Silver Spring, MD — The Shiralee, an Australian miniseries based on D’Arcy Niland’s international bestseller, debuts on DVD from Acorn Media on March 10, 2009. Starring Bryan Brown (Australia, Cocktail, The Thorn Birds), the award-winning family drama aired on the Disney Channel and PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre in the late 1980s.

Set in the Australian outback of the 1940s and ’50s, The Shiralee explores the relationship between a father and daughter with warmth and humor. Bryan Brown portrays Mac, a gruff, fiercely independent man who earns his living as an itinerant laborer. After his brief, disastrous marriage ends, he finds himself with a “shiralee,” or burden—his pigtailed nine-year-old daughter, Buster (Rebecca Smart). Proud and stubborn, Mac ekes out a living—sometimes with his fists—on the dusty roads of the 1940s and ’50s outback, with Buster in tow. Together they befriend a number of colorful characters, and Lily (Noni Hazlehurst, Little Fish), a lovely rancher as maddeningly willful as Mac. At times grudgingly, Mac and Buster forge a father-daughter bond that hunger and hardship cannot break.

Based on D’Arcy Niland’s 1955 novel, The Shiralee captures the wry humor and rugged independence of the Australian frontier, as well as the tenderness and true devotion at the heart of a most unusual family.

The Shiralee won Australian television’s Logie Awards for most popular miniseries and actress for Rebecca Smart (1989).

Headquartered in suburban Washington, D.C., Acorn Media distributes distinctive home video releases to the North American market with a special focus on the best of British television. Acorn’s DVD sets are available from select retailers, catalog companies, and direct from Acorn Media at (888) 870-8047 or www.acornonline.com.