Tim Minchin

Tim Minchin stars in Upright, an eight-part series about two misfits, thrown together by chance in the middle of the Australian desert, who forge the unlikeliest of bonds in their quest to get a precious piano from one side of the country to the other. He plays Lucky Flynn, alongside newcomer Milly Alcock in the road-trip adventure, which takes places between Sydney and Perth. Lucky Flynn hasn't spoken to his family in years. He's broke, distant and damaged. He's also a gifted pianist, whose talent for music is matched only by his talent for self-destruction. When he learns that his mother has only days left to live, Lucky sets off in a hire car to drive the 4,000km from Sydney to Perth to say goodbye, taking with him his only cherished possession in the world: a battered and scarred upright piano. But what should have been a straightforward drive across the outback soon becomes a test of Lucky's emotional fitness, when he quite literally runs into Meg, a hilarious, tough-as-nails teenager, who we soon discover has plenty of scars and secrets of her own.

This six-part comedy series tracks the trials and tribulations of five car loads of travellers in peak hour morning transit and again on their drive home to find out how the workday turned out.

The Secret River dramatises the British colonisation of Australia in microcosm, with the dispossession of Indigenous Australians made comprehensible and ultimately heart-breaking as Will's claim over a piece land he titles "Thornhill's Point", brings his family and neighbours into conflict with the traditional owners of the land.