AustLit

'A fast-paced television drama set within the fascinating environment of a State Coroner's office complex. Each day a team of highly trained professionals deal with the questions of deaths, murders, accidents, suicides, fires, drownings and even the odd natural cause. We see their battles with grieving families, slow or meddling authorities and organized crime, from the initial inquiry through to the courtroom appearances and the Coroner's final verdict and recommendations for trial or reform.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive (http://www.australiantelevision.net/statecoroner/statecoroner.html). (Sighted: 8/3/2013)

'It's a story about justice...and the corruption of justice. JANUS is about the lawyers, police, judges and magistrates who work with a very imperfect system. The focus of our story will be the new Director of Public Prosecutions Officer, taking over the handling of all Committals for trial - the first sweeping changes recommended by the Janus Taskforce Committee.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 3/5/2013)

'A hard-edged, gritty drama about the tense and claustrophobic world of a Major Crime Task Force set up to solve an urban terrorist bombing, a Task Force which brings together a crew of idiosyncratic, competitive characters over a knife edged maximum stressed two months. PHOENIX is no traditional cop shop or crime story. Its characters are not clean, super hero cops, just real police whose attitudes can be shocking and whose humour is grim and black.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 3/5/2013)

'There are strange goings on at Brindabella Homestead. Every time someone visits the house, they seem to come to a sticky end. Who is committing these horrible murders?

'Could it be glamorous socialite Mrs Peacock, owner of Brindabella? Perhaps it is her step-daughter, the lovely Miss Scarlet? Scarlet's boyfriend, Professor Plum, has charm but is he to be trusted? The family cook, Mrs White, seems a kindly old soul. But looks can deceive! Colonel Mustard's fine war record would suggest an upright gentleman. But is he? And the good Reverend Green? Surely a man of the cloth couldn't be a killer ... or could he?

'The answer is that any of them could be the killer and the task of finding out who is the criminal rests with you, the audience. In your investigations you will be assisted by the local sleuth, Detective Sergeant Bogong. Help will also come from a studio audience who are able to quiz the characters about their movements and their alibis.'

Source: Crawford Productions publicity material (held in the Crawford Collection at the AFI Research Collection).

On the cold and inhospitable planet of Zyrgon in a galaxy light years away, X's father wins the state lottery for the 27th time in a row. Knowing he will now be severely punished, twelve-year-old X is determined to save her family from jail, and decides to buy a spaceship. The whole family then set off into space, head halfway across the galaxy, and turn left. They land on an even stranger planet: Earth.

'They're women of action, they're women of the '90s, they're intelligent, highly trained and resourceful. But in the police force they call them "skirts".'

Source: Screen Australia

Like previous Grundy production Waterloo Station, Richmond Hill was an attempt to replicate Crawford Productions' success with the police-drama/soap-opera fusion that was Cop Shop. But like Waterloo Station, it was unsuccessful, limping through a year's worth of poor ratings before being cancelled.

Moran notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series that the program was

designed to fit on the other side of the main evening news, thus hopefully holding viewers already hooked by Neighbours. Although the program had its share of younger characters, it is chiefly remembered for its older players, including the monumental Maggie Kirkpatrick as the pretentious butt of much of the comedy, veteran Gwen Plumb as the caring owner of a boarding house, and Ross Higgins as the police sergeant trying to hold it all together.

Moran also notes that the serial cost $8 million to produce.

Home and Away is a television serial created by Alan Bateman and produced by the Seven Network. The idea for the series came to Bateman (then head of drama at Seven) after he stopped to buy ice-creams in a small country town in southern NSW. While chatting to some locals, he learned that the town was unhappy about plans to build a home for foster kids from the city. At that time, Channel Seven was still smarting from its decision to let Neighbours go to the Ten Network, where it had become hugely popular, and was looking to create another series to rival its success. Bateman saw in the idea that became Home and Away the potential for plenty of storylines and conflict by having streetwise city kids being relocated to a small regional environment,

In the beginning, the series focused on Pippa and Tom Fletcher, who, being unable to have children of their own, decide to become foster parents. When Tom is retrenched from his city job, the couple buy the rundown Summer Bay Caravan Park and move there with their five foster children. Soon after arriving, they also take in troublesome Bobby Simpson.

The series debuted in January 1988 with an hour-long telemovie. Although this rated well, the series itself took some while to develop an audience. Having learned their lesson from the Neighbours debacle, Network Seven gave its new show time, and its ratings gradually increased. As with Neighbours, the Home and Away series and performers became very popular in the United Kingdom.

Like the earlier Crawford's series The Box, Prime Time was concerned with television production. In this case, the programme focused on the fictional Lockhart Productions and its prime-time current-affairs program, Assignment: according to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, 'although there was no physical resemblance between actor Chris Orchard and real-life current affairs host and company owner, Mike Willesee, nevertheless the reference was clear.' The show was produced in such a way that, according to Moran, its 'format was flexible enough to allow both the presence of ongoing narratives about the principal characters as well as featuring guest characters, narratives and situations arising out of the stories that Assignment was focusing on.'

Unlike The Box, Prime Time was not successful, though Moran emphasises that Channel 9, the network airing the program, 'did much to snatch disaster from the jaws of victory by scheduling Prime Time on Thursday and Friday nights'.

An attempt to re-invoke the popularity that police procedurals had enjoyed a decade earlier, Special Squad was the most expensive program produced in Australia up to 1985 (at $150,000 per episode), yet received such lukewarm ratings that Channel Ten chose not to commission a second series.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series,

it was good to watch, with expert stunt work and special effects. With well-paced narratives, intelligently and nicely worked out situations and plenty of emphasis on the villains and victims, Special Squad was just as watchable and entertaining as Homicide had been in its last series.

According to Moran, the failure of Special Squad lay both in its difference from and its similarity to Homicide. The novelty (of Australian accents and Australian locations) that had helped make Homicide so successful was no longer in play, and 'the sight of tough men (on both sides of the law) made the program [Special Squad] seem very old-fashioned. In addition, the plethora of other Australian dramas on air at the time gave viewers more than enough alternatives.'

This Ten Network serial--which Moran describes in his Guide to Australian TV Series as 'an eccentric series that might have been more at home on the ABC'--followed the travails of two branches of the Carson family: patriarch and lawyer Geoffrey Carson (and his at-home son and daughter) and his widowed daughter-in-law and fellow lawyer Jennifer (and her three children).

Geoffrey and Jennifer often meet in court, usually in oppositional roles in the same case, which underlies the tension between Geoffrey's outdated patriarchal attitude and Jennifer's more liberated outlook. Moran also notes that the sets ('sumptuously heavy Victorian interiors') tended to emphasise the undercurrent of nineteenth-century patriarchy running beneath the series.

Carson's Law employed the soap-opera convention of self-contained episodes for guest stars and ongoing story arcs for regular characters, though, in Moran's terms, 'it tended to use its guest stories as a means of furthering the personal and continuing narratives'.

Though popular in Melbourne (and less popular in Sydney), the program was not renewed after the second series, and ended in 1983.

Set in a small, fictional, New South Wales country town called Wandin Valley, A Country Practice focused on the staffs of the town's medical practice and local hospital and on the families of the doctors, nurses, and patients. Many of the episodes also featured guest characters (frequently patients served by the practice) through whom various social and medical problems were explored. Although often considered a soap opera, the series was not built around an open-ended narrative; instead, the two one-hour episodes screened per week formed a self-contained narrative block, though many of the storylines were developed as sub-plots for several episodes before becoming the focus of a particular week's storyline. While the focus was on topical issues such as youth unemployment, suicide, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, and terminal illness, the program did sometimes explore culturally sensitive issues, including, for example, the Aboriginal community and their place in modern Australian society.

Among the show's principal characters were Dr Terence Elliott, local policeman Sergeant Frank Gilroy, Esme Watson, Shirley Dean Gilroy, Bob Hatfield, Vernon 'Cookie' Locke, and Matron Margaret 'Maggie' Sloan. In addition to its regularly rotating cast of characters, A Country Practice also had a cast of semi-regulars who would make appearances as the storylines permitted. Interestingly, while the series initially targeted the adult and older youth demographic, it became increasingly popular with children over the years.

The script held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection contains the following character notes (excluding regular characters):

'RICKY: A 31 year old rocker. Tall, good-looking in a lean sparse way. A dreamer, reluctant to face reality until the very last. The driver.

'CHAS: Also a 31 year old rocker. Shorter, heavier, not so good looking. Like Ricky, missed the bus in '64 when rock collapsed, but unlike Ricky, a pragmatist. The mechanic.

'CASSIE STEVENS: About 17. Pretty, little make-up. Dresses casually. Carefree, impulsive, with no past, no future, just the present. A realist in her own reality.

'HELEN: About 21. Second-year law student. Into Womens' and any other minority Rights [sic]. Confident, at times aggressive. An idealist.

'CROFT: About 28. Well groomed, fashionably dressed. Confident, easy, yet plausible. A competent salesman.

'EMPLOYER/MANAGER:/ MR. GOODISON: About 55. Soberly dressed. No nonsense type. Knows his job, probably worked his way up from the Print Shop floor. A conservative.

'SERVICE STATION PROPRIETOR: Mid 40's. Slow, easy going type, who proves too trusting.

'SKINHEAD #1 #2. Young, weazle [sic] faced, looking for action and finding it. Drives.'

The script held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection contains the following character notes (excluding regular characters):

'MARGARET BATESON: 30. Attractive looking without being strikingly so. Public Servant. A naturally shy person, her manner is polite, even reserved, though later on in the 8 M.M. film clips, a relaxed friendliness begins to emerge. Drives.

'MICHAEL JAMES Late 30's, early 40's. A solicitor, married. English, though not 'public school' background, prefer trace of regional accent. Neither suave lawyer, nor 'ladies man', rather a working solicitor, sincere, competent, with the usual hassles of any family man, but with the added load of an invalid wife.

'MRS. JAMES 36, though looks 56. Twelve months previously suffered a stroke from which she has never really recovered. Premature aging, loss of right arm and side, impairment of certain memory and speech functions. Speaks with a slow, deliberate manner. Occasionally a glimpse of the warm, vibrant personality that existed before. Still an intelligent woman. James' wife. Also English.

'JOHN SMITH: 20, good looking, easy manner. Student teacher, theatre and film making, over from New Zealand on a working holiday. Certain idealism, and also confidence, born of his youth, that becomes tested through the course of his encounter with the police.

'MANAGER (HOTEL): 40's. Bluff, chatty type, with a certain air of insincerity. A student of blending and tax evasion.

'SUPERVISOR (PUBLIC SERVICE): Margaret Bateson's immediate superior. Also 40's. Brusque, efficient type, who displays a certain perception towards Margaret's personal situation, but little sensitivity.

'AGENT (FLAT): Woman, 50. Possibly her husband ran the Estate Agency, and subsequently died. Treats D's almost as if they were prospective tenants.

'GARAGE PROPRIETOR: Small, gnarled, well into his 70's. Old fashioned type, who still gets concerned at young women driving around the country alone and who doesn't mind saying so.

'COUNTRY POLICE SERGEANT: Heavy, balding 40ish. Knows the Hotel Manager fairly well, and probably would share a drink if not for the Homicide D's presence. However, shrewd and knows his job, and handles the Manager with experienced understanding when the time comes.

'JANE CURTIS: Early 20's. Secondary teacher, based in the country. Drives a sports car. Attractive, sense of humour, takes life as she sees it.

'MOTORCYCLE OFFICER: No lines. Not necessary to ride a motorcycle. Discovers the body, during routine exercise.

'POSTMAN : Delivers letters. Rides a bicycle.

'RADIO ANNOUNCER: V.O.

'V.K.C: V.O.'

'An ordinary little man decides to leave his wife and so draws Ryan into an extraordinary mesh of plots and counter-plots.

'Ryan is able to trace the man to a mysterious travel agency called 'Escape International' and from there to the airport - only to learn that he had a heart attack before catching his flight out of the country. Ryan learns that he was rushed to a public hospital, but transferred almost immediately to a private institution which turns out not to be a hospital at all. Now he has disappeared.

'So Ryan decided to enter the 'Pipeline' himself; to book an overseas tour through 'Escape International'. He soon learns that he is being used as some sort of courier - but he doesn't know he is also a decoy.

'He finds himself entangled with not one, but two international espionage agencies.'

Source: Synopsis held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection (RMIT).

The script for this episode held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection does not contain character notes.

Ryan focused on the titular Michael Ryan, a private detective with a stringent code of ethics and a background as a soldier, police officer, and social worker. Ryan's work doesn't focus on divorce and domestic problems, but on serious crimes that, for some reason, the victims are unwilling to take to the police. He is supported by his secretary Julie King (who often becomes involved in fieldwork), cab driver and later assistant Tony Angelini, and police liaison Detective Sergeant Dan Cullen.

According to Don Storey in Classic Australian Television,

'The production standards of Ryan are very high -- good writing, solid acting performances, smooth direction and excellent camera and editing work combined to form a polished and professional product. And Ryan was very successful overseas -- proportional to the number of episodes made, Ryan has probably done better overseas than most other Crawford shows. Yet it was the first Crawford show not to do well locally'.

'The body of Katherine Gibson is found in a shallow lake. Her boss, who runs a book shop tells police that she is a lonely girl from New Zealand with very few friends and no family in Australia.

'After a chase, Police [sic] capture a youth who is driving Katherine's car. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the car had been stolen well after the time of Katherine's death.

'Inspector Lawson gets a tip from Detective Murray, a woman detective who tells Lawson that Katherine had been registered at the same computer matchmaking company that she belongs to. After interviewing the manager of the service, Thompson, Homicide Police suspect David Grant. David had been matched with both Katherine and Sally Watson, a girl who was reported missing two months earlier. When forensic scientists discover that some of the items found with Katherine's body had been submerged in water for two months, they search the lake more thoroughly and find Sally's body.

'Grant is dismissed as the chief suspect after he admits to being a homosexual and is able to verify his movements on the nights in question. The focus of the investigation now turns to Thompson. They have circumstantial evidence to convince them of his guilt, but no concrete proof. Detective Murray volunteers to go out on a date with Thompson and set him up.

'Murray is picked up by Thompson, but a series of unfortunate accidents mean that the police following her, lose the couple completely. Murray, however is able to get to a phone and get a message to her colleagues that she is going to a particular restaurant near where the bodies of the other girls were found.

'The Homicide detectives arrive on the scene as Thompson goes schizophrenic and tries to strangle Murray. When Thompson is apprehended he breaks down and it is clear that he is mentally unbalanced.'

Source: Synopsis held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection (RMIT).

[Note: although the synopsis indicates that Thompson 'tries to strangle' Murray, the narration at the end of the script says that he is convicted for her murder.]

[Note: Katherine's name is variously spelt 'Katherine' (in the synopsis) and 'Catherine' (in the character notes/script).]

The script held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection contains the following character notes (excluding regular characters):

'HELEN MURRAY Late 20's. Policewoman. Attractive looks, but not glamorous. Recently transferred to C.I. Competent in her work. However, she has reached something of a cross-road. She is concerned that the demands of her job may over-ride all else - at the expense of her being an ordinary person. She is not sure that she wants to become a twenty-four hour policewoman.

'THOMPSON 30's - 40's. Computer date manager. Good-looking. Drives. As a small boy was dominated by his mother and older sisters. As a consequence he suffers a love-hate relationship with women. A conscientious family man - he expiates his guilt concerning his frequent philanderings, by transferring the guilt to the girl concerned. In other words - a nut.

'DAVID GRANT Photographer. 30's. Intelligent. Sensitive. Helpful towards D's at first - but when it tends to drag on becomes a little supercilious. Over the last few years he has come to realize he is homosexual. For various reasons he is very reluctant to admit it - particularly to himself. Rather a sad figure.

'FLETCHER 23. Small-time crim. Not too bright. Bit of a born loser. Drives.

'USED CAR SALESMAN 30's - 40's. Battling to make a buck. Knows the business inside out and gives nothing away. More than a match for Fletcher.

'CATHERINE GIBSON 20's. Pretty, although she doesn't use a lot of make-up. A shy, reserved girl, interested in philosophy and folk music. Inexperienced in her relationships with men.

'ERIC TANNER 40's. Bookseller. Kindly towards Catherine. A little cynical towards D's when at first he thinks they are Vice Squad.

'CHARLIE SIMPSON 30's - 40's Maintenance mechanic. Brash. Cocky with D's - but mortally afraid of his wife. Considers himself God's gift to women and does his best to spread these gifts.

'CHERYL GREEN 30's. Deserted by her husband. Knows Charlie for what he is, yet still loves him in a fashion. Pretty well hardened to life over the years.

'DAVIS 19. Young, local uniform constable. Fresh, eager and enthusiastic. However his keenness tends to flag when the search for the second body drags on for six hours or so.

'JENNY 19. Sells doughnuts, hot dogs. Straight-forward. Working class. A bit cheeky, but likeable.

'MRS. GRACE 60's. Landlady. Mean and miserly. Sniffs a lot.

'DIVVY (1) 20's - 30's. Uniformed constable (Stuntman).

'DIVVY (2) 20's - 30's. Uniformed senior constable. Bit of a character.

'SEARCH AND RESCUE (1) 20's. Young policeman.

'SEARCH AND RESCUE (2) 40's. Stronger character. Experienced policeman. Kids Davis along a bit.

'FORENSIC MAN Greg Watkins. Stock character.

'TED BROWN 50's. Model boat fanatic. Rudely jolted out of his own little world by the discovery of Catherine's body.

'MODEL 20's. Glamorous but not too bright. XSSW (to fit the only Edwardian dress Wardrobe currently possesses).

'OLD LADY 70's - 80's. Old and deaf.'

Division 4, which Don Storey notes in Classic Australian Television was 'the only drama series on Australian television to rival the popularity of Homicide', was created as a vehicle for Gerard Kennedy, who had risen to popularity playing the complicated enemy agent Kragg in spy-show Hunter, after Tony Ward's departure left Hunter's future in doubt.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian Television Series:

The series differed from Homicide in being more oriented to the situation and milieu of a suburban police station staffed by a mixture of plainclothes detectives and uniformed policemen. This kind of situation allowed Division 4 to concentrate on a range of crimes, from major ones such as murder to minor ones such as larceny.

Though set in the fictional Melbourne suburb of Yarra Central, 'Sets were constructed that were replicas of the actual St Kilda police station charge counter and CIB room, with an attention to detail that extended to having the same picture hanging on the wall', according to Storey.

Division 4 ended in 1976. Storey adds:

Division 4's axing was a dark day for Australian television, as within months the other two Crawford cop shows on rival networks, Matlock Police and Homicide, were also axed. It was widely believed, and still is, that the cancellation of the three programs was an attempt by the three commercial networks--acting in collusion--to wipe out Crawford Productions, and consequently cripple the local production industry.

Running for twelve years and a total of 510 episodes, Homicide was a seminal Australian police-procedural program, set in the homicide squad of the Victoria Police. According to Don Storey in his Classic Australian Television, it represented a turning point for Australian television, prompting the development of local productions over the purchase of relatively inexpensive American dramas. Indeed, Storey quotes Hector Crawford as saying that his production company intended three outcomes from Homicide: demonstrating that it was possible to make a high-quality local drama series, counteracting criticism of local performers, and showing that Australian audiences would watch Australian-made dramas.

As Moran notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series, the program adopted a narrative structure focusing on crime, detection, and capture, rather than on character studies of the lead detectives. The early episodes were produced by a small crew (Storey notes that the crew was frequently limited to four people: cameraman, grip, director, and assistant director), requiring some degree of ingenuity to achieve a polished result (including, in some cases, the actors performing their own stunts). However, the program received extensive support from the Victoria Police (who recognised, in its positive portrayal of police officers, a valuable public-relations exercise) and, as its popularity grew, from the public.

The program's cast changed extensively over its twelve years on the air, though it remained focused on a small group of male detectives, with the inclusion of irregular characters such as Policewoman Helen Hopgood (played by Derani Scarr), written on an as-required basis to reflect the involvement of women in the police force. In Moran's words, 'The other star of Homicide was the location film work. These ordinary, everyday familiar urban locations were what gave the series a gritty realism and familiarised audiences with the shock of recognition at seeing themselves and their milieus on air'.