Sylvania Waters was an Australian reality television series that followed the lives of an Australian family – one of the first such programs in Australia. It premiered on Australian television in 1992 and was co-produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

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

 (ABC) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The show documented the lives of Noeline Baker and Laurie Donaher of 48 Macintyre Crescent in the Sydney waterside suburb of Sylvania Waters

Sylvania Waters, New South Wales

Sylvania Waters is a suburb, in southern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Sylvania Waters is located 21 kilometres south of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of Sutherland Shire....

 over a six-month period, emphasising the couple's newfound wealth

Nouveau riche

The nouveau riche , or new money, comprise those who have acquired considerable wealth within their own generation...

and luxurious lifestyle as well as interpersonal conflicts.

External links

• Encyclopedia of Television
• Sylvania Waters at the National Film and Sound Archive

Sylvania Waters was a documentary television series that followed the lives of an Australian family. A 12-part co-production by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the controversial program chronicled the existence of couple Noeline Baker and Laurie Donaher and their largely adult offspring. The series took its name from the wealthy waterside suburb in southern Sydney where Noeline and Laurie resided.
Billed as a real-life soap opera , Sylvania Waters was shot over a six-month period by a camera crew who lived with the Donaher/Bakers. According to an agreement struck with the family, the crew was allowed to film anywhere, at any time - except when family members were using the bathroom or making love. While ABC publicity for the documentary series emphasised the couple's new found wealth and luxurious lifestyle, the tightly edited result ruthlessly scrutinized the entrenched interpersonal conflicts which lay beneath the surface of the blended family's easygoing facade.
Like its 1978 British prototype, "The Family", which brought instant infamy to the Wilkins family of Reading and the 1973 U.S. program "An American Family" which chronicled the lives of the Loud family in Santa Barbara, California, Sylvania Waters focused a national microscope on the values and behaviour of the Donaher/Baker family.
Noeline and Laurie's unwed status, Noeline's drinking problem, Laurie's racism, their materialism and the family's routine domestic disputes, all became issues discussed widely in the Australian media.