For everyone Queerstralia, ABC TV

★★★★

“If you don’t have a history… and if you don’t have a past to build on, it’s very hard to see the future.” So says academic, filmmaker and feminist Barbara Creed.

She’s one of the many excellent queer heroes interviewed by comedian-turned-documentarian Zoë Coombs Marr in this rollicking three-part series offering a bracing sweep of the country’s oft-obscured LGBTQIA+ history. Attempting to plug the gaps from pre-colonisation on, it is zippily informative and amusing as well as occasionally bringing a tear to your eye.

Building bridges to the uninformed and, hopefully, a brighter future, Marr is joined by the likes of First Nations elder Aunty Dawn Daylight, super-producer Tony Ayres, historian Dr Yves Rees, activist Peter De Waal and comedian Hannah Gadsby. Packed with fascinating insights from penal colony misbehaviour to gender binary-destroying bushrangers, past the explosion of protest in the 1970s and on to Sistergirl drag stars from the Torres Strait Islands, it’s riveting TV.

Queerstralia delicately balances queer trauma with magnificent victories to tell a fabulous holler-out-loud story.