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Four Corners Season 48 Episodes
Season 48 Episode Guide
41 Episodes 2008 - 2008
Episode 1
Howard's End
45 mins
For nearly a year John Howard lived with a spectre of humiliation - the increasing prospect of his government being tossed aside, his own Bennelong seat swamped in a Labor deluge.
Episode 2
Changing Men
44 mins
One in five Australian women - perhaps your workmate, or your neighbour or your friend - knows the humiliation and terror of domestic violence.
Episode 3
Beyond Bethany
44 mins
Picture the scene: Old and finally ousted, Joh Bjelke-Petersen stubbornly clings to his executive suite. Just outside, knockabout minister "Big Russ" Hinze is in tears, bent and blubbering through the keyhole: " Joh, come out mate, it's all over. "
Episode 4
Dangerous Ground
46 mins
Pigs' heads are dumped under cover of darkness by persons unknown, but the intent is clear: no Islamic school for this neighbourhood. At rowdy public rallies against the school, traffic and planning concerns are drowned out by anti-Muslim tirades amid choruses of " Aussie Aussie Aussie, oi oi oi. "
Episode 5
Winds of Change
48 mins
On the flat yellow plains surrounding Birchip, in north-western Victoria, drought is a familiar if detested visitor that always overstays.
Episode 6
Kidnapped: The Alan Johnston Story
46 mins
Alan Johnston had just a couple of weeks to go before flying home after three years working for the BBC in Gaza. As he left his office and nosed his car into the mid-afternoon traffic, he was suddenly blocked and surrounded by gunmen. Hooded and handcuffed, he was driven to some unknown apartment and left in an empty room.
Episode 7
Debtland
48 mins
Mortgages doled out to people on disability support pensions; loans to refugees with no English and no jobs that leave their families with next to nothing to live on; home loans so large they push borrowers below the poverty line.
Episode 8
The Newman Case
51 mins
On a spring night in 1994, Labor MP John Newman was gunned down as he arrived home from a party meeting.
Episode 9
Interview: Brian Johnson
42 mins
An interview with Brian Johnson, Banking Analyst, JP Morgan.
Episode 10
Dirty, Sexy Money
49 mins
When sordid tales of sex and money and development deals spilled out of the Wollongong anti-corruption hearings, Labor luminaries dashed for cover.
Episode 11
China's Stolen Children
48 mins
In modern China, baby girls can be sold for as little as $500. Boys cost $1000-plus. This documentary, made for Channel 4 and HBO, intimately reveals the depth of this tragedy and explores the connection between child trafficking, an alarming shortage of girls and the country's stringent birth control policy.
Episode 12
America Dreaming
51 mins
"Obama will be the next president of the United States - and the whole world will change" - A Barack Obama supporter proclaims his faith, one voice among millions clamouring for their man to storm the White House.
Episode 13
Massacre at Virginia Tech
46 mins
On 16 April last year, a young man called Seung-hui Cho took a gun and calmly turned it on terrified fellow students and staff at Virginia Tech campus in the US. He killed 32 people before turning his gun on himself.
Episode 14
Voices of Dissent
47 mins
Olympics organisers have hit the home straight in full stride. Games venues are getting their final touches. Beijing's stunning "bird's nest" stadium has been unveiled to international acclaim. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers wait impatiently as the torch teasingly approaches.
Episode 15
Dogfighting Undercover
44 mins
They're criminal, they're cruel and they operate amid the tightest security.
Episode 16
Bad Company
50 mins
One spring evening in 2005, Brett Kebble, a young mining magnate who had lived a life in the fast lane, drove off to a dinner appointment in the suburbs of Johannesburg. On the way he stopped and opened his window, inexplicably in the crime-ridden city, and was shot seven times at close range.
Episode 17
On the Piss
42 mins
Reporter: "What do you think is the root cause of young people going out and getting themselves goat-faced like that?"
Episode 18
Educating Kimberly
47 mins
If their teenage child couldn't spell "cat", most Australian parents would be howling for the blood of politicians, teachers and just about anyone else in striking distance.
Episode 19
Notes from a Diary
48 mins
Reporter Sarah Ferguson wrote a diary during her trip to the Tiwi Islands, Northern Territory, for her report on Indigenous education, "Educating Kimberly", first broadcast 16 June 2008. Read an excerpt below.
Episode 20
Daylight Robbery
44 mins
When the US goes to war, corporate America goes too.
Episode 21
Stretching the Law
50 mins
For 20 years the NSW Crime Commission went about its business quietly and effectively. When it scored a bust - and there were plenty - it stood back and let politicians and police bask in credit. It mostly avoided controversy and guarded its low profile.
Episode 22
Undercover in Tibet
50 mins
When the Olympic torch and its harried security detachment finally reached Tibet last month, all went peacefully and according to script... traditionally-dressed locals danced, waved flags and cheerfully applauded, with not a protester to be seen.
Episode 23
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
44 mins
"He said it's going to be bigger than Microsoft, and I thought Whoa!" - investor
Episode 24
Art for Art's Sake
47 mins
What's a painting worth? Quentin McDermott tells how Australia's booming art market is open to manipulation - and artists and buyers to exploitation.
Episode 25
Tipping Point
51 mins
While Australians argue about when or whether to confront global warming, the top of the globe is melting away.
Episode 26
Passage of History
50 mins
The harbour where Sir John Franklin and his crew spent their first winter after they arrived at the entrance to the fabled Northwest Passage is a truly godforsaken place. And despite claims they brought with them 1,000 books, 17,000 litres of alcohol and three years' food supply, it is difficult to imagine spending one night on Beechey Island let alone the dark Arctic winter.
Episode 27
The End of the World Cult
48 mins
Michael Travesser used to be a sailor called Wayne Bent. Then he became the self-proclaimed Messiah, claiming to know the exact hour of an apocalyptic event that will mark the end of the world.
Episode 28
The Money Pit
46 mins
They can't rip it out fast enough. Day and night, men and machines pull iron ore from the world's biggest open cuts, crushing it then piling it onto the world's longest trains, before loading it onto Asia's biggest ships to feed the world's hungriest economies.
Episode 29
My Brilliant Career
48 mins
"People either love or loathe Turnbull."
Episode 30
The Price We Pay
45 mins
Supermarkets have bulked up. These days they're retail superpowers who make money not just when we eat or drink but increasingly when we fill the petrol tank, play pokies or buy a hammer from the local hardware - and they're quietly stalking pharmacies, newsagents and florists.
Episode 31
9/11: The Third Tower
52 mins
Seven years on, the destruction of New York's Twin Towers, played and replayed thousands of times over, is seared into collective memory.
Episode 32
The Guards' Story
53 mins
They stand pristine and empty, cocooned in a silence broken intermittently by the roar of low-flying fighter jets. Woomera and Baxter detention centres, pitched in desert to confine thousands of people from across the seas, have outlived their idea. They exist as harsh monuments to history - with powerful stories to tell.
Episode 33
Bran Nue Deal
52 mins
To most Australians it's squiggles on a map... a wild and jagged shoreline hewn over millions of years: towering cliffs and gorges pummelled by powerful tides. Home to dugongs, turtles and crocodiles, a humpbacks' maternity ward, the Kimberley coast is nature's catwalk.
Episode 34
A Walk to Beautiful
45 mins
It's been 50 years since an idealistic young Sydney couple, Catherine and Reginald Hamlin, spotted an ad for doctors to go to Africa, then took a punt. Little did they know they were about to make the world a far, far better place.
Episode 35
Tax Me If You Can
45 mins
His present identity and whereabouts are mysteries to all but a select few. When he reveals his story to members of a powerful US Senate committee, he's just a silhouette on a screen. The man who used to be known as Heinrich Kieber lives his life immersed in secrets.
Episode 36
Mortgage Meltdown
43 mins
"The crisis is just beginning" - "We're nowhere near the end." - "I don't think anybody anywhere in the world is going to be immune."
Episode 37
Buying Back the River
49 mins
Another crisis, another bailout... With liquidity at a critical low, this time it's the Murray-Darling Basin whose survival hangs on a desperate $12.9 billion injection - a sum that shades what the Rudd Government is spending elsewhere to cheat a worldwide recession.
Episode 38
Good Cop, Bad Cop
48 mins
They were the glamour force - supercops smashing drug rackets, tracking terrorists and making Australians feel safe.
Episode 39
Scars and Stripes
52 mins
Opinion polls tell Barack Obama he is on the White House porch with one foot in the doorway. But outside, in the places that will really count in this election for the biggest job on Earth, the message is: Don't pack your bags just yet.
Episode 40
The Great History War
49 mins
A few days ago Kevin Rudd and Paul Keating skirmished over Gallipoli's place at the epicentre of the national psyche. Keating dismissed it as a faraway European affair, the spilt Australian blood testament to the country's lack of self-esteem. But Gallipoli, countered Rudd, was an act of courage that shaped national identity for a century.
Episode 41
Look Back on 2008
48 mins
From all of us at Four Corners, a heartfelt thanks for your support in 2008.