Michael Carson was an Australian television director who was responsible for some of Australia's most significant series in the last decades of the twentieth century. His work as a director, producer and script editor was recognised with AFI Awards

Australian Film Institute Awards

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award, known as the AACTA Award , is an accolade presented annually by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts . The awards recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry and television industry, including directors,...

, Logie Award

Logie Award

The TV Week Logie Awards are the Australian television industry awards, which have been presented annually since 1959. Renamed by Graham Kennedy in 1960 after he won the first 'Star Of The Year' award, the name 'Logie' awards honours John Logie Baird, a Scotsman who invented the television as a...

s, Penguin Award

Penguin Award

The Penguin Award is an annual award given for excellence in broadcasting by the Television Society of Australia. It was founded in 1954.The award trophy depicts an ear listening to a television tube, but strongly resembles a penguin....

s and Awgie Awards

AWGIE Awards

The AWGIE Awards is an annual awards ceremony conducted by the Australian Writers' Guild, for excellence in screen, television, stage and radio writing. The awards began in 1967....

.

Life and career

Carson was born in Sydney and attended North Sydney Boys High School

North Sydney Boys High School

North Sydney Boys High School is an academically selective, public high school for boys, located at Crows Nest in Sydney, Australia.- History :...

. He commenced work in the television industry as a studio hand and did all his training on the job. He started work with the Australia's national broadcaster, the ABC

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...

, in the early 1970s. His first directing jobs included the rock 'n roll music programme GTK which combined live performances and interviews with cutting edge bands and performers.

He married television producer and director Sandra Levy in the 1970s, and in 1980 they had a son, Simon. They later divorced but maintained close ties.

He was Course Director for screen acting at Australia's NIDA from 2000 to 2003.

He left the ABC to work freelance in 1990. In his post-ABC years he directed for such companies as Barron Television, Jonathan M. Shiff Productions, and Southern Star Xanadu.

Style and achievements

Carson was responsible for "an extraordinary range of drama during his years with the ABC, the standout probably being Scales of Justice which he conceived, developed and produced". It was made during his "message era" years, and it was "a three-part expose of police corruption". In its published form it became a high school text. In the 1990s, he was the establishing director for Police Rescue, Phoenix and Janus. Carson himself claimed his peak productions were the first episodes of Janus (1994) and the popular series SeaChange

SeaChange

SeaChange was a popular Australian television show that ran for 39 episodes from 1998 to 2001 on the ABC. It was created by Andrew Knight and Deborah Cox and starred Sigrid Thornton, David Wenham, William McInnes, John Howard, Tom Long and Kerry Armstrong...

, in which he cast Sigrid Thornton

Sigrid Thornton

Sigrid Thornton is an Australian multi-award winning actress.-Early years:Thornton was born in Canberra, the daughter of Merle, a teacher of women's studies and writer, and Neil Thornton, an academic. She spent most of her formative years growing up and attending school at St. Peter's Lutheran...

 and David Wenham

David Wenham

David Wenham is an Australian actor who has appeared in movies, television series and theatre productions. He is known in Hollywood for his roles as Faramir in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Carl in Van Helsing and Dilios in 300 and Neil Fletcher in Australia...

.

Internationally, his work was recognised with Scales of Justice being accepted into official competition at BANFF (Canada) and Jackaroo receiving the New York Film & TV Festival Bronze Award.

Australian playwright, Alex Buzo

Alex Buzo

Alex Buzo was an Australian playwright and author who wrote 88 works.-Early life:Buzo was born in Sydney in 1944 to an Albanian-born father and an Australian mother...

, praised Carson for his "tremendous affinity with characters and the actors who played them". Australian actors Sigrid Thornton

Sigrid Thornton

Sigrid Thornton is an Australian multi-award winning actress.-Early years:Thornton was born in Canberra, the daughter of Merle, a teacher of women's studies and writer, and Neil Thornton, an academic. She spent most of her formative years growing up and attending school at St. Peter's Lutheran...

 and Colin Friels

Colin Friels

-Background and training:Friels was born in Kilwinning, Ayrshire, Scotland. His mother was a mill worker and his father a joiner. He lived in Kilbirnie until 1963, when his family moved to Australia, arriving in Darwin, Northern Territory before settling in the Melbourne suburb of Broadmeadows...

 also praised his "sensitive handling" of actors". This is regarded as unusual in a director who came "up from the floor".

Awards and recognition

• 1992: AFI Award for Best Episode in a TV Drama for Phoenix. Hard Ball. Nominated for Best Director
• 1993: AFI Award for Best Achievement in Direction in a Television Drama for Police Rescue. Whirlwind
• 2005: Australian Screen Directors Association (ASDA): posthumous accreditation recognising lifetime achievement

Filmography

• Loss of Innocence (1978, co-director, four-part drama)
• A Place in the World (1979, co-director, six-part drama)
• Coralie Landsdowne Says No (1980, director, telefeature)
• Going Home (1980, director)
• Intimate Strangers (1980, director, two-part drama)
• The Timeless Land (1980, co-director, eight-part miniseries)
• Scales of Justice (1983, producer, three self-contained telemovies)
• Crime of the Decade (1984, producer)
• Mail Order Bride (1984, producer)
• Man of Letters (1984, producer)
• Natural Causes (1985, director and producer, telefeature)
• Times Raging (1984, producer)
• White Man's Legend (1984, producer)
• The Petrov Affair (1987, director, docudrama)
• Peter and Pompey (1988, director, telefeature - in Touch the Sun
  Touch the Sun (Australian TV series)
  Touch the Sun was a television series commissioned by the Australian Children's Television Foundation in 1988 as part of the Australian Bicentenary celebrations. It may have been intended that seven feature-length episodes were produced, one for each State, plus the Northern Territory, but only six...
  
  series)
• The Australians (1988, co-director, drama series)
• Jackaroo (1990, director, two-part drama)
• Police Rescue: The Movie (1993, director)
• Damnation of Harvey McHugh (1994, co-director, television series)
• Janus (1994, director, television series)
• Halifax F.P.: Hard Cops (1995, director, telefeature - fifth in Halifax F.P. series)
• Naked (1995, co-director, three-part television drama)
• Old Flames (1995, director)
• The Bite (1996, director, two-part miniseries)
• The Devil Game (1997, director and writer)
• Driven Crazy (1998, co-director, television series)
• Time and Tide (1999, director)
• Corridors of Power (2001, director, six-part miniseries)
• Cybergirl (2001, co-director, children's television series)
• Horace and Tina (2001, co-director, television series)