export, Bluey, will have a special 28-minute special episode called The Sign.
It will air on ABC TV and iView before being available on Disney+. The show recently marked five years and 151 episodes since it was released on the ABC in 2018.
The ABC’s new content chief, Chris Oliver-Taylor, is serving up a healthy slate of drama and comedy in his first full year at the helm, including a third series of both The Newsreader and Deborah Mailman’s Total Control, which have been well received by audiences and critics alike.
There are also three new dramas including Ladies In Black, which shares a name with the 2018 movie and is based on the 1993 novel about the lives of the women who work in a department store.
House of Gods, which was announced last year but has been delayed, is set in western Sydney around an imam’s family and the Australian Arab and Iraqi community he leads.
Oliver-Taylor is reluctant to call the show “brave” but says he wants to get the marketing right to attract people who may never have watched the ABC.
“It’s a really wonderful commission, but it’s not necessarily a broad play,” Oliver-Taylor told Guardian Australia.
The new offering that is most certainly a broad play is Return to Paradise, an Australian version of the popular UK crime drama Death in Paradise, which has been airing on the BBC since 2011.
“Death in Paradise is one of our biggest shows which plays directly into a really core ABC audience,” Oliver-Taylor said. “The BBC brought this idea to us and we said ‘fantastic’. It’s pretty sure to work. You know, it’s one of those shows that I think will bring a big audience in and it means the ABC audience can find other great shows.”
The breakout star of Love on the Spectrum, Michael Theo, has been cast as the neuro-divergent son of a children’s author and his wife, played by the well-known British actors Ben Miller and Sally Phillips.
“This is an amazing project with really big actors and Theo, who plays their son Austin,” Oliver-Taylor said. I think that’s going to be a huge hit. We were so excited that somebody from a documentary series is now going to be an actor in drama, essentially playing himself, I guess.”
Virginia Trioli, who recently quit ABC Radio to return to television, will be hosting a new arts show called Creative Types.
“Virginia is going to be talking to a range of significant people from the world of art, design, TV, fashion and media,” Oliver-Taylor said. “But also taking us into the world of creativity.”
New comedies include White Fever, about a Korean Australian adoptee “with a love of hairy white guys” and series three of Kitty Flanagan’s Fisk.
Musical quizshow Spicks and Specks is returning, as is Lisa Millar’s Muster Dogs and two new shows with Maggie Beer and Miriam Margolyes.
