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10 reviews in total

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17 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
One of those great shows of intelligence, excitement and adventure, 14 July 2006

Author: sunny lovett (dwtaxi) from Australia

Ocean Girl is the most enjoyable and certainly one of the most intelligent children's series that it has been my good fortune to experience. Made in the time before now, when the producer's of children's TV believed in quality rather than budget, it carries well on all levels.

Far more than just an "alien on earth" program. Ocean Girl deals with friendship and bullies, the environment, family and life. There is little call for special effects in the story lines, but those there are have neither pretensions nor inadequacies. The plots are in interesting, inventive and attention catching with a strong emphasis on the necessity of protecting our oceans.

One of the most important aspects is the high quality of the acting from the main and supporting cast members. A strong attachment to the characters is easily developed and one genuinely cares about what happens to them.

The strong performances and excellent visual effects lend a strong sense of realism to the tales and unlike modern programs adults can enjoy it nearly as much as their children. It is truly targeted as family entertainment, not just for children. While there are enemies to be overcome and some rather scary moments, the stories are not dark and a happy ending is always around the corner. The beautifully shot scenes of The Great Barrier Reef, the ocean and the islands also lends a sense of loveliness to the happy scenes.

Ocean Girl is a science fiction program, but the language and ideas are no different from today's and the technology is mostly current, although with elements such as AI computers which are perhaps a few short decades beyond us.

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14 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Much different from other shows.., 30 August 2004
Author: livnluv15 from Murrieta, California

Ocean girl was a show on the Disney Channel that my sister and I used to watch when I was probably like 7 or 8. I really used to love it and looked forward to the new episodes on Monday night. It was about a girl who lived on an island and could actually communicate with a whale who was her best friend. She later met 2 teenage boys that lived on an underwater community with their parents, who studied whales. She also had a sister but she didn't come until later on in the season or maybe even the second season. I remember that she could also hold her breath for like 4 minutes, and she some times talked to her father who was dead, but I forgot how exactly they communicated. There were also these "villain" scientists who were also trying to learn about the whales and were competing with the people from the underwater habitat. It was definitely not your typical show of that day, but it was something that you had to follow and it was really mind boggling.

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13 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
Mysterious and intriguing..., 10 August 2001
Author: william-charles wenham from Arcata, CA

While it's been too long since I've seen this show (I was a mere 7th grader when it was on the Disney channel), I remember this show being very intellectual for a children's primetime series. Neri was a mysterious girl who lived in the ocean (and a nearby island) could communicate with the whale. Meanwhile there was a group of scientists, complete with an underwater city that boasted a school for the teenage children. Neri befriended two of the teenage boys of the ocean city, and together they tried to help save "Charlie" - the whale that Neri was friends with. The show had it's villains - a group of scientists that were competing against the Ocean city for whale research. This is pretty much all I remember about the series - aside from the fact that i was completely in love with the complicated stories - but it was canceled shortly before it's mysteries and loose ends were finished (Neri's island was a spaceship of sorts, suggesting she was an alien; and she had a sister - and a brother if I'm not mistaken). If you get a chance to see this show in syndication sometime, trust me, it's worth your time. Then again, maybe I just remember it being my only alternative to the looooong half-hour before Melrose Place on Monday nights.

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9 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Additional to previous comments., 4 February 2005
Author: nozcr (onethousandpieces@yahoo.com) from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

As a full grown adult at the time I used to watch this series on The Disney Channel on long, boring Sunday mornings when there was nothing else on TV. Occasionally I would tape episodes when there was a good discussion on the Sunday morning political shows and watch the episode later. To all of you who were children at the time and remember it, I wish to reassure you that there were many different references in the stories to things that really were more on an adult level. It wasn't all in your head. The series pretty much held up at an adult level. Unfortunately, the show was made in Australia so it didn't attract much attention in the United States. There was an underlying message of environmentalism and taking care of our planet in addition to the references to mermaids and the general remaking E.T.:The Extra Terrestrial story lines that were common in the 15 years after Steven Spielberg's groundbreaking film.

The series only lasted three years. In year one we were introduced to the Ocean Girl Character. In year two, it was discovered that she had a sister who had been adopted by a human family and was then taken back to the island by the Ocean Girl. In year three, it is discovered that there is a spaceship buried under the island, inside of which is a boy who knows nothing about how things work on Earth. The boy is the key to turning on the spaceship, which sends a distress signal, that brings a ship from the Ocean Girl's home planet and takes the ocean dwelling aliens back home. As far as I know, this is how it came to an end. If there was anything more, only someone from Australia would know.

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7 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
One of the best shows ever, 25 February 2002
Author: Jusenkyo_no_Pikachu from Cyberspace

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This is one of the best TV series to come from Australia. SPOILER ALERT It centres around Neri, an alien girl from the ocean. Along with human kids from the underground city of Orca, she overthrows an organisation called UBRI.

The series ran for four seasons, with 13 episodes a season. It later introduced Neri's sister Mera, another alien called Kal, and Neri's mother Shallamorn.

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8 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
First Addiction, 20 January 2006
Author: alejandra from Bolivia

I was very young back then when I watched this show, but I remember that it was one of my first TV addictions. After that followed Dark Angel, Alias, Lost and most recently Prison Break. Ocean girl was into that category somehow. It was intriguing and the audience didn't know the deal most of the times. Back then I was totally into that show. It was actually pretty interesting for being a kid's show. The plot lines were twisted and the characters were compelling. I also remember the cast changing a lot, but that kept it interesting. Also the actress that played the lead was great on that role, I wonder whatever happened to her. I would watch it any time again if I have the chance and I highly recommend it.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
'A great Australian TV show! One of Australia's best! Read this if you wish to know about the show's fourth season", 7 June 2010

Author: simon-trek from Sydney, Australia

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I recently watched all four seasons of Ocean Girl on DVD and I loved it! This is a beautiful show which was filmed in two of Australia's great natural wonders the Daintree Rainforrest and the Great Barrier Reef. The heroine of the show Neri is a wonderful character. She's so peaceful, innocent and beautiful.

Neri is a mysterious teenage girl who lives alone on an uninhabited tropical island off the coast of northern Queensland. Neri has lived alone on this island for as long as she can remember. Neri is no ordinary girl as she has incredible abilities. She can breathe underwater and can swim great depths and long distances underwater. She can also communicate telepathically with a humpback whale she calls "Charley". Off the coast of Port Douglas is an underwater research and environmental protection facility called ORCA (Ocean Research Centre of Australia). In the pilot episode of Ocean Girl a marine scientist and cetologist (i.e. whale scientist) named Dr. Diane Bates comes to ORCA along with her sons, teenage Jason and his younger brother Brett. The Bates brothers encounter Neri and befriend her and agree to keep Neri a secret. At the same time the Bates brother's mother Dr. Bates and is studying Neri's whale "Charley" and she eventually learns about Neri. Dr. Bates is able to gain Neri's trust and becomes a surrogate mother to her. She also attempts to keep Neri a secret while secretly doing experiments on Neri to try and understand her extraordinary physiology. At the same time a rival research organization called UBRI headed by the corrupt Dr. Hellegren is introduced. This organization performs a number of secret and unethical experiments many of which cause damage to the environment. In the last few episodes of the first season, a spy from UBRI steals a copy of recorded whale song and UBRI uses it to trap Charley. In the last episode of the first season the Bates Brothers reveal Neri to the other children living on ORCA, then the Bates brothers, the other ORCA children and Neri work together and successfully free Charley.

Neri doesn't learn her origins until the second season when Neri with the help of the Bates brothers discover a spacecraft buried under the sand on Neri's island. In the spacecraft they find a holographic recording made by Neri's father explaining that he and Neri are "Ocean People" who come from the "OceanPlanet". Neri's father was a scientist who came to study and protect the Earth's oceans, but the spacecraft crash-landed on Earth. Neri's father also explained that there was another member of Neri's family on the spacecraft Neri's younger sister Mera who was a baby at the time and was placed in a capsule which landed somewhere off the coast of Northern Queensland. The Bates brothers and the other children are eventually able to locate Mera who is living in a foster home. UBRI also learns about Mera and her abilities but the ORCA children persuade Mera to flee with them before UBRI can take her. Mera is reunited with Neri and two sisters live together on Neri's island. But UBRI finds out about the two girls and endeavours to capture them. The Bates brothers and the other ORCA children are able to thwart UBRI's attempts. Then two Ocean People come to Earth to take the two girls home. Mera happily returns to her home planet but Neri decides to stay on Earth to finish her father's work.

In the third season of the show Neri and the Bates brothers search further into the buried spacecraft and discover logs revealing that Neri's father had with him this powerful device called the "Syncronium", which has the power to revitalize the worlds oceans and thus save the Earth from destruction. When the spacecraft crashed all the pieces of the "Syncronium" landed in different areas on the ocean and land. The Bates brothers, along with several children living on ORCA help Neri locate the pieces of the "Syncronium". Unfortunately Dr. Hellegren of UBRI also learns about the "Syncronium and wants it for his own selfish reasons. So the ORCA children have to try and stay ahead of UBRI.

For some reason the fourth season of the show wasn't shown in the U.S. I've no idea why as the fourth season is really enjoyable. Neri and the Bates brothers discover an underwater Pyramid located in the South Pacific built by the Ocean People thousands of years ago. In this Pyramid is a hologram of Neri's mother Queen Shalamorn of the "Ocean Planet" who informs Neri that her destiny is to become princess of her people. The Ocean Planet and the Ocean People are finally revealed in this season. There is great chaos on the Ocean Planet as a deadly plague known as the "Red Virus" has contaminated the planet. A group of rebel Ocean People led by Malakat (a deranged tyrant) and Shersheba (a depraved member of the Ocean People royal family trying to steal Neri's heritage) lead a coup and make plans to invade and conquer Earth, something the majority of the Ocean People are highly opposed to. The other antagonist in the fourth season is PRAXIS (Preventative Response And eXtraterritorial Intelligence Service) an intelligence agency which investigates extraterrestrial activity. PRAXIS learns about Neri and believes that her people are a problem for Earth. The two PRAXIS field agents are Jake Shelby (a callous and arrogant American agent) and his partner Ellie Hauser (a blonde haired Australian woman) who unlike Shelby follows her conscience. So the Bates brothers have to protect Neri from the both PRAXIS and the rebel Ocean People, save the Earth and help Neri achieve her destiny as princess of her people.

So Ocean Girl is a wonderful show. It is also one of the few Australian shows to perform so well internationally. So I highly recommend this show to anyone.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
awesome!, 2 July 2005
Author: lilgapeachco06

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I remember watching this show every Monday night! I use to come home and wait for it to come on. This much I remember in the first season there was a girl named Nira that could talk to her best friend whale under water (that's also where she lived). She later befriends to teenage boys who are living in this underwater city with their mom and fellow scientists and i remember a teenage girl that lived there too and she didn't like Nira for the longest time. There was an enemy of bad scientist too who was trying to conduct experiments on the whales. In the second season i remember Nira and her friends looking for her long lost sister who had been living with adopted parents and everyone was awed because of how fast she could swim and how long she could hold her breath. I remember something in sadly the last season about a spaceship and how Nira and her sister were aliens from another planet. This t.v. show was awesome and I wish I could watch them all over again so i could understand them better....considering i was like in 3rd grade last time i saw an episode.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Ocean Girl an AMAZING show with an amazon cast, 3 January 2012

Author: dancinglarissa from Australia

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Ocean Girl is about a teenage girl called Neri (Marzena Godecki) who can communicate with a Whale which is called Charlie. Neri makes friends with two boys who live in an UnderWater research community called Orca. The boys are Jason Bates (David Hofflin) and Brett Bates (Jefferey Walker) who throughout all the 4 seasons (series) introduce Neri to a load of new people and the world. Together they work out who Neri is and where she comes from, Find Neri's long-lost sister, save the world (not once but twice), and bring up some important issues concerning the world and the people in it. This show has a fun, entertaining and it also teaches you a few things all at the same time. It keeps you entertained and you always seem to want more. It was and still is a great and amazing show to watch. :)

It follow Neri and the Jason and Brett as well as their mother Dianne (Kerry Armstrong/Liz Burch) (two seasons each)and her Research Assistant Winston (Alex Pinder) on some amazing adventures and meeting some amazing people. They are constantly trying to keep Neri's secret with the help of some other ORCA teenagers and protect the oceans. they constantly have to ward off UBRI, which is another research company that is after Neri and Charlie, as well as PRAXIS, which is an Alien Intelligence Agency who is after Neri........did i mention Neri was an Alien from a planet in our language 'The Ocean Planet' and it is revealed in season 4 that she is the Princess of her planet!!........ and they save Earth (and the Solar System) with the Syncronium.....When i say the Solar System i do mean the Solar System as Earth would have spiralled out of control and hit other planets which would hit other planets and hit other planets and so on and so on..... as well as in season 4 the Earth and the Ocean Planet from the 'Red Virus' which was created by Malikat a Evil person from the Ocean Planet.

Once again i loved this show and i still do (I am only 15 years old at the time of writing this) and i wish that their were more episodes. i would/ have told my friends about it who also loved it and i hope you do too.

Thanks :)

Enjoy the show!!! :)

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Exceptionally good family entertainment, 19 May 2012

Author: nolarose from United States

My 11-year old son and I have gotten hooked on Ocean girl on Netflix, where all 4 seasons are available. To me the show is a cross between the Saturday cartoon "Land of the Lost", perhaps Star Trek, a late-80s MTV video, and a National Geographic special. It has nature, beauty, conservation, and it consistently decries the spoiling influence of corporate greed.

There are two main characters: the young man Jason is really the main character since most time is spent on him, but the series is named for the beautiful Ocean Girl. I thought that the Ocean Girl Neri is played in an unusually pure and unaffected way by the beautiful young actress who was also a ballerina, and it shows in how she moves in the water. She is an admirable person in every way; beautiful but unconcerned with her beauty, graceful but strong and athletic, guileless and generous, and loyal. She is almost perfect! The handsome young lead character, Jason, is also an admirable young man in that he honorable and passionate about all the right things -- Neri's right to remain unspoiled in herself and habitat, the ocean, etc, but my one caveat is that he shown as being way too disrespectful and dismissive to his giving and kind researcher mother. So far, into the 2nd season's 11th episode, I have not yet seen him have anything but a disparaging word towards his mother. He pushes off her attempts at closeness, he criticizes everything she does, and she accepts it and is loving to him without any correction.

This is as much a function of what I believe to be our patriarchal society -- one in which however subtly, we are taught to expect that men/boys are going to be put off by the women in their lives. Start watching TV with new eyes and see if what I say is not true. However, it is true in society, so in that sense I was sure to point this out to my son. After a few episodes he also complains when Jason is unkind or distancing to his mother.

On the upside there is a co-researcher character played by a very likable an actor named Pinder...an Indian guy who displays almost constant cheeriness and a desire to bring people together and to solve problems in kind ways. He is an excellent role model.

The other negative I notice (and I notice this a lot on TV anyway) is that people who do not tan redheads, fair skinned folk) are almost always shown as the ugly aggravating character in the show. You see this in cartoons, in TV, everywhere. If you are to find a beautiful redhead they are almost always not a real redhead and either tan well or are covered in fake tan. If the skin is fair they usually are going to be somehow undesirable. The "treat you like a red-headed stepchild" didn't come out of nowhere; it is based in reality. I don't know anything about Australia, but it would appear that red hair and fair skinned people are unpopular, as they now are in America. I've read it's even worse in Britain.

I certainly don't mean to compare this with indignities suffered in race discrimination and even discrimination against heavy people -- they have it much worse, but in this series too we are given the message that fair skinned people, redheads and not-slim are unattractive and aggravating. I am sure to mention these things to my son when we watch together, as I do when we see magazines and other movies.

On the contrary, an obviously aboriginal boy is a very likable genius character so that is a real plus.

Despite these minor downsides, the series has much beautiful scenery and important messages, as well as some really quirky creativeness. I was hooked after the first episode, and my son got hooked by the 4th episode. Now he begs for us to watch more together.

Highly recommend for family viewing with the proper guidance about certain themes in the series.

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