Gruen will be back in 2018 and Paul McDermott to return to television
The ABC has made another round of programming announcements for the year ahead, confirming the Gruen franchise will return to screens in 2018.
Gruen will be back in 2018
In addition, perennial television personality Paul McDermott will return to the national broadcaster as host of Think Tank – “ABC’s new game show with a difference”.
Think Tank will screen weeknights at 6pm with three contestants battling it out in a general knowledge test. “Helping or maybe hindering them in the pursuit of game show glory, is the Think Tank, eight everyday Australians with an extraordinary love of trivia and general knowledge. Our Think Tankers are there to help but sometimes they get it wrong,” a release from the ABC said.
McDermott said the show would be hard to resist.
“Australia is about to meet eight wonderfully funny, warm and intelligent people. Oh, and I’ll be there too, The Marvellous Mr Me! How could anyone resist?”
Gruen – the ABC’s panel show about all things marketing, advertising and public relations – will also get another run. This year’s edition of the show wasn’t confirmed until August and screened in September.
The show debuted to a metro audience of 903,000 – beating the second-last episode of Matty J’s run as The Bachelor on Ten – and continued to rate well into late 2017.
The ABC’s full round of programming announcements:
NEW HIGHLIGHTS
Back In Time For Dinner
One Australian family goes on an extraordinary time-travelling adventure to discover how the post-World War 2 revolution in the food we eat has transformed the way we live, the fabric of the nation and defined the roles of men and women over the past 60 years.
In each episode Annabel Crabb, will guide our modern day family through a different decade. Back In Time For Dinner offers a unique opportunity to tap into the social, economic, and political imperatives of our times.
The family’s own home is meticulously transformed back in time from the 50s all the way to present day and finally into the future. Following carefully researched recipes they’ll source, cook and eat the same meals as everyday Australian families in each era. The family will live through the highs, lows and challenges that shaped family life in the 20th century.
A Warner Bros. Australia production for the ABC.
Employable Me
It’s hard enough finding a job nowadays, but when you have a disability it can be almost impossible.
Employable Me follows people with neuro diverse conditions such as autism, OCD and Tourette Syndrome as they search for meaningful employment.
The series follows nine warm, funny and generously open participants as their job searches unfold. Each story is told from the characters own perspective and follows their determination. Neuro-psych testing by experts identifies their skills, reveals some astounding cognitive brilliance and helps deliver some truly surprising job
outcomes.
A Northern Pictures production. Financed by Screen Australia and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with financial support of the NSW Department of Family and Community Services and the assistance of Create NSW.
Everyone’s A Critic
Everyone’s A Critic opens the doors into some of the nation’s most prestigious art galleries. The Australian public are then invited in to deliver their opinions on works created by some of our most respected and iconic artists.
Regardless of their education or knowledge of art, the ‘critics’ are asked in each episode to comment, interpret, and respond to a collection of works. Subjects including Australian identity, race relations, love, family, gender and pop culture are explored through paintings, installations, sculptures and photography.
Everyone’s A Critic is candid, emotional, humorous and at times controversial. Part art history, part critique it captures a cultural response to what has and what is happening in our world.
Everyone’s got a story, everyone’s got an opinion, everyone’s a critic.
A Matchbox Pictures Production for the ABC.
General Monash and Me: Peter Greste on Australia’s Greatest ANZAC
Monash is a towering figure in Australia’s story of World War 1; he is celebrated as one of the great tacticians of the Great War with his innovative battle tactics helping to break the stalemate on the Western Front.
A raft of contemporary biographies builds on this mystique, but how accurate are their accounts of him as a commander of the AIF? Was he, as his critics claim, vain, impulsive, egotistical, and prone to exaggeration? Award winning journalist Peter Greste plays detective and military analyst, unearthing private letters, diary entries and army records from protagonists on both sides of the conflict to reveal a much richer and more detailed picture of Monash.
An Artemis Media Production in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Screenwest, Lotterywest and The Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
Hawke, The Larrikin and the Leader
From the moment Bob Hawke blazed onto the national stage, he was the rock god of Australian politics. Never short on self-belief, he propelled himself head and shoulders above the crowd to become the most popular Prime Minister we’d ever had. But what kind of leader was Bob Hawke? And what are the lessons for today?
Now with unprecedented access to Bob Hawke and intimate first-time accounts from those who were by his side, this two-part political biography takes a revelatory look at the times and the leadership that made us who we are today. The result is a rollicking journey through some of the most tumultuous decades in Australia, made more timely by the 35th anniversary in March 2018 of Bob Hawke winning government, and the current crisis of confidence in Australian political life.
A Southern Pictures production with funding from Screen Australia and the ABC, in association with Create NSW.
Think Tank
Hosted by TV grandmaster Paul McDermott, Think Tank is an exciting new nightly quiz show. Each episode sees three contestants go head to head, pitting their general knowledge and their general luck against each other, drawing on the wisdom of eight relatively ordinary Australians with an extra-ordinary love of trivia and general knowledge.
But be warned…Our Think Tankers – like Australia itself – are made up of a diverse group of people plucked from all walks of life. They are there to help but sometimes they get it wrong.
An ITV Studios Australia production for the ABC.
RETURNING TITLES
Ask The Doctor, Season 2
This innovative factual series returns to deliver more of the latest in health and medical advice for all Australians. In the new season we’ll find out if we really can live to be 100, discover if pets are good for our health and if we can afford to eat the right food. Our inquisitive doctors are back and will put themselves and the public through life-changing experiments, they’ll bust medical myths and bring us the latest in health advice we should all know. Who knows maybe Granny really did know best.
Nothing will be off limits as we investigate and test the latest medical methods to explore and guide the health of our nation.
A WTFN production for the ABC.
Catalyst
Returning in 2018 to take you to the heart of the biggest science stories from Australia and around the world, each hour-long program will delve into the very latest science, meet the researchers at the cutting edge and show how scientific thinking is changing the lives of everyday people.
The series will explore how we can use maths to help us make better decisions and the ways robots are transforming farming across Australia; we’ll meet the intrepid explorers determined to go back to the Moon and discover why we should all make sleep a priority.
It’s a series that will astonish and inform in equal measure.
An ABC production.
Compass
Compass returns in March 2018 with brand new episodes. Highlights include PitchUp, where Australian families have a chance to make a difference by donating to support grassroots charities; Sacred Space an immersive series featuring high profile Australians including Australia’s first female bishop Kaye Goldsworthy and musician and writer Eddie Ayres; The Street challenges Australian to find real meaning in their lives, and on Good Friday a Compass special Countdown To Calvary presented by Hugh Bonneville is a forensic investigation into the last week of Christ’s life.
An ABC production.
Gardening Australia
ABC’s most down-to-earth gardening program is blossoming in 2018 into a hour-long format that you can catch at the new time of 7.30pm Friday, kicking off on January 26th.
Gardening Australia has a new timeslot in 2018
Join host Costa Georgiadis and the team as they traverse this amazing country unearthing the best gardens and gardeners in the land.
A new duration, new time slot, new stories, new information from trusted and knowledgeable presenters and plenty of ideas to carry you into a flourishing new year.
An ABC production.
Hard Quiz, Season 3
After the huge success of season two,2 Hard Quiz is back in 2018 for a harder-than-ever third series.
Host and loveable grouch Tom Gleeson grills four self-declared experts on their own unique subjects as they battle each other, and the barbs, to become Hard Quiz Champion.
Hard Quiz is back for its third outing
The contestants give as good as they get to take home the coveted Big Brass Mug™.
When it comes to entertainment, there’s no question Hard Quiz is the answer
A Thinkative TV production for the ABC.
Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery Season 6
Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery is back on the road.
In this ten part series, Julia takes much loved and well known personalities on a trip down memory lane creating unscripted moments, provoking reactions and reflecting dimensions of the guests along the way. Each intimate and revealing journey shows that our past, our present and our future are all there inside us, just waiting to come
out, waiting to go for a walk.
Guests this series are: Germaine Greer, Louis Theroux, Rebecca Gibney, Nicky Winmar, Maggie Beer, Barrie Cassidy, Cate McGregor, Brian Cox, Raelene Boyle and Dave Faulkner.
A Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder production for the ABC.
Jack Irish Season 2
Jack (Guy Pearce) stumbles into the world of manipulative pharmaceutical companies, corrupt educational institutions aimed at international students and fatal clinical trials. The apparent suicide of a foreign student triggers a chain of events that will see Jack risking his life to uncover the truth.
Guy Pearce as Jack Irish on the ABC
An Easy Tiger production for ABC in association with Film Victoria.
Restoration Australia
Restoration Australia gets a makeover and returns for seven episodes in 2018 with new host Stuart Harrison at the helm. Harrison, an architect, and self-confessed history nerd is the co-founder and director of an award-winning architectural practice and an expert on existing building and adaptive heritage re-use projects.
Each episode, Harrison follows the trials and tribulations of a different group of Australians committed to the daunting task of restoring forgotten heritage gems into living homes. This season looks beyond the restoration of colonial and early Australian buildings to embrace significant homes from all periods of Australian history. From
Iconic modernist masterpieces to Queenslanders, inner city gasworks and colonial churches, each of the ambitious projects in this fresh new series will inspire and surprise Australian audiences.
An ABC Production with Fremantle Media Australia.
The Checkout Season 6
The Checkout, ABC’s factual consumer affairs series, returns to our screens with new episodes which turn consumer TV on its head with its no-holds-barred, irreverent and entertaining approach to the subject at hand.
As in previous series, presenters will include Julian Morrow and Craig Reucassel from The Chaser team, Kirsten Drysdale, Zoe Norton Lodge, Ben Jenkins, Scott Abbot, Alex Lee, Andy Matthews and Kate Browne from CHOICE.
A co-production between the ABC, Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder and Giant Dwarf.
You Can’t Ask That, Season 3
You Can’t Ask That returns bolder, braver and blunter than ever. Asking misunderstood Australians the most outrageous, uncomfortable and shocking questions sourced from the public, the series holds a mirror to all corners of contemporary life and culture. The series confronts prejudice and discrimination, offering genuine insight into the lives of diverse Australians who live in judgement.
You Can’t Ask That will be asking more questions net year
Taking a seat and answering the questions in 2018 are: priests, former cult members, swingers, former reality tv stars, people with schizophrenia, sexual assault survivors, drag queens/kings and people with eating disorders.
This groundbreaking format was recently awarded the European Broadcast Union’s Rose d’Dor for Best Reality & Factual Entertainment Program with the series format enjoying immense success internationally, well on the way to becoming the ABC’s biggest original format hit.
With no subjects off limits the questions are confronting, the answers surprising.
An ABC production.
topics
ABC
Annabel Crabb
Back In Time For Dinner
Employable Me
Everyone's A Critic
Gardening Australia
Gruen
Hard Quiz
Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery
Paul McDermott
Peter Greste
television
The Chaser
The Checkout
Tom Gleeson
TV
Yay!
User ID not verified.
Great line-up!
Both the FTA broadcasters and the ABC are doing well with their content rosters for 2018.
User ID not verified.
Looking good!
User ID not verified.