Sydney– Bed of Roses, a six-part drama series for ABC TV, and 10 documentaries on diverse subjects such as baby boomers, asylum seekers and endangered birds, have secured funding from Film Finance Corp. Australia.

Bed of Roses, from McLeod’s Daughters writers Jutte Goetze and Elizabeth Coleman, follows the adventures of spoilt, rich, city-dweller Louisa Atherton, who is forced to move back to her tiny hometown when her husband dies in the arms of another woman, leaving her and two teenage children bankrupt. The producers are Mark Ruse and Stephen Luby of Ruby Entertainment; Southern Star International is handling sales.

Among the docs are The Attack of the Baby Boomers, which looks at the consequences of old people outnumbering the young (for SBS TV, WNET Thirteen, Off The Fence); Cassowaries, focusing on an endangered species of birds in Queensland after a cyclone destroyed their forest (ABC TV, National Geographic Television International, Germany’s ZDFE); and Deported, following a team of researchers across the globe in search of asylum seekers whom Australia detained, rejected, then deported (SBS Content Sales).

Also: The Wedding Makers, a behind-the-scenes expose of the highly competitive, glamorous and often garish wedding industry (ABC TV); Seed Hunter, following Australian scientist Dr Ken Street on a quest through Central Asia to find rare plants whose genes may help save our food from the threat of climate change (ABC TV, National Geographic Television International, RTE Ireland, SVT Sweden, ARTE France); and the second series of Family Footsteps, which enables Australians to live the life they may have led if their ancestors had not migrated to Australia (ABC TV, Fremantle International).