Lockie Leonard is an Australian children's television series adapted from Tim Winton's Lockie Leonard books by the ACTF. It first screened on the Nine Network on 19 June 2007, and has subsequently aired in ABC3. The series was filmed in Albany, Western Australia. A second series was filmed in 2009 and screened in 2010 in Australia, the UK and Ireland.
Lockie Leonard was produced by Goalpost Pictures Australia and is distributed by the Australian Children's Television Foundation. The theme song "Worlds Away" is performed by Jebediah.
Lockie Leonard premiered in the UK on Saturday 27 September 2008, as part of the long running children's Saturday morning programme TMi which airs from 09:00 to 10:30 on BBC Two. It ran for the first 12 episodes then continued to air on CBBC Channel. In America, it has aired on the short-lived Family Room HD.
The show won the 2008 TV Week Logie Award for Best Children's Series, and star Sean Keenan (Lockie) was nominated for the Graham Kennedy Award for Most Outstanding New Talent. It won the 2007 AFI award for Best Children's Drama Series. The series was also nominated for the 2007 BAFTA Awards for Best International Children's Drama Series.
Lockie Leonard is a surf rat who moves with his family to Angelus, a small coastal town in Western Australia. Lockie has to deal with starting high school in a new town with no friends and a house that is in danger of sinking into a swamp. After nutting himself in the surf on his first day in town, Lockie meets a head banger named Egg, and the two eventually become best friends. After attending his first day at a new school, Lockie manages to fall in love for the first time with Vicki Streeton, the smartest and richest girl in the entire school, whose father also happens to be the mayor of Angelus. The first series is spread over Lockie's first year spent in Angelus with his family.
The second series follows Lockie Leonard's second year in Angelus, middle of nowhere, where Lockie must cope with new situations. Vicki leaves to go to boarding school, and Lockie makes friends with new girl Mel, to whom he is initially assigned "buddy duty". His best friend Egg decides to make a new best friend in school bully, Curtis, and begins dating Vicki's friend Sasha. Lockie's brother Phillip enters Angelus High a year early owing to his impressive intelligence, and discovers a new friend or two along the way. Meanwhile, poetry-loving Sarge must deal with the new constable at the police station, and Joy decides to get out of the house and set up a new radio station, Radio Angelus.
This series contains examples of:
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Sarge. Even his sons call him that a lot of the time. And his wife.
- Grade Skipper: Lockie's brother Phillip gets enrolled in Angelus High School a year early due to his superior intellect.
- Jizzed in My Pants: Lockie has a wet dream involving Vicki at one point that puts him in a... sticky situation.
- Race Lift: In the books, Egg wasn't just white, he was egregiously white (since he was from the Bogan
subculture). In the series, he was changed to an indigenous Australian. - Short-Runner: In America, it only aired on Disney Channel briefly, and almost no one remembers it.
