Rachel Griffiths, Jacki Weaver, and Claudia Karvan headline shiny new programs at SBS as the broadcaster banks on star power for its 2025 programming line-up. Each actress will present a series examining Australian identity, stories and documentaries.

Griffiths will host The Idea of Australia, a four-part series exploring the myths that bind Australia and the events and people that have shaped our democracy, place in the world, cultural identity and the relationship between non-Indigenous and First Nations peoples.

Jacki Weaver presents Australia: An Unofficial History, a playful series that opens a forgotten vault of Australian films exploring the social and political change of the 1970s.

Karvan will host Great Australian Road Trips, joining comedian Steph Tisdell, MasterChef host Melissa Leong and comedian Nazeem Hussain to reveal untold Australian stories, one pit stop at a time.

SBS is also back to doing what it does best: wild places. Alone will return for a third season, sending 10 survival enthusiasts into the inhospitable landscape of The West Coast Range, Tasmania, Lutruwita to compete for $250,000.

Alone has been a standout hit for SBS, with each episode of the second season drawing more than a million Total TV viewers across the week, according to OzTam.

SBS director of television Kathryn Fink said, “We are thrilled with the tremendous audience response to the return of Alone Australia. We expect it to again stand out as a unique property in the Australian TV landscape.”

The network also announced drama-documentary, Robodebt, that digs deep into the controversial debt recovery scheme implemented under the Liberal-National Coalition governments of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, and Scott Morrison.