What to watch in July, from 1880s homestead reality series Back to the Frontier to Washington Black

Australia Broadcast Center

21-07-2025

What happens when you take a bunch of technology-dependent teenagers and force them to swap their 21st-century lives for an 1880s homestead?
This is the premise of new reality series Back to the Frontier, which sees three families stripped of their creature comforts and hauled off to spend a summer in the wilderness.
Each hopes that trying something this big will change the way they not only relate to each other, but to the world around them.
Also new this month, we have a whirlwind adaptation of Canadian author Esi Edugyan's Booker-nominated novel Washington Black, as well as a reality show that looks at what it takes to write a number one song.
But that's not all — there's also a fresh nature documentary led by the ABC's resident nature journalist, Ann Jones, and a powerful queer Pasifika story set in Western Sydney.
Reality series Back to the Frontier opens as the extremely particular Hanna-Riggs, the incredibly emotional Halls, and the frankly very capable Loper families are dropped at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains of western North America with little more than the clothes on their backs and three scarcely habitable cabins to call home.
They have one objective: to prove they can work the land.
Just like the real-life 1880s homesteaders, they will be judged on their ability to build a secure, comfortable home, farm the land and fill their pantries with enough meat, vegetables, baked goods and dairy to survive an entire winter.
Don't go into this show expecting things to get that tough: the fact this series focuses on families should be enough to tell you HBO was never going to let these people struggle like the contestants on hit survival competition Alone.
But, unlike the competitors on Alone, these people have little to no skills. And while they presumably went into this fully aware they wouldn't have makeup or any technology whatsoever, let alone electricity or running water, they can't handle it. There is a lot of crying — and not just from the kids.
This is a show that wants you to lean into peak voyeurism. But it also provides a surprising amount of information about the original homesteaders, with experts including historians and modern homesteaders dropping in along the way.
The result is a series that's quietly heartfelt, and which features some wholesome conversations around confidence and the importance of community. Not everyone is into it, though — some conservative Christians in the US are furious a gay couple was cast.
Make of that what you will.
For fans of: Colonial House, Alone
When 11-year-old George Washington "Wash" Black (Eddie Karanja) escapes the 19th century Barbados sugar cane plantation where he was born at the beginning of this series, it feels like an against-all-odds miracle, never to be repeated.
But then he hitches a ride away from the Caribbean in a bizarre flying machine with his white saviour/scientific mentor Titch (Tom Ellis) and takes up with a band of pirates. The adult version of Wash (played by Ernest Kingsley Jr) goes on to find not only freedom, but love, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Executive produced by Sterling K Brown (who also stars in the series as Wash's friend, Medwin) Washington Black isn't your typical narrative about the horrors of slavery.
Told from the perspective of a sensitive and brilliant young boy, this eight-part series is a story about daring to dream, despite the circumstances.
You'll frequently have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy this odyssey; adapting a fantastical story like this for the screen is immensely difficult.
But this series has just as much to say on white guilt, romance across class lines, and the notion of freedom as the book that inspired it.
For fans of: Kindred, Belle
Netflix's latest unscripted series is for everyone who's ever looked at the songwriting credits of a hit song like Sabrina Carpenter's Espresso and wondered how it took so many people to come up with the lyrics "Say you can't sleep, baby, I know / That's that me espresso".
Hitmakers offers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to create a number one song. The show follows 12 hit writers and producers from the US as they compete against each other for the privilege of writing new tracks for John Legend, Shaboozey and Lisa of Blackpink/The White Lotus season three.
Over six episodes, the creatives behind the likes of BTS' Butter, Ariana Grande's Thank U, Next and Beyoncé's Cuff It attend three different songwriting camps, where they have just six hours to come up with a hit.
Hitmakers isn't sure whether it wants to be a documentary or a reality show.
It has the tension and pacing of a reality show and goes out of its way to confect drama, and yet it treats the craft of songwriting as a docuseries would. The famous musicians almost feel like an afterthought, dropping in at odd moments.
Who knows if there will be a Hitmakers season two?
The idea that this may never be repeated somehow makes the first season more compelling.
For fans of: Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE, Formula 1: Drive to Survive
When Moni (Chris Alosio) returns to Western Sydney for his baby sister's wedding after 10 years in London, he doesn't expect to see his dead mother Tina (Tina Leaitua) there.
She has no idea she's dead and he has no idea how she's returned — or why he's the only one who can see her.
Then Moni is reminded of the Samoan proverb, "Teu le Va", which roughly translates to, "tend to your sacred spaces". To achieve this, one must live a life of truth.
Moni reluctantly comes to the realisation his mother's apparition has to do with their avoidance of two very different things. If she has any hope of passing on, they must both accept their truths.
For Moni, this means embracing his sexuality and learning how to be part of his Samoan community as his full self.
For Tina, it's about admitting her failures as a parent.
This genre-bending, queer, Pasifika-led series packs a lot into its six 10-minute episodes — from explorations of the varying lived experiences of queer Samoan-Australians, to the importance of remembering the cultural lessons of one's parents.
Moni could have used a hell of a lot more funding (it's part of the SBS Digital Originals initiative, which supports new Australian stories), but the messages at the heart of this layered and intimate series will stay with you, regardless.
For fans of: White Fever, Swift Street
Nature journalist Ann Jones joins scientists trying to gain a deeper understanding of some of the world's most reclusive — and dangerous — animals in this moreish six-part docuseries.
Starting with bull sharks on the Great Barrier Reef, each episode offers an intimate look at one animal. The deadly sea snakes of the Pilbara in WA are next, followed by the orangutans of Borneo, three different species of turtle in the Dampier Archipelago region of WA, and the dugongs of Queensland's Moreton Bay region. Last up: the elusive pangolins, again of Borneo.
As the ABC's beloved "nature nerd", Ann brings a contagious blend of enthusiasm and curiosity to this immersive series.
In less than 30 minutes, she'll have you reconsidering your understanding of each of these creatures. Bull sharks, for example, are more than just opportunistic killers. And did you know there's a breed of sea snake that hatches its eggs internally?
For fans of: The Kimberley, Australia's Wild Odyssey