Australian
Screen

The reporters are all young and hip and ready to travel to every corner of the globe to find the latest technology to bring into our living rooms. This episode has eight different items, none of them longer than five minutes, with great camerawork and editing. The pace is fast and furious with snappy promotions of upcoming items to keep our interest alive. The stories move at a cracking pace – from stem cell research and its applications to household items of the future. There’s even a technological solution to debilitating depression.

Beyond Tomorrow was the successor to Beyond 2000 – the name given to the magazine program proposed to Channel 7 by three reporters who’d been working on the ABC’s Towards 2000 when it was axed in the 1980s. The three reporters were Iain Finlay, Carmel Travers and Chris Ardill-Guiness. The Channel 7 series became a huge ratings success and formed the foundation of the production company Beyond. The current managing director of Beyond, Mikael Borglund, was one of two chartered accountants brought in at the very beginning to assist the original team of reporters establish their new company. The other was Phil Gerlach. As Mikael Borglund recalls, they would take what the reporters had created, make sure they owned it outright and licence it to as many territories as possible. They were incredibly successful. From the end of the first year, they had sold to the US market and have continued to do so ever since.