Tween TV From the Turn of the Millennium

We’re forever losing our minds over Round the Twist, a stalwart of the 1990s (it ran from 1990 until 2001). It was based on stories by the popular Australian author Paul Jennings, who collaborated on the making of the series. 

Airies Inlet on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road stood in for the fictional town of Port Niranda, where a sculptor called Tony Twist lives in a lighthouse with his three children: the teenage twins Peter and Linda and their younger brother Bronson. Their adventures, featuring supernatural elements like ghosts, time-travelling Vikings and a dryad, were full of wordplay and slapstick. Although it was made for kids, the show was intended to appeal to all ages, from parents on down, and showed the problems and obsessions of both older and younger children.

In the episode Brainless, Bronson and his friend Anthony conduct a science experiment on Pete and Linda that goes seriously wrong, extracting their brains from their bodies. Then Anthony, who has an unrequited crush on Linda, accidentally puts a love spell on her – and Linda’s brain, many miles away, starts homing back to her ‘sugar plum’. It’s a visceral representation of a teenage crush, with a touch of family-friendly body horror and a hefty dose of the show’s trademark absurdity.

Open up a bottle called ‘1996’ and you’ll release The Genie from Down Under, an Australian Children’s Television Foundation production whose central character Penelope, a haughty upper-class English child you’ll love to hate, finds a magic opal in her attic and summons an unusual pair of genies: an Australian father-son team called Bruce (Rhys Muldoon) and Baz (Glenn Meldrum).

They delight in playing tricks on their snooty new master and end up whisking her, along with her mother Lady Diana (Anna Galvin) and their housekeeper Mossie (Monica Maughan), to a property in outback Australia.

Themes of culture-clash and class lurk within this supernatural comedy. As they adjust to life together, much of the show’s humour comes from the genies’ wilful misinterpretation of Penelope’s commands: when she asks them to remove the rubbish in a room, they include her in the dump, and they turn her into an immobile diamond-encrusted figure when she asks for a sparkling kitchen.

The environmental movement of the 1990s finds embodiment in Neri, the alien protagonist of Ocean Girl. In this clip from the second series of the program, we glide with her through the Barrier Reef as she discovers a mysterious object that will connect her with her outer-space past.

Neri was played for all three series of Ocean Girl by Melbourne actor Marzena Godecki, who undertook intense swimming training for the part. It paid off: the freedom of her distinctive, fish-like double kick is contrasted in this scene with her friend’s bulky scuba gear, emphasising Neri’s oneness with the water (she can also communicate with whales).

The vivid corals and fish of the Reef, and the bird’s-eye pans over the beach under the opening titles, encapsulate what set Ocean Girl apart from other tween fare – the lavish use of its Far North Queensland locations, which gave its environmental message extra force.

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When you were a kid, did you think your parents were really embarrassing? Only to grow up and find out that they’re actually kind of awesome? In the inaugural episode of Mortified, the central character, pre-teen Taylor (Marny Kennedy), lives in Sunburn Beach with her kooky parents, who run an underwear shop. Her worst nightmare comes true when they enter her school's Parent Talent Spectacular with a comedy bit called ‘Undies Through the Ages’. Taylor dies a thousand deaths – until they bring the house down and her crush Leon calls them 'legends’.

Mortified, which ran on the Nine Network between 2006 and 2007, explored relatable adolescent issues like identity, image, unrequited love, frenemies, siblings and school.

Kaboodle led the charge of eccentric TV shows for kids, sparking up our screens from 1987 to 1990 with a creative mix of 2D animation, claymation, live action and puppetry. Each episode featured stories that incorporated myths, classic literature and fairytales as well as the issues and perspectives of modern kids.

Its first episode featured The Great Detective Alex Holmes, a story by Michael Cusack and Richard Chataway of the South Australian animation studio Aniflex. Alex, a pint-sized version of Conan Doyle’s famous sleuth, must chase down a thief who’s stolen their TV. Accompanied by his sidekick Watson, an elderly dog, he attempts to see through the burglar’s disguises while trying to beat him at his own game.

With great economy and swirling life, Aniflex builds vivid characters out of clay. The thief morphs from dustbin to moustache-twirling villain to cat burglar, finally posing as a bus stop. The queue for the bus is a veritable gallery: a punk, a Frankenstein and a boombox-toting gorilla, all masterfully modelled and instantly conveying character.

Kaboodle harked back to classic English animation series like The Wombles and The Magic Roundabout, but freshened the format for late ’80s kids.

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Looking for more?

• From hip hop to hoedown: discover the many lives of Humphrey B Bear
• Sample a mixtape of five decades of Australian music television
• Learn about the explosive arrival of colour TV in Australia in 1975

Main image: Taylor's parents Don (Andrew Blackman) and Glenda (Rachel Blakely) perform at the school talent quest while Mr McCluskey (Steven Tandy) looks on in a scene from Mortified: Taylor's DNA, 2006. The image perfectly captures the show's frenetic tone and kooky charm. NFSA title: 736121