Airdate: Australian Encounters

A new animated interstitial is set to begin on ABC1 next week that revisits some of Australia’s best loved heroes, villains and ratbags, with narration from Geoffrey Rush and featuring the voices of Gerry Connolly, Tyler Coppin, Kamahl, Lucy Holmes and David Cotter.

Based on the long running Encounters column, created by Shane Maloney and Chris Grosz in The Monthly magazine, the ten part series is written, produced and directed by Duncan Imberger and Josh Moore of Melbourne based production company Suitcase Murphy.

Australian Encounters looks at what happened when Bob Hawke locked horns with Frank Sinatra? When Lionel Rose sparred with Elvis? And when Enrico Caruso slipped a hot Italian sausage into Nellie Melba’s captive palm?

All ten episodes were hand drawn by New Zealander Chris Grosz using pens and watercolours.

The ten encounters span more than 100 years, from Ned Kelly and Redmond Barry in 1880, through to Kylie Minogue and Michael Hutchence in 1987. Half of them take place in Australia, half of them abroad. The paths of Billy Hughes and Woodrow Wilson converge at Versailles in France, where the world’s statesmen have gathered to redraw the map of the world. The meetings between Joe Lyons and Mussolini take place in Rome. George Johnston and Leonard Cohen happen upon one another in a backroom bar on the Greek island of Hydra. And Lionel Rose meets the King on the set of one of Elvis’ movies at the MGM lot in Los Angeles, where Lionel is preparing to defend his world bantamweight title against Mexican
challenger Chucho Castillo.

Collectively, these stories tell us much about Australian history – touching on topics including late nineteenth century colonial society, World War I, Australian appeasement, Aboriginal rights, and popular culture.

6:55pm Tuesday July 30 ABC1.