Reporters •
Mike Moore (
Rob Sitch) is the anchor of
Frontline. He is self-centred and dim-witted, but his intentions are generally noble. Mike is very protective of what he calls his "journalistic integrity" and resents any insinuation that he is a lightweight. He believes that he is on the cutting edge of journalism, but is oblivious to most of
Frontlines content, as the executive producers go to some length to keep him out of production meetings, and a running gag within the show sees Mike ignore most of the stories that
Frontline airs despite his position as host. Mike is desperate for any sort of publicity he can get, but his public appearances are a constant source of amusement for the rest of the
Frontline team, as they typically end in disaster. While usually harmless, Mike is not above using underhanded tactics to get his way—in "A Hole in the Heart" (series 3), he steals a story from Marty because viewers are responding positively to it, while in "Addicted to Fame", he demands that Geoffrey's television show be cancelled because he is jealous of the attention his friend is getting. In the first two series Mike's position is constantly under threat from senior reporter Brooke Vandenberg, who has a better press profile, but by the last series he has been cemented as one of the network's most valuable stars and considerably more effort is made to pander to his whims. While Mike is usually portrayed as simply dumb (for example, in "A Man of His Convictions" in series 2 he writes a letter to media commentator
Stuart Littlemore full of basic spelling and grammatical errors) he occasionally surprises his colleagues with his sneakiness: in "Give 'em Enough Rope" (series 2) he traps the network owner into admitting to contravening the Broadcasting Act in a live interview, after first getting the owner to publicly commit to allowing him to ask difficult questions without threat to his job. Many gags centre around how easily he is manipulated by his executive producer, the most typical case being when Mike refuses to present a story and then is convinced to run it by an appeal to his supposed fearlessness or journalistic integrity. Mike used to work for the
ABC until he was "poached" to run
Frontline. •
Brooke Vandenberg (
Jane Kennedy) is a reporter on
Frontline. She is ambitious, amoral and publicity hungry. While there are constant rumours that she has affairs with male celebrities in order to build her profile, in some cases she simply creates the rumours herself; in "The Desert Angel" (series 1) she confesses to
Pat Cash that she started a rumour about having an affair with him. Like most of the employees of
Frontline, she has no ethical problems with any action the show takes to get a good story. She is, however, portrayed as being very hypocritical; in "The Invisible Man" (series 1), she has no issues with violating peoples' privacy when she runs a story using a hidden camera to catch shoplifters in a store change room, but is outraged when a rival network violates her own privacy in the same way when broadcasting a similar story. Brooke is also very vain, and tends to edit her stories to give herself as much screen time as she can manage. When a new segment producer edits footage of Brooke out of a story in "I Disease" (series 3), she becomes upset to the point where she demands that the producer be fired for it. In "A Hole in the Heart", Brooke discovers she is pregnant to a former boyfriend and is bribed into having an abortion by a new hosting offer. •
Martin "Marty" Di Stasio (
Tiriel Mora) is a senior reporter on
Frontline. He is Mike's major antagonist on the team, often baiting him about sensitive topics, such as the supposedly
anti-Semitic golf club of which Mike is a member ("A Hole in the Heart"), or whenever Mike's public appearances end in disaster. He is the most experienced journalist on the team: a few references are made to him winning a
Walkley Award. Like Brooke, he is uncritical of the show's journalistic tactics (although in the episode "Judge and Jury", he has reservations about their persecution of a priest accused of rape, mainly because he is a lapsed Catholic); in fact he is usually the confidante of the executive producers, and the one they can trust to do what is needed to get a good story, or to persuade Mike to present a story. His position on
Frontline is more tenuous than that of Mike or Brooke: in "Dick on the Line" (series 3) he tells Mike and Brooke that at his age he signs his yearly contract immediately and does not mess about negotiating.
Producers •
Emma Ward (
Alison Whyte) is the Line Producer on
Frontline. She questions the show's practices most frequently and acts as the viewers' conscience. In "Heroes and Villains" (series 2), she is the only member of the team to have read the supposedly racist book the show is attacking and objects to their incendiary treatment of its author. Early in series 2 and 3, the executive producers of the time approach Marty and ask him to explain Emma. Marty explains that while she has moral qualms like Mike does, she is more difficult to handle because she is intelligent. Despite often objecting, Emma is usually party to ethically questionable practices and occasionally finds them amusing. In "A Hole in the Heart (part 2)", to placate a director from charity organisation Rotary, she allows the executive producer to yell at her and pretend to fire her over one of the show's decisions, when in reality she is receiving a large pay rise in return for her part of the act. •
Kate Preston (
Trudy Hellier) is the segment producer. While Kate is friendly with Emma, who has a more senior position, Kate has fewer ethical qualms about stories than Emma, and tends to be in the middle of conflicts between Emma and the executive producer. •
Brian "Thommo" Thompson (
Bruno Lawrence) is the executive producer during series 1. He is fired by the network in the first episode of series 2, although he is never shown on screen in that episode; the real reason for this is that Lawrence died of lung cancer between the filming of series 1 and series 2, forcing the writers to create a new executive producer character, Sam (see below). •
Sam Murphy (
Kevin J. Wilson) is the executive producer during series 2, hired immediately after Brian is fired. Thommo's and Sam's characters are similar; a hard-nosed EP who would not hesitate to air questionable stories to attract ratings. •
Graham "Prowsey" Prowse (
Steve Bisley) is the executive producer during series 3, hired after the producer who took
Frontline to the top retires. Prowsey is much more aggressive and unpleasant than his two predecessors. He has a bad temper, is unpleasant to the staff and is unashamedly
sexist: groping the female staff, dismissing
bulimia as a "chick thing" and writing off Brooke's bad moods as
PMS. He is, however, like his predecessors, capable of being charming when needed to deceive Mike, placate Emma or feed Brooke's ego.
Supporting staff •
Domenica Baroni (
Anita Cerdic) is the office receptionist, and the only person in the office who truly admires Mike. Her increasingly bizarre hairstyles become a running gag, culminating in "Give 'em Enough Rope", when she is completely bald and festooned with ribbons. Her reactions to the show usually reflect the target audience's responses. She is a reluctant and sometimes traitorous party to the office's determination to keep Mike away from production meetings. She is always very supportive of Mike and there are often hints that she actually has a crush on him. Domenica occasionally contributes to stories run by the show, such as when she receives a tipoff from a relative in "Divide the Community, Multiply the Ratings" or when she is the only female staff member willing to go undercover in a nightclub in "My Generation". •
Shelley Cohen (
Linda Ross) is the executive producer's secretary. She has worked for the network for many years and is usually unfazed by the mishaps in the office. • '''Stuart "Stu" O'Hallaran''' (
Pip Mushin) is the office's main cameraman and shoots most of Brooke's and Marty's stories. He, Marty and Jase are all friends and frequently make fun of Mike. •
Jason "Jase" Cotter (
Torquil Neilson) is the sound recordist who works with Stu. Jase is not actually heard speaking until series 3 despite appearing in most episodes in series 1 and 2. He is fired in the episode "I Get the Big Names" for audio taping Brooke Vandanberg while she urinates on the toilet and then leaking it to the media. •
Hugh Tabbagh (
Marcus Eyre) is the editor of videos, who is almost always seen editing in the audio-visual room whilst sitting, smoking cigarettes, coughing wildly and inhaling an asthma puffer. •
Trev (
Stephen Curry) appears as Jase's replacement as the sound recordist towards the end of the third series.
Network employees •
Geoffrey Salter (
Santo Cilauro) is the network's weatherman and Mike's closest friend at work. Geoff usually appears in private conversations in his office with Mike, and is often the catalyst for Mike to question the reassurance he has been given by a producer that the story of the moment is being ethically pursued. Despite his being Mike's closest friend, Mike frequently ignores Geoff's issues, and their conversations often serve to reinforce Mike's beliefs. Geoff is unpopular with the rest of the
Frontline staff to the point where he is banned from the
Frontline set, but they are all supportive when he unexpectedly achieves popularity with his own one-hour programme in "Addicted to Fame" (series 3), though he is unaware that Mike demanded the plans for the expansion of the show be cancelled because he was jealous of the attention Geoff was getting. He is the focus of a running gag where he will laugh hysterically along with Mike at any anecdote Mike tells him, before admitting that he does not understand it. •
Ian Farmer (
Gerard Kennedy) is the Station Manager, the boss of the local studios. He appears only in series one. He and Brian Thompson are good friends, and frequently play golf together. •
Bob Caville (
Peter Stratford) is the network's managing director, and definitively pulls the office into line. •
Jan Whelan (
Genevieve Mooy) is the network's head of publicity in series 1 and 2. Jan refers to everyone as "poppet" and "darling" and has extravagantly
camp mannerisms, but is in fact practical and efficient. •
Trish (
Lynda Gibson) is the network's head of publicity in series 3. Gibson also appears in "Workin' Class Man" from series 2 as the wife/mother of three of a working-class family who is visited by Brooke for a story regarding the difficulties of making ends meet. •
Elliot Rhodes (
Boris Conley) is a comedian and musician, performing short musical sketches about current events at the end of Friday night episodes of
Frontline. Mike detests his act but is required to laugh uproariously and compliment it on air every week. In two episodes, he was fired at Mike's request.
Special guests Frontline frequently featured celebrity cameos, unusually including major Australian politicians appearing as themselves, often but not always as interviewees. The most memorable appearance is that of
Pauline Hanson in "The Shadow We Cast" (series 3), in which she turns her famous "please explain?" phrase on Mike.
Noel Pearson appears as an interviewee later in the same episode. Other appearances include:
John Hewson in "The Soufflé Rises" (series 1);
Pat Cash in "The Desert Angel";
Cheryl Kernot in "We Ain't Got Dames" (series 1);
Ben Elton,
Bert Newton,
Rosemary Margan,
Amanda Keller and
Anne Fulwood in "This Night of Nights" (series 1);
Glenn Ridge in "Add Sex and Stir" and "Office Mole" (series 2);
Glenn Robbins and
Molly Meldrum in "Add Sex and Stir";
George Negus in "Add Sex and Stir" and "Dick on the Line" (series 3); and
Ian Baker-Finch in "A Hole in the Heart".
Harry Shearer appeared in the series 2 episode "Changing the Face of Current Affairs", where he played the character of Larry Hadges.
Merv Hughes also starred in the series 2 episode "Workin' Class Man". Other guest stars appeared in mock-ups of their own shows: Mike Moore appeared on fictitious episodes of ''
Burke's Backyard'' with
Don Burke,
Rex Hunt's fishing show, and
The AFL Footy Show with
Sam Newman.
Stuart Littlemore, who at the time was hosting the media commentary show
Media Watch, appeared in several fictitious episodes as a critic of
Frontline. == Production strategies ==