ABC's blog

Douse the lights and board up the doors – ABC TV’s AFI award-winning comedy, Double The Fist, is back for a new season of over-the-top action. More anarchic than ‘The Young Ones’, more surreal than ‘The Mighty Boosh’ and chock-full of seething anger and blood-soaked special effects, Double The Fist is testosterone-fuelled TV that shows no mercy.

Three years in the making, this new 8 x 30-minute action-packed comedy series is a cinematic epic of love, betrayal and time travel – spiked with high adventure, low blows and more digital effects than ‘Transformers’.

Led by charismatic crusader Steve Foxx, the Fist Team includes extreme sportsman Rod; the mysterious Mephisto; that large, loveable lump of man meat The Womp; ‘Panda’ the panda; vending machine assassin Tara; Ballistic Man, mythical warrior and Odin, professional wrestler.

Deep underground mines, gaping pits and the vast expanse of the Australian desert are the backdrop for Dirt Game, the new six-part ABC TV drama series, which starts filming this week.

Written by Michael Harvey and produced by David Taft and Michael Harvey, Dirt Game delves into one of Australia’s oldest and riskiest pursuits – mining. It tells the story of the industry’s men and women – from the faction-torn board, to the workers at the hazardous ore face – striving to save a proud, if crippled Australian firm.

Wednesday, 06 August
9.30pm

After a visit to a military base goes wrong, the Prime Minister becomes concerned that not enough people are joining the armed forces. The Unit is asked to solve the problem.

CAST: Lachy Hulme, David James, Neil Melville, Rob Sitch, Merrick Watts

The Hollowmen will be repeated on ABC2 – Thursday, August 07 at 9:00pm

Friday, 08 August
8.00pm

To complement the opening of the Beijing Olympics Collectors does sport. Niccole Warren checks out the National Sports Museum at the MCG. Charles Leski, an auctioneer who specialises in sporting memorabilia, passes on some excellent tips about what is valuable and what isn't in the vast array of sporting memories.

Gordon Brown's Roving Eye lights up when he finds a chance to offer some 'expert' golfing advice to a 'novice' called Peter Thomson. Avid Gold Coast surfer Carl Tanner has one of the largest collections of surfboards in Australia, if not the world. He has more than 300 boards ranging from a rare 1915 Duke Kahanamoku design, to one with its own built-in jet engine.

Thursday, 07 August
8.30pm

The head of Scotland Yard's Homicide Prevention Unit, Laura Richards builds a psychological portrait of history's most notorious murderer by going inside the mind of Jack the Ripper.

No one was ever charged with the brutal Whitechapel murders of 1888, which continue to fascinate the public. It was rumoured that the horrible mutilations of the victims' bodies were the work of a doctor. Others said the culprit was Queen Victoria's grandson.

Modern police have tools that the original crime investigators could not have dreamed about; DNA profiling, CCTV, fingerprinting even geo-profiling. Richards sifts details about the victims and decodes their injuries to bring her closer to the Ripper than anyone has ever been before.

Thursday, 07 August
6.10pm

Historian presenter Simon Thurley turns his attention to the English country house that represented the very heart of Britain's political, economic and cultural life in the 16th to 18th century.

Unlike Europe, where power resided absolutely with the monarch, in Britain it rested not only with the king, but also with parliament, which was controlled by the great men of the counties and shires.

These aristocrats were kings in their own little 'countries'. Flush with money given to them by Henry VIII after he took over the monasteries, they cemented that power through building wonderful houses. More than 700 were built between 1530 and 1750 and their design reflected the roles of lord and ladies and the distancing of their assistants to 'downstairs' staff.

Thursday, 07 August
5.25pm

Everyone's on a high when the Solar Blue team decides to surf a new break at Swordfish Bay. With perfect waves, Cassie (Rebecca Breeds) forgets all the rules. She's sucked in by a rip and lands on a rock ledge. Wiping out spectacularly, she injures her foot and is rescued by Adam (Eka Darville).

Wednesday, 06 August
9.00pm

Freezing is a contemporary, relationship comedy - full of heart - about a couple living and working from home together. And about what a nightmare that is.

Hugh Bonneville (Iris, Doctor Zhivago, Tipping The Velvet) and Elizabeth McGovern (Once Upon a Time in America, Ragtime) star as Matt and Elizabeth, a middle-aged couple who should be in the prime of their lives, but instead find themselves jobless, forced to spend 24 hours at home in each other's company and driving each other crazy!
Elizabeth is an Oscar-nominated actress, but her film work has dried up and now she wonders where the next job will come from.

Matt has just been replaced by his assistant at the publishing firm where he worked for 15 years. As a result - and for the first time in their marriage - Matt and Elizabeth now have to spend their days together at home - two freelancers seeking work.

Wednesday, 06 August
6.30pm

Following their New Zealand food adventure, Maggie Beer and Simon Bryant reset their sights on local Australian produce. This week they are enjoying two excellent fish, the King George whiting and the mulloway.

Simon takes his nephew Harry on a trip to the local port side markets where they're entertained by fishermen spruiking their wares. Harry is not too keen on the seafood on offer but doesn't mind a bit of King George whiting. Convinced that this is a fish for even the fussiest of fish eaters, Simon decides to cook some.

Tuesday, 05 August
8.30pm

NEW SERIES, NEW NIGHT, NEW TIMESLOT

Grand Designs moves to a new night in a new timeslot. Presented by design expert Kevin McCloud, series six premieres on Tuesday August 5 at 8.30pm.

In this episode Kevin meets Tim and Zoe Bawtree who live in an elegant Regency house in Cheltenham, UK. But lovely as it is, the four storey house is expensive to run. With the aim of becoming mortgage free, Tim and Zoe decide to sell their house and build an ultra modern, low maintenance house in their large back garden.

However, the garden is surrounded by grade two listed houses and, because of height restrictions, Tim and Zoe are forced to build 60 per cent of their new home underground. This doesn't deter them, neither do the 90 objections to their planning application from the neighbours.

Tuesday, 05 August
8.00pm

From the Logie award-winning team who brought us Dynasties, Family Fortunes is a four-part half-hour series that explores how dramatic reversals in fortune - for better or worse - have affected Australia's most interesting families.

Family Fortunes is a rare opportunity for viewers to enter the private homes of four families, as they reveal for the first time on television the intimate details of their history. In this new series, family members candidly discuss the unexpected incidents that have dramatically affected them - affairs, illness, car accidents, death and unjust wills - and the profound repercussions of these events. Each shares their unique perspectives, with great honesty and often great emotion.

Episode Four: The Manifolds

Tuesday, 05 August
6.50pm

The National Library of Australia is the country's largest reference library with over nine million items in its collection, including a surprising number of art works. Yet visitors to the library glimpse only a fraction of the collection with many fragile items unable to be placed on permanent display.

Former director of the National Gallery of Australia, Betty Churcher, presents an insider's guide to some of the library's art treasures, which are rarely on public display. From her unique vantage point, Churcher makes intriguing historical connections between paintings and engravings, photography, manuscripts and artefacts, illustrated journals and diaries.

These are fascinating tales about the creative process and the works themselves that offer a tantalising insight into Australia's culture and heritage.

Episode 9: John Olsen's Opera House Mural

Sunday, 03 August
8.35pm

In this final episode set against the last six days of the war, on the home front, Hastings is preparing itself for victory celebrations. For Foyle (Michael Kitchen) it means retirement and hopefully the return of his son, Andrew (Julian Ovenden), from the war; for Sam (Honeysuckle Weeks) a new and uncertain future; for Milner (Anthony Howell) a promotion at another police station down the coast and a new baby. Until the announcement however, there's still work to be done.

Foyle is enlisted as the police representative for the council's Victory Day Celebrations Committee. Worried about a breakdown in public order, the council has collected together the great and the good of the town to see how best to manage what is anticipated as the biggest street party of all time.

Sunday, 03 August
7.30pm

This week on Doctor Who: The Poison Sky, the Sontarans activate their masterplan and begin to choke the whole of planet Earth. UNIT is left defenceless, with a traitor in their ranks.

And, as interplanetary war edges closer, the Doctor (David Tennant) has to fight to keep both Martha (Freema Agyeman) and Donna (Catherine Tate) alive. But will he have to make the ultimate sacrifice?

Also stars Christopher Ryan as General Staal and Jaqueline King as Sylvia Noble.

Sunday, 03 August
1.30pm

The late Michael Riley is one of the most important contemporary Indigenous visual artists of the past two decades. Over his 20 year career he created an impressive body of work ranging from black and white portraiture, to film, video and large-scale digital photography.

This two-part special, Sights Unseen, is an intimate account of Michael's short but prolific life. Riley not only looked at the world through a different lens, he wanted the world to view what he saw. His films and photographs challenge perceptions of Indigenous life, particularly in eastern Australia.

Episode two focuses on Michael's filmmaking - its inspiration and impact. Friends reflect on him as a friend and professional, and talk about his tragic early death from renal failure, which was triggered by childhood rheumatic fever, a common disease among the Aboriginal community.