AustLit

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.

An adventure series following the experiences of a naval patrol boat, Patrol Boat rated reasonably well on Australian television and sold well overseas. Made in co-operation with the Royal Australian Navy (which, Moran points out in his Guide to Australian TV Series, 'had been trying to get something similar onto the screen for almost eight years'), the series made use of two naval patrol boats for open-sea shooting, including (for the second series) the Fremantle class patrol boat HMAS Defiance.

Moran notes that 'Guest stories included pursuing drug runners, helping a stranded refugee boat and destroying an old mine that had become dangerous to shipping. Each self-contained episode was constructed around two stories, one usually working around an individual sailor while the other concerned a larger group'.

Patrol Boat was the first program in which series creator James Davern's production company, JNP Film, had an active involvement, but Moran notes that JNP Film 'simply packaged scripts for the first series'. Their involvement was greater in the second series, which was made much later.

Aimed largely at young (specifically male) viewers, Alpha Scorpio followed the sudden realisation of two university students, enjoying a quiet coastal holiday, that their friend Mirny is one of a group of aliens from the fifth planet of Antares who have recently landed on Earth.

Alpha Scorpio has never been released on either video or DVD, and it is possible that nothing but the first episode remains in the ABC archives. However, the first episode is available to view on YouTube, beginning with part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq7QOln0fro (Sighted 16/2/2011)

The program is a sole-author work: James Davern scripted all six episodes.

Further Reference

'"Alpha Scorpio": Based on Fact', Australian Women's Weekly, Wed.. 17 Oct. 1973, p.27.

One of Australia's earliest television dramatisations of its gold-rush era, Rush is, as Don Storey points out in his Classic Australian Television, in many ways two entirely separate programs: between series one and series two, the setting shifts from the Victorian goldfields to a New South Wales mining town, and jumps forward from the 1850s to the early 1860s. However, both series take place in the same universe, use the same chronology, and have a clear internal coherence, centred on the continuing character of Sergeant Robert McKellar. Therefore, they are generally treated as two separate series of a single program.

(The differences in cast, crew, writers, and directors between the two series are given in detail in the film details section below.)

With its enormous, intricate, expensive, and accurate sets, costumes, and props, Rush proved extremely popular with viewers, despite series one airing in an awkward weeknight 8pm slot (which, as Storey notes, put it against the second half of the highly successful Homicide in Melbourne). Series one did, however, attract some criticism for being filmed in black-and-white when colour programming was only a matter of months away in Australia.

Series two (which drew on foreign financing to cover its cost, an extremely high--for a domestically produced program--$24,000 an episode) was made in colour. Following Sergeant McKellar (the only character to carry over from series one), series two pushed the character forward through two disillusioning events (the Eureka Stockade, which prompted McKellar's resignation from the Victoria Police, and the death of his wife Sarah) and dropped him into the conflicts of a small New South Wales mining town.

Series two was also extremely popular but, according to Storey, plans for series three were shelved when the new Fraser government instituted (among other things) a hefty budget cut to the ABC.

Series one gained renewed prominence in the 1990s when, like police procedural Bluey, it was re-dubbed and sent up on The Late Show (as The Olden Days).

Australia's first successful television soap opera, Bellbird was devised by writer Barbara Vernon and telecast by ABC Television between 1967 and 1977. The serial is set in a rural farming community, with the storylines examining the lives of various people from in and around the fictional township of Bellbird. Among the long list of characters introduced during the course of the series were the crusty farmer Jim 'The Colonel' Emerson and his glamorous wife Maggie, the local mechanic Joe Turner and his wife Olive, local policeman Constable Des Davies and his wife Fiona, the unpleasant stock and station agent John Quinney, and Jim and Marge Bacom, proprietors of the local pub that served as a central meeting place.

Episodes one and four from the first season of Bellbird are published in Close Up: Scripts from Australian Television's Second Decade. Editors Don Reid and Frank Bladwell provide a summary of the episodes:

Episode 1: Melbourne teacher Michael Foley sells his house and leaves the city in his Rolls Royce to live in the country township of Bellbird. Lori Chandler, a librarian, has agreed to take him in as a boarder at her property, Bellbird Station. The local P and C committee members find this immoral, however, and demand she renege on her decision. Meanwhile, Glenda Chan, a young Chinese woman, is being pressured to sell her house by local real-estate agent Charles Kozane, who uses Jack Baker, an old friend of the Chans', as his cover. Baker currently tends the garden for Glenda. She is informed that not only is the garden on council land but her family has also been squatting on land originally bought by Lori Chandler's grandfather. Kozane knows that Lori won't sell the land while Glenda still lives in the house, and is attempting to convince her to take Jack's 'generous' offer.

Episodes one and four from the first season of Bellbird are published in Close Up: Scripts from Australian Television's Second Decade. Editors Don Reid and Frank Bladwell provide a summary of the episodes:

Episode 4: Michael Foley's presence as the new teacher, his living arrangements, and his car become topics of interest within the town. While Mrs Lang finds the whole situation a lot of fuss about nothing, she is nevertheless determined that her daughter will have nothing further to do with Tony Buckland. Charles Kozane invites Foley to his office to apologise for his behaviour, but then asks him to help convince Lori that she shouldn't get involved with the 'Chinese' problem. Kozane is disappointed when Foley not only insists he has no plans to get involved in anything or with anybody in this 'god-forsaken burg,' but also openly criticises his 1920s' Chicago-style methods. The episode ends with Glenda informing Lori about Kozane's attempts to get her out of the house. Lori exclaims with savage bitterness, 'Charlie Kozane! Of all the Grade A stinkers! Charlie Kozane!'