The BEST ABC (AU) shows of all time
Every ABC (AU) show, ranked
We've compiled the average episode rating for every ABC (AU) show to compile this list of best shows!
#1 - The Checkout
Satirical consumer affairs series presented by Julian Morrow and Craig Reucassel from The Chaser, Hungry Beast's Kirsten Drysdale and Kate Browne from CHOICE. Conditions apply. While stocks last.
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#2 - The Micallef Program
The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) is a character based sketch show interspersed with interviews, infomercials, group counselling sessions, razor edged satire, falling over, and dancing with elan.
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#3 - Spicks and Specks
Adam Hills hosts this lighthearted music quiz show. The two teams are captained by Myf Warhurst and Alan Brough.
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#4 - Frontline (1994)
Frontline is a satirical comedy on Current Affairs. From the anchor Mike Moore who believes he does all the work (but just reads the autocue) to the egotistic reporter Brooke Vandenberg and the troubles of the other staff (not to mention horrible Friday Night Entertainer Elliot Rhodes) After two years, the show did a thing related only to sci-fi programs, by skipping forward a number of years. The show, however, maintained it's high quality and is one of the Top Australian shows ever made. From Season 2 onwards, there are no specific writing credits as Cilauro, Kennedy, Sitch and Gleisner wrote in practically all episodes. The same is said for directing.
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#5 - Ronny Chieng: International Student
International Student is the story of Ronny Chieng, a Malaysian student who has travelled to Australia to study law. All he has to do is study, get good marks and make his Mom proud. Well, that was the plan anyway.
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#6 - The Katering Show
Fill the void in your life by joining celebrity chef, Kate McLennan, and her food intolerant friend, Kate McCartney, as they cook their way into the Food Culture Revolution with a series of edible recipes*! Watch as The Kates create food intolerant-friendly meals and explore modern culinary trends like quitting sugar, food porn, food trucks and drinking shit out of jars! They road test everybody’s favourite culinary moneysuck, the Thermomix, and sample a range of libations, like wine, whiskey and kombucha, the hot new drink that combines parasitical fungi with intestinal spasming! The Katering Show! Change your life through the power of good food and even better Friendship**. * The Katering Show accepts no responsibility for side effects incurred from consuming these dishes. ** Friendship is a trademark of The Katering Show Horse Dancing Spectacular and Motorboat Hire Pty Ltd.
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#7 - Gruen
Gruen is about advertising, how it works, and how it works on us. It decodes and defuses the commercial messages that swirl through our lives, with the help of a panel of ad industry experts. It's the show that tracks advertising almost as closely as advertising tracks you!
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#8 - Round the Twist
Round The Twist is a wacky TV series written by the hilarious children's author, Paul Jennings. It follows the bizarre lives of the Twist family. Tony Twist (a.k.a. Dad) and his three children – the twins Pete and Linda and youngest son, Bronson – move from "The Big Smoke" (the city) to the sea-side village of Port Niranda. They move into an old lighthouse, previously owned by their new neighbour, Nell, and their new lives begin. Strange things always happen to the Twist family, strange but hilarious things. Each episode is a self-contained story with an amazing twist in the tail.
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#9 - Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries is based on the novels of Australian author Kerry Greenwood. Our lady sleuth sashays through the back lanes and jazz clubs of late 1920’s Melbourne, fighting injustice with her pearl handled pistol and her dagger sharp wit. Leaving a trail of admirers in her wake, our thoroughly modern heroine makes sure she enjoys every moment of her lucky life.
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#10 - The Librarians
This series centers on the trials and tribulations of Frances O'Brien, a devout Catholic and head librarian in a small suburban town. Her life unravels when she is forced to employ her ex-best friend, Christine Grimwood—now a drug dealer—as the children's librarian. Frances must do all she can to contain her menacing past and her present prejudices.
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#11 - Rosehaven
Daniel McCallum returns to his rural Tasmanian hometown, Rosehaven, to help his formidable mother in her real estate business.
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#12 - Laid
Laid is a series about sex. Sex and death. Death and valour. Life and love. For Roo, it's hard enough just trying to work out who she is and what it's all about without being dragged back to her chequered bedroom past to protect her exes - and preserve her chance at true love.
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#13 - Rake
On any single day, Cleaver Greene is described as many things. Whilst his ex-wife may call him 'unreliable', his son will call him 'a mate'. To his learned friends at the bar table he is 'a real wag', to his jurors he is 'hilarious', and to most judges he is 'an outrage'. To the Tax Office, he is 'a defendant', to a certain brothel owner 'a legend', and to his former cocaine dealer 'a tragic loss'.
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#14 - A Moody Christmas
Once a year, for six years, we visit the lovably dysfunctional Moody family as they come together to share this universally celebrated holiday, stuffed full of all the fun, fights, bad gifts, boring uncles, overbearing in-laws, shocking family secrets and bizarre eccentricities that any family who’s experienced the melting pot of Christmas Day will relate to.
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#15 - Serangoon Road
HBO Asia's first Original series, a ten-episode detective noir series set against the tumultuous backdrop of 1960s Singapore, when the global balance of power is shifting and Singapore is at its crossroad; a time when the British colonial rule is coming to an end, independence is on the horizon, and the island state can finally forge its own identity.
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#16 - The Slap
At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own. This event has a shocking ricochet effect on the group of family and friends who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event. Based on Christos Tsiolkas' best-selling novel.
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#17 - Love on the Spectrum
This uplifting show follows the first steps of young adults on the autism spectrum as they explore the unpredictable world of dating, love, and relationships.
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#18 - Jack Irish
Jack Irish is a man getting his life back together again. A former criminal lawyer whose world imploded, he now spends his days as a part-time investigator, debt collector, apprentice cabinet maker, punter and sometime lover – the complete man really.
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#19 - Utopia (AU)
Set inside the offices of the "Nation Building Authority", a newly created government organization responsible for overseeing major infrastructure projects, Utopia explores that moment when bureaucracy and grand dreams collide. It's a tribute to those political leaders who have somehow managed to take a long-term vision and use it for short-term gain. The eight-part series follows the working lives of a tight-knit team in charge of guiding big building schemes from announcement to unveiling. Constant shifts in priorities are the order of the day as the staff are asked to come up with plans for everything from new roads and rail lines to airports and high rise urban developments. In short, Utopia examines the forces that go into creating a very well-designed white elephant.
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#20 - The Moodys
The Moodys reunites the cast from A Moody Christmas. In the new series Dan (Ian Meadows) and Cora (Jane Harber) return home to Australia to set up house together. Now they are back Down Under, everything in their lives is topsy turvy. As they struggle to make ends meet, the Moody family home is up for sale; Sean’s (Patrick Brammall) funeral fireworks business is going great guns – literally; Maree (Tina Bursill) and Kevin (Danny Adcock) test the freewheeling lifestyle of the grey nomads; Bridget (Rachel Gordon) and Roger (Phil Lloyd) find out if there’s friendship after divorce; and Uncle Terry (Darren Gilshenan) is in a tangled love affair with Yvonne (Sacha Horler), a one-woman force of nature.
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#21 - The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Accompanied by haunting memories of his service time in World War II, Dr Lucian Blake returns home to Australia after 30 years to take over his deceased father's medical practice. As he deals with his own personal loss and changed by his war experiences, the wry, personable doctor performs his other role as police surgeon with gusto. His unconventional and unpredictable manner unnerve some, but it becomes clear Dr Blake is ahead of his time in his use of forensic science, and in his own understanding of the human heart, to help solve murder mysteries in the country town of Ballarat.
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#22 - Fisk
Lawyer Helen Tudor-Fisk is forced to take a job at a shabby, suburban law firm following a humiliating marriage breakdown and a professional fall from grace.
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#23 - Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe
Starring Aunty Donna's Mark Samual Bonanno, Broden Kelly, and Zachary Ruane, the unpredictable comedy follows three best friends running a trendy cafe down one of Melbourne's less-than-iconic laneways.
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#24 - Barracuda
Based on award-winning novelist Christos Tsiolkas’ book and adapted for television in four parts, Barracuda is a moving story about identity, obsession, desire, the dizzy heights of success and the terrifying risk of failure. Starring Rachel Griffiths and Matt Nable and introducing Elias Anton as Danny Kelly.
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#25 - The Newsreader
The Newsreader is set in the maelstrom of a commercial television newsroom in 1986. Dale Jennings is a diligent young reporter who is desperate to become a newsreader and Helen Norville is a notoriously 'difficult' star newsreader determined to build credibility. Over three months, the pair cover an extraordinary chain of news events from the shock of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, to the hype of Halley's Comet and the complexities of the AIDS crisis. A deep bond is formed that will upend their lives and transform the very fabric of the nightly news bulletin.
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#26 - Harrow
The story of Dr. Daniel Harrow, a unorthodox and brilliant medical examiner with a total disregard for authority. When a dark secret from his past threatens to be exposed, Harrow must use all his forensic skills to keep it buried forever.
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#27 - The Letdown
Audrey is determined not to be defined by motherhood. In theory, this seems fairly easy. In practice, her career-focused husband, self-obsessed mother & fancy-free best friend, make it damn near impossible.
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#28 - Bananas In Pyjamas
This television series, Bananas in Pyjamas, is about two giant, child-like bananas, B1 and B2. They are good friends and companions. Together they live on Cuddles Lane, with their friends, the Teddy Bears: Amy, Morgan, and Lulu, the Rat-in-a-Hat, and various other critters. The bananas are constantly teasing the Teddy Bears (the bears know that it is all in fun), but those silly bananas are always able foil the Rat's sly tricks. B1 and B2 are typically mischievous; however, they are always ready to fight for a good cause.
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#29 - Old School
Ted McCabe, a retired cop, and Lennie Cahill a retired crim, get together to solve crimes, unravel scams and make some cash, while avoiding the wrath of the police and the underworld.
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#30 - Upper Middle Bogan
The series follows the story of two families living at opposite ends of the freeway. Bess Denyar, is a doctor with a posh mother Margaret, an architect husband Danny Bright and twin 13-year-olds at a private school, Oscar and Edwina. When Bess finds out that she is adopted, she is stunned, but even more so when she meets her birth parents, Wayne and Julie Wheeler. She also discovers that she has three siblings: Amber, Kayne and Brianna. The bogan Wheelers head up a drag racing team in the outer suburbs and are thrilled to discover the daughter they thought they had lost.
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#31 - 72 Dangerous Places to Live
From its tempestuous, turbulent atmosphere to its consistently moving and shifting tectonic plates, the Earth can be a very dangerous place to live. Devastation can take on many guises; hurricanes lashing southern United States, blistering fires sweeping Australia’s bushland, earthquakes crumbling cities in one bold seismic move, sink holes swallowing homes into darkness and walls of water hurtling toward island continents with such speed and ferocity leaving no chance of escape. From first-hand accounts from the people that live there, 72 Dangerous Places to Live is a fascinating discovery of the world’s riskiest places to live.
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#32 - ANZAC Girls
Honouring the Centenary of the commencement of WW1, ANZAC Girls is a moving new six-part series based on the unique, and rarely told true stories of Australian and New Zealand nurses serving at Gallipoli and the Western Front.
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#33 - Wakefield
What happens when the go-to man – the sanest individual in a psych ward – begins to lose his grip? When the person people rely on most, loses control? After years working as a psych nurse at Wakefield, Nik Katira (Rudi Dharmalingam) is exceptionally good at his job. With a gift for soothing the afflicted and reaching the unreachable, he’s the most stable person in what tends to be a pretty crazy place. But right now, his grip on his own sanity is slipping. The question is… why?
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#34 - The Code (2014)
Stretching from the spectacular red desert of Australia’s outback to the cool corridors of power in Canberra, The Code tells the story of two very different brothers who are handed information those in the highest political echelons will kill to keep secret.
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#35 - Seven Types of Ambiguity
Shown from six different points of view, this tense psychological mystery reveals how people and relationships are tested when a child is kidnapped.
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#36 - Pine Gap
Set in the intensely secretive world of intelligence and the enigmatic US/Australia joint defense facility in central Australia, the spy-thriller Pine Gap delves into the famously strong alliance between the two countries.
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#37 - Shaun Micallef's MAD AS HELL
A half-hour weekly round-up, branding, inoculation and crutching of all the important news stories of the week. Along with a like-minded Think Tank of reporters and pundits, offering not only reportage and analysis of the week’s events but discussion, argument and dissection of what’s making the world turn every which way.
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#38 - Glitch (2015)
James Hayes is a small town police man who is called to the local cemetery in the middle of the night after six people have inexplicably risen from the dead in perfect health. With no memory of their identities, they are determined to discover who they are and what has happened to them. James recognises one of them and along with local doctor Elishia Glass, struggles to keep the case hidden from his colleagues, his family and the world. The six people are all linked in some way and the search begins for someone who knows the truth about how and why they have returned.
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#39 - 72 Cutest Animals
What is the cutest animal in the world? Well that is a matter of opinion. Visually stunning and packed with scientific facts, 72 Cutest Animals is a countdown and investigation into the cutest animals in the world. From owls to bats and koalas to cats, this series uncovers the unusual characteristics that actually make an animal cute – and it’s more than just a pretty face! With explanatory graphics and firsthand accounts from animal lovers and experts, each creature is fully assessed on its cuteness and ranked on a sliding scale to eventually uncover the cutest one in the world.
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#40 - Mystery Road
Detective Jay Swan takes on a grisly case in a new town, a coastal community where the desert meets the ocean and secrets past and present run deep. Jay must reconcile the law and deep lore and confront a dangerous enemy. Spin-off from Ivan Sen’s films 'Mystery Road' and 'Goldstone'.
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#41 - Mystery Road: Origin
It’s 1999, and Constable Jay Swan, a charismatic young officer arrives at his new station. Fresh from the city and tipped for big things, Jay might be the new copper, but he’s not new to this town. His estranged father Jack lives here, as does the woman who will change his life forever, Mary. Mystery Road: Origin will explore how a tragic death, an epic love, and the brutal reality of life as a police officer straddling two worlds, form the indelible mould out of which will emerge, Detective Jay Swan.
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#42 - Stateless
Inspired by true events; a woman escaping a cult, a refugee fleeing with his family, a father trapped in a dead-end job, and a bureaucrat on the verge of a national scandal find their lives intertwined in an immigration detention centre.
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#43 - Total Control
When Alex Irving, a charismatic and contradictory Indigenous woman, is thrust into the national limelight after a horrific event, Australia's embattled Prime Minister Rachel Anderson, sees a publicity goldmine for her party. In a bold power play, she handpicks Alex for the Senate. But Alex wants to be more than just a political stunt: she wants to make a difference. So, when the Prime Minister's cynical calculations betray her, Alex sets out for revenge that will send the political establishment into meltdown.
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#44 - Ask The Doctor
Ask the Doctor is an innovative, fun, and exploratory factual series that addresses the state of the nation's health, the latest in medical treatments and the future of healthcare as we know it.
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#45 - Janet King
Janet King returns from a year's maternity leave determined to prove she still has her edge, but finds a very different Department of Public Prosecutions. Under growing political pressure, director Tony Gillies has formed an uneasy alliance with his police counterpart, Chief Superintendent Jack Rizzoli, and Janet's pre-eminence as Senior Crown Prosecutor is threatened by rising star Owen Mitchell, a former police prosecutor, willing to cut corners to win high-profile cases.
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#46 - Operation Buffalo
A captivating drama set in Maralinga, South Australia, at the height of the Cold War. At a remote army base carrying out British nuclear testing, paranoia runs rife and nuclear bombs are not the only things being tested, as loyalty, love, and betrayal are pitted against each other.
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#47 - The Beautiful Lie
The Beautiful Lie is about love and all that goes with it; family and fidelity, seduction, commitment, jealousy, envy, obligation and mad passion. Love that saves and love that destroys.
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#48 - The Straits
Set among the turquoise waters of Australia's Torres Strait, The Straits follows the life of a criminal family as they smuggle drugs into Australia and exotic wildlife out through blood ties in the Torres Strait Islands.
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#49 - The Secret River
The Secret River dramatises the British colonisation of Australia in microcosm, with the dispossession of Indigenous Australians made comprehensible and ultimately heart-breaking as Will’s claim over a piece land he titles “Thornhill’s Point”, brings his family and neighbours into conflict with the traditional owners of the land.
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#50 - Newton's Law
When Josephine’s low-flying solicitor’s practice is incinerated by a disgruntled client, she is persuaded by her old uni’ friend and not-so-secret admirer, Lewis Hughes, to trade the benefits of her brilliant mind for a berth in the lofty glamour of Knox Chambers. With her office destroyed, her marriage collapsing and motherhood fast losing its charm, Josephine decides it’s time she took her own aspirations off the back burner and resumed her barrister’s robes.
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