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One of Australia.s foremost television writers, Michael Laurence, died this week on March 23rd, .2015, after a long illness. He was 79. Michael was creator and writer of close to two hundred hours of commercially successful Television. He was a gifted storyteller, probably best known for his successful series Return to Eden. He began his professional career as a child actor in Sydney radio, and was always distinguished by his mellifluent speaking voice. This together with his imposing height and dark good looks made him someone not to be ignored. At eighteen he won a two-­‐year scholarship to Lamda (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art). He worked as an actor in the UK and Australia, in everything .from musicals to Shakespeare, and with all the major theatrical companies. He was a clever comedian in shows like .Black Comedy. at Sydney.s Philip Theatre. Working at the Melbourne Theatre Company...

The Missing's penultimate episode, "Return to Eden," laid the groundwork beautifully for its finale, but also took time to visually reconsider all that has come before. In the cold open, another child is abducted, close to where Oliver had been. It rips off the tentative bandaid that Tony and Emily had put over their lives, and also rips their relationship apart. Meanwhile, in the present day, things are continuing (as they have been all season) to be put back together. The final scene of the meeting on the train platform was a culmination so many things. It went beyond a reunion of those who were all together at the beginning of the case, and actually married together the two key pieces of evidence and experience that will likely lead them to the truth next week. Hit the jump for why Baptiste deserves a spin-off series. Every episode of The Missing is an extremely full,...

Wendy Hughes, who has died in Sydney aged 61, will be remembered by her peers as one of the finest actors of her generation.

Hughes won the AFI award for best actress for Careful, He Might Hear You in 1983 and was nominated on six other occasions, for Newsfront, My Brilliant Career, Lonely Hearts, My First Wife, Echoes of Paradise and Boundaries of the Heart.

.She was a brilliant actress who set the standard and was pioneering for her era,. filmmaker Philippe Mora, who was a close friend in the 1980s and early 1990s, told If.

.In my opinion without Wendy there would have been no Judy Davis, no Nicole Kidman and no Cate Blanchett. If timing had been different she would have been a major international star. As it is she leaves a legacy of perfect performances as one of Australia's greatest actresses..

Mora wanted to cast Hughes as the female...

The cult classic movie riff comedy show Mystery Science Theater 3000 celebrates its 25th anniversary with a special MST3K: 25th Anniversary Edition DVD from Shout! Factory, and creator Joel Hodgson tells ETonline that much of the show's recipe for comic success had to do with the unexpected.

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"When you go to a movie, you really know what you're getting because it's been presold to you in so many different ways," Hodgson tells ETonline. "With Mystery Science Theater, I think people liked it because it's kind of like being taken into a haunted house with guides -- you don't know what's going to happen. You're just kind of strapped in, and you've got to go watch this movie, and that's an unusual exercise in today's world. … You just don't watch movies you don't know anything about [these days]. It's just unusual."

For those not...

Shout! Factory has announced that a Mystery Science Theater 3000: 25th Anniversary Edition DVD set will be released this November, featuring The Leech Woman, Gorgo, The Brain that Wouldn’t Die, and more:

“A man and his puppets in space watching cheesy movies … sounds crazy, no? But here on the Satellite of Love you might say each one of us is a captive audience, watching gifted writers and performers try to make sense of it all without losing their minds. Why do we continue to treasure this oddball TV series? That can be answered in one word: funny!

On November 26th, 2013, join us as we celebrate 25 years of cult-movie craziness with Mystery Science Theater 3000: 25th Anniversary Edition from Shout! Factory. Housed in a collectible silver(ish) tin, MST3K: 25th Anniversary Edition is a five DVD set that features the films Moon Zero Two, The Day The Earth Froze,...

Nine has guaranteed the market that it will grow its audience in the key advertising demographics by 5% in 2013.

Sales director Michael Stephenson made the pledge at an event held in Sydney to launch the network’s 2013 programming.

Advertisers and media agencies focus on the 16-39, 18-49 and 25-54 demographics. Stephenson told the audience: “We will guarantee 5% audience gain in the demographics that matter to you.” The pledge was then repeated in a slide in his presentation.

This year has seen Nine and Seven virtually neck-and-neck in the key demos after a period of dominance by Seven. Nine’s recovery was led by the success of the Voice, along with a successful rebooting of Big Brother off the back of The Olympics.

Among the key programming unveiled by Nine for the coming year was another instalment of Southern Star’s series of Kerry Packer biopics, this time featuring a portrayal of the young Rupert Murdoch.