The John Sullivan Story

The Sullivans
The Sullivans main title caption
Genre	Soap opera / drama
Created by	Crawford Productions
Starring	Lorraine Bayly Paul Cronin Andrew McFarlane Steven Tandy Susan Hannaford Richard Morgan Michael Caton Megan Williams Reg Gorman Vikki Hammond Chantal Contouri Norman Yemm Vivean Gray
Country of origin	Australia
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	8
No. of episodes	1,114
Production
Location(s)	Melbourne, Victoria
Running time	22 minutes (episodes 1 and 2 are each 46 minutes)
Production company(s)	Crawford Productions
Release
Original network	Nine Network
Picture format	4:3 PAL
Audio format	Mono
Original release	15 November 1976 – 10 March 1983

The Sullivans is an Australian drama television series produced by Crawford Productions which ran on the Nine Network from 15 November 1976 until 10 March 1983. The series told the story of an average middle-class Melbourne family and the effect the Second World War had on their lives. It was a consistent ratings success in Australia, and also became popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Gibraltar, Greece and New Zealand.

The show was purchased by Channel Nine without a pilot program being produced. They commissioned 34 hours with a view to extension. Fourteen writers were assigned to the thirteen plot lines which had been devised.

The cast had not been established when they started writing the series and three months later they still had only two cast members, Vikki Hammond and Noni Hazelhurst.

When researching the time period, the set designer Nick Rossedale said at the time "when you are dealing with a period of time that is well within living memory, you have to watch things very carefully". Hence, the painstaking research into the reality of the show.

In 1976, the show was regarded as an ambitious project with the biggest budget ever for a commercial network series. It reputedly cost one million dollars to set up.

The story began in 1939, with the declaration of war against Germany. From the outset the series focused on the Sullivan family of 7 Gordon Street, Camberwell, Victoria, along with neighbourhood friends, relatives and associates. The majority of show's storylines related to the war, focusing on either the fighting itself or its effect on the Sullivan family. Scenes of battles in North Africa, Greece, Crete, Britain, New Guinea and Malaya were all filmed in or around Melbourne. However, some of the exterior scenes in the Netherlands were actually filmed in Amsterdam.