ABC Upfronts 2027: Aunty's slate has a type, and it carries a notebook

If you work in media and have long suspected you are the main character, the ABC has some validating news.

The national broadcaster unveiled its 2027 content slate today, and reporters turn up all over it. 

A war correspondent chases a conspiracy to the top of government in John Bailey – The Enemy Within, starring David Lyons and Anthony LaPaglia. A New York journalist whose career has just imploded comes home to Sydney in Help Me!. Colleen Egan and Richard Baker front new documentaries, and ABC NEWS has turned its cameras on Alan Jones.

It’s either a love letter to the trade or a very long job ad… or possibly both.

The numbers Marks wants you to notice

The ABC led with its own report card. It rates itself Australia’s most trusted media brand, says ABC NEWS has been the top digital news brand every month of 2026, and claims ABC iview reaches more people than any other broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD) platform.

ABC Managing Director Hugh Marks wasn’t about to play any of it down.

“Without doubt the ABC is the undisputed leader in sharing Australia’s stories with Australians,” he said.

Thems some fighting words.

A new face in news

When the ABC unveiled its 2026 slate last November, Justin Stevens was running news. By May he was gone, resigning after almost 19 years at the broadcaster, four of them as director of news, for “reasons both professional and personal.”

His exit landed the day before Senate Estimates, where Liberal senator Sarah Henderson told Marks it “does very much look like he was pushed.” Marks didn’t directly reject that, saying it was “the right time for him to move on.” He also confirmed he had already engaged a recruiter for “a general sort of succession planning,” and that Stevens hadn’t been told.

A month later, The Australian reported Stevens had left with a $300,000 payout. By then the ABC had long since named his replacement, confirming Reuters executive editor Simon Robinson within a day of the resignation. 

Robinson started in September, and what a way to kick off his first few months in the role.

“In 2027 ABC NEWS teams across the country and around the world will continue to deliver Australians the most reliable and independent local, national and international news wherever and whenever they want to access it, as well as expert analysis and distinctive special content,” Robinson said.

Crime, mostly

The scripted slate leans hard on crime.

Fortitude Valley stars Hunter Page-Lochard as a Queensland detective working a cold case after human remains turn up in the foundations of a demolished 1980s government building. Queensland viewers will not need the decade explained. Kat Stewart and Rupert Everett co-star.

Rebecca Gibney leads buddy-cop series Rural Crime Unit, where the caseload includes missing livestock and crop circles. Tasma Walton and Ursula Yovich play “somewhat-famous” Indigenous private investigators in Pilli Sisters P.I.

The Great White casts Hugo Weaving as a disgraced barrister working out of an office above a panel beater’s in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. He takes a dangerous dog case he considers beneath him and ends up in the Supreme Court trying to free a zoo elephant.

In Help Me!, Kate Box and Sarah Peirse play an estranged mother and daughter whose café reunion is interrupted when a stranger slips them a lipstick-scrawled note. The villain, per the ABC’s synopsis, is “far worse than a criminal – he’s a lawyer.” Somewhere, a legal department has read that line twice.

Kitty Flanagan returns for a fourth season of Fisk, Dog Park returns for a second, and Australia's Golden Girl Boy Sam Pang’s Ground Up, the comedy about building Tasmania’s AFL team, also returns, at least moving faster than the real one.

“Our Screen slate is built around unmissable Australian stories with integrity, originality and authenticity,” said ABC Director Screen Jennifer Collins. 

“Our 2027 line-up reflects the breadth of Australian life, with something for all of our audience, whatever their age, interests or background. We’re proud to be backing Australian creatives and bringing their work to audiences on screen in 2027 and beyond.”

The reporters’ room

The documentaries are where the journalists do the work.

Mark of a Murderer follows journalist-turned-MP Colleen Egan across 25 years of reporting on the 1994 murders of two women near Fremantle. Her work helped free Andrew Mallard after a successful High Court appeal.

Pray Harder, built on Richard Baker’s podcast, looks at coercive control in Australian religious groups through the death of eight-year-old Elizabeth Struhs in Toowoomba. Fourteen members of a religious sect, including her parents, were convicted of manslaughter.

Silenced follows human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson into defamation cases brought against women who spoke out about gendered violence, including Brittany Higgins and Amber Heard.

ABC NEWS has two documentaries of its own. Alliance examines 75 years of the US–Australia relationship. The rise and fall of Alan Jones covers the broadcaster’s 35 years as the country’s most powerful talkback voice and “his use of power, tolerated for so long by so many.” It also explores how that history intersects with the indecent assault charges he is facing in court. Jones has denied the charges.

Crocs, cricket, and burnt-out parents

Kingdom of the Crocodile belongs to Stumpy, a boss saltwater croc who rules his river “with intelligence, strategy and sometimes, brute force.” Most network schedules get made the same way.

Mutiny on the Boundary revisits the 1977 Centenary Test and the dressing-room plot that turned cricket professional. The press kit mentions “a snubbed media mogul” and politely declines to name him.

Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds adds parents this time. The ABC cites a survey of 10,000 Australian parents in which nearly two-thirds reported burnout. Any parent could have told them the seniors would help, particularly if they babysit.

Gruen and Hard Quiz return. You Can’t Ask That is back for the first time in four years, and rage turns 40. New kids’ animation Happy House follows a group of animal influencers who share a house and get upstaged by the sentient mould in their fridge.

Ears on

The ABC says nearly one million Australians listen to its podcasts each week. New titles include The People Versus with Julian Morrow, plus an NRL podcast with Josh Mansour, Kennedy Cherrington, and Andrew Fifita from February 2027. Expanse returns for a seventh season, investigating a plane that vanished over the Barrington Tops in 1981.

“We’re backing distinctive Australian voices and stories in 2027,” said ABC Director Audio Ben Latimer. “You’ll hear that in the new investigations from our podcast teams and the Australian artists coming through triple j and Unearthed. Those discoveries sit alongside the live, local radio and familiar voices people already make part of their day. That’s the strength of ABC Audio,” said ABC Director Audio Ben Latimer.

Oh, and don't stress, Media Watch is back too. We know someone has to check our work.