Mix Tape (ATOM Study Guide)

Please note: This study guide contains two versions – a full-colour guide as well as a text-only version for printing and referencing.

Mix Tape is a poignant, decades-spanning love story that captures the enduring power of music, memory and the connections we can never quite let go of. From 1989 to 2015, the series follows Alison and Daniel, two teenagers who fall in love through their shared passion for music and poetry, forging a bond that transcends time and distance, from the streets of Sheffield to the shores of Sydney.

In 1989, Daniel and Alison’s love blossoms over traded mixtapes and dreams of escaping their small-town lives. For Daniel, Alison is his muse, his escape from the monotony of Sheffield, while for Alison, Daniel becomes her anchor amidst the chaos of her personal life. But life pulls them apart, leaving their plans – and their love – unfinished.

Fast forward to 2015. Daniel is a music critic who has remained rooted in Sheffield, grappling with a failing marriage and a lingering sense of what could have been. Alison, now a published author, has built a life in Sydney with her surgeon husband and two children. Despite her success, she feels unfulfilled, haunted by memories of the past.

When fate intervenes, Daniel and Alison are reunited after more than two decades apart. But with so much left unsaid and lives shaped by choices made long ago, can they reclaim their first love or are they destined to repeat the same mistakes?

Mix Tape is a journey through time, soundtracked by the music that defined a generation, asking the universal question: Can first love, once lost, ever truly be found again?

Curriculum Links:

Mix Tape is suitable viewing for students in Years 10–12 in:

• English
• Literature
• Media

It is also relevant to the General Capability: Personal and Social Capability.

Mix Tape provides opportunities for students to make a close reading of the series from a film as text perspective. In these subjects, students are expected to discuss the meaning derived from texts, the relationship between texts, the contexts in which texts are produced and read, and the experiences readers bring to the texts.

In completing the tasks, students will have demonstrated the ability to: 

• Respond to a television series both personally and in detached and critical ways.
• Analyse the construction of a television series and comment on the ways it represents an interpretation of ideas and experiences.
• Discuss the social, cultural and historical values embodied in a television series.
• Draw on appropriate metalanguage to discuss the structures and features of a television series.
• Use their own written and spoken texts to explore concepts and ideas and to clarify their own and others’ understanding.