AustLit

'It seems that Department B is to be closed down and Bluey forced into retirement. Their last case is to investigate and close the operations of a faith healer and in doing so, Bluey ends up with a touch of stardust settling on him.

'Bluey's will to survive is taken from him when there seems little he can do to stop the closing of the department and his enforced retirement. But Monica, Gary and Truscott have other plans and do not intend to see Bluey give up without a fight.

'Everyone needs faith in someone or something and this is what Bluey learns when he comes face to face with a man whose purpose in life is to give faith to others.'

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

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

'RONALD BENFIELD HAMLIN 33 years old. An extremely handsome man with eyes that seem to bore right through you, exposing your inner most [sic] thoughts. His hands are quite beautiful and since a child has had a certain talent for easing pain and mental anguish with them. Over the years, Ronald's belief in himself as a healer has grown, but to many, he's nothing but a Con-Man. To his followers he's a "Prince", "Mr. Stardust", because he seems to sprinkle a little here, a little there. At heart, Ronald's a simple man who's [sic] ego, matured by others, blinds him to his own limitations.

'LILLY MORRIS 26 years old. Pretty as a picture on the surface, but underneath? Well that's another story. She knows how limited Ronald's powers are, but she also sees the money they can make from it. Deep inside she loves Ronald, but money has a stronger hold. When things go wrong, Lilly decides it's time to quit, leave, taking what she can with her, but then you can never tell what a woman will do when faced with a crisis, or the law.

'JAKE HOBBS 68 years old. A retired copper. One of the old school of policemen who saw good in even the hardest crim. And old friend of Bluey's. In the last six months, Jake's become desperately ill, against the wishes of his doctors and his daughter he turns to Ronald for help and receives it. When the power fails, Jake sticks by Ronald.

'JANEY HOBBS 38 years old. Jake's daughter. A pleasantly plump, motherly type. She doesn't agree with Jake about Ronald, but is powerless to stop her father going to him and giving him all his money. The one thing she has to agree with her father on, Ronald does seem to stop a lot of her father's pain. In the beginning that is.

'PEGGY MOSS 25 years old. Peggy is pregnant and has been warned by the doctors that she could lose her baby if she doesn't have special care. Peggy ignores them and goes to see Ronald. Ronald gives her great comfort and belief in herself. Like Jake, she's warned and ignores it.

'TED MOSS 25 years old. He loves his wife and like her, wants his baby. He distrusts Ronald and calls him a Con-Man. When Peggy won't listen to him, Ted calls the police, complaining about Ronald. When he thinks the police aren't doing their job well enough, he takes the law into his own hands. Not a bad man, just an emotionally upset one.

'BETTE TAYLOR 46 years old. Still a very attractive woman. Widowed and rich. She gos to Ronald for one reason only. He gives her belief in herself. If she is attracted to his looks, you'd never get her to admit it. She's not a silly woman, just lonely. (BETTE IS PRONOUNCED BET)

'MOU MOIR 47 years old. A happy face, but underneath needing the help that Ronald can give her far more than Bette Taylor. She's married and doesn't mind admitting to a sort of sexual attraction to Ronald. Like Bette Taylor, she's not a silly woman.

'DOCTOR (HOSPITAL) 35 years old. Compassionate. Efficient.

'POLICE DOCTOR 34 years old. Nobody's fool. Dislikes people like Hamlin.

'MARY FELLOWS 18 years old. A deaf mute.'

'Susan Martin is very fortunate to have Sergeant Monica Rourke answer her cry of rape. However, even with the support of Monica, she has a lonely ordeal ahead of her.

'Bluey and Gary do not share Monica's belief that Susan is an innocent victim as there is a great deal of lying on the girl's part. This, coupled with a dubious past, gives them every reason to doubt her story. It will take much more than Monica's "gut feeling" to make Bluey believe Susan is justified in her complaint.

'The age old conflict of who is guilty in such a situation rears its head and accusations and lies from several quarters do nothing to help Department B in its search for the truth.

'And there is always the thought that the rapist will strike again - perhaps at the same woman.'

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

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

'SUSAN MARTIN: 30 years old. A very pretty woman. Married, but separated from her husband. Susan's a sweet-kind-vulnerable woman, caught up in her own emotional needs, not really knowing what they are. In no way is she helped by her husband or boyfriend.

'HENRY MARTIN: 32 years old. Susan's husband. Goodlooking [sic] in a weak way - no real backbone - He loves his wife, but his work becomes his life, thus throwing Susan into the arms of another, more alive man. Henry hasn't the strength of character to really try to win her back.

'JACK STEVENS: 28 years old. Handsome with a rough, back to nature, look. The sort of man most women in Susan's position, fall for, only to live to regret it. Jack's cruel, selfish, without any real feelings for anyone but himself.

'ROGER STEVENS: 25 years old. Jack's brother. Like Jack, he's handsome and still has the look of an innocent about him. Roger hasn't the way with women that Jack has. He has more feelings, but is unable to show them in the usual way.

'KATIE COOPER: 17 years old. Very pretty. A little vague. She's scared stiff of Bluey, fancy's [sic] Gary. The sort of girl you'd invite to a party, because of her attractiveness and sense of fun.

'MR. TIMMS: 55 years old. A weasel type character. Nosy, loves peeking into other people's windows. A little creepy, but no real harm in him.

'P.C. BEECHER: 21 years old. Young and attractive. Quite new to the force. He's heard a lot about Bluey, but never really believed it until he meets him. He's likeable and eager to learn.

'DRUNK: 40 years old. Ordinary looking, business type man. Still quite athletic looking. (NOT YOUR USUAL DRUNK) Just a man who's been on a magnificent celebrating spree after hearing some wonderful news. Unfortunately it lands him in trouble.

'PHOTOGRAPHER: 30 years old. Knows and likes his job. He's photographed a hundred women like Susan and tends to get easily irritated with them.

'EXTRAS IN GYM (2) Athletic types (No lines)

'VKC (V.O.)

'TWO POLICEMEN (UNIFORMED) Young. Middle twenties (No lines)'.

Note 1: Between the writing of these character notes and production, the character of the photographer was changed from male to female.

Note 2: The character notes show signs of minor annotation in blue ink (for example, closing the brackets in 'VKC (V.O.)' and correcting 'TWO POLICEMAN' to 'TWO POLICEMEN'.

'Detective Gary Lawson's excitement at working undercover on a difficult case is quickly dampened when he finds his co-undercover man is a woman - and a rather domineering one at that. Bluey discovers even the best made plans can go wrong and that, for once, it looks like the crims have more cards up their sleeves than Department B.

'Three armoured trucks have been hijacked in various parts of the country. The only lead Bluey comes up with is the possibility that the men involved may be in need of an "oxy" man.

'So Tracey, the female undercover cop, is set up as bait. In settling down together as part of their cover, Gary is surprised to find Tracey has many facets to her character that are most appealing.

'But Gary is in danger of letting his personal feelings interfere with police work.'

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

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

'TRACEY ALEXANDER: 26 years old. Tracey's an undercover policewoman. Very attractive, except when she's in uniform, even that is a cover for Tracey. She is a Chameleon type [sic] character, slipping easily in and out of each character she is asked, or forced, to play. At all times she is on top of the given situation.

'MIKE SCOTT: 26 years old. A handsome well built man. There's still a touch of the soldier about his bearing. Mike was in Vietnam, but he was under investigation, along with four others, for possible graft involving selling arms to the enemy. Mike and the other four devise a way of disappearing from the army. They're successful. Mike has nerves of steel. He relies a lot on his own intuition, usually he's right. Then he meets Tracey, Truscott and Gary. Mike must drive well.

'ED BAIN: 26 years old. Attractive well built man. Nervous eyes, looking everywhere, but at the person he's talking to. Ed doesn't really trust anyone. He has a nasty temper when irritated. He enjoys killing. He is one of the four men who were with Mike in 'Nam.

'PETE ESSEX: 25 years old. Short and stocky, but well muscled. Cold eyes. More easily led than Ed. Pete was in the army from the age of 16, so he is used to responding without question to orders, especially from Mike. He also has a lot of courage, if needs be he could stand up to Ed, but rarely ever does. He also was with Mike in 'Nam.

'MARCIA FRANKS: 25 years old. Very pretty with a touch of the wanton about her. A happy go lucky girl who very early on in her life realised that all she'd got to offer to the world was her body. So she used it, first at school then in the big outside world. She is a very successful massage parlour and home girl. Marcia's big trouble is, she's nosey and just a little too greedy, but there's no real harm in her.

'SERGEANT JACK HALL: 35 years old. Stolid family-type man.

'MACK: 25 years old. Works in the maintenance department - police headquarters, Sydney.

'P.C. DRIVER: 30 years old. He's got as far as he'll ever go.

'WAITER:

'CUSTOMERS (4):

'POLICEMEN (2)'.

'64-year-old Emma Evans claims her son is innocent of murder. Nobody, including Bluey, believes her - until Emma becomes the victim of a hit and run.

'After seeing and talking to Emma in the hospital, Bluey promises that he will at least review the evidence.

'Against the advice of everyone around him, including the Assistant Commissioner, Bluey starts to dig, coming up with some very interesting new facts, that involve the arresting officer and the chief witness for the prosecution.

'The more digging Bluey does, the more twists he finds, causing upheavals at Russell Street - to the point where Bluey is threatened with suspension by the Assistant Commissioner.

'Bluey won't give in, firmly believing there's a case to answer, but even Bluey finds that things are not always what they seem.'

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

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

'EMMA EVANS: 64 years old. Homely, hardworking, old before her time, brought on by the lone fight to prove her son Tom innocent of murder. Emma has a helping hand for everyone, young or old. With Emma it's all or nothing, very rarely is it nothing.

'LESLIE STEVENS: 35 years old. Emma's married daughter. Leslie's a lot like her mother, except Leslie's a lot harder and unlike her mother she believes her brother Tom to be guilty. She has no illusions about him.

'TOM EVANS: 30 years old. Emma's son. Tom's been in trouble all his life. No reason for it, he could just never keep his hands off other people's property. He has two faces - one for his mother and the other for the rest of the world.

'SENIOR DETECTIVE BILL HOLDEN: 34 years old. A handsome well-built man. Good at his job, but he has a tendency to lose his cool if crossed. Like all of us, he's human and makes a mistake.

'HELEN TRENT: 30 years old, married to a dull business man. Helen was the witness who saw Tom Evans running out of the garage after the murder. Intelligent, pretty, but emotionally incapable of being able to cope with the simultaneous break-up of a love affair and the threat of blackmail.

'MOGGY MOON: 29 years old. A creep in every sense. Has an ocker accent with a peculiar whine brought on by nerves.

'TERRY BAXTER: 34 year's old. Terry's a house-breaker. No real harm in him. He's just a loser.

'JENNY DAVIS: 28 years old. Hard and brittle. She blames Tom Evans for being the reason that she's turned to stripping for a living.

'SNOOP BENSON: 40 years old. Ferret-like. A petty crim.

'DOCTOR WICKS: 30 years old. Very efficient.

'CUSTOMER (A): Old age pensioner. A real granny type.

'CUSTOMER (B): A father type.

'POLICEMAN: 20's.'

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian Television Series, Bluey (and its Sydney-based rival, King's Men) 'constituted an attempt to revive the police genre after the cancellations of Homicide, Division 4 and Matlock Police'.

Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, summarises the program as follows:

Bluey is a maverick cop who breaks every stereotype image. He drinks, smokes and eats to excess, and therefore is rather large, but it is his unusual investigative methods that set him apart. He has bent or broken every rule in the book at some stage, to the point where no-one else wants to work with him. But he gets results, and is therefore too valuable to lose, so the powers-that-be banish him to the basement of Russell Street Police Headquarters where he is set up in his own department, a strategem that keeps him out of the way of other cops.

Moran adds that 'Grills, Diedrich and Nicholson turned in solid performances in the series and the different episodes were generally well paced, providing engaging and satisfying entertainment.'

The program sold well overseas, especially in the United Kingdom. But though it rated well domestically, it was not the success that the Seven Network had hoped for, and was cancelled after 39 episodes.

Bluey had an unexpected revival in the early 1990s when selections from the video footage (over-dubbed with a new vocal track) were presented during the second series of the ABC comedy The Late Show as the fictional police procedural Bargearse. (The Late Show had given ABC gold-rush drama Rush the same treatment in series one.)

A spin-off from Crawford Productions' Matlock Police, Solo One transferred motorcycle officer Gary Hogan from the fictional town of Matlock to the real town of Emerald in the Dandenong Ranges, where the program was filmed on location.

The program, an attempt to capitalise on Gary Hogan's popularity with child viewers of Matlock Police and less adult in focus than its predecessor, wasn't renewed for a second season, after Cronin moved on to Crawford's war-time drama, The Sullivans. Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, notes that the program 'was very successful and received much critical acclaim', but Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, counters that 'Cronin, though lovable both to Crawford's and the Victorian Police, who were advisors on the series, was far too long in the tooth to be playing this kind of role'.

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

'HARRY THOMAS: 30 years old. But mentally he's about 10. He looks normal enough, but when he speaks we see and hear the child. Harmless.

'JEFF DAVIS: 12 years old. A quiet, friendly boy and a diabetic. When he meets up with Harry, he understands Harry's need for a friend.

'TIM BENSON: 12 years old. Mischievous, always in trouble, without really meaning any harm.

'BOBBY CLARK: 12 years old. He's very like Tim and follows him in everything, they're buddies.

'MRS. JUPP: 45 years old. A sour faced woman. The Thomas' neighbour, not happy.

'MRS. DAVIS: 30 years old. Hardworking, pleasant woman. A little too easy going with Jeff perhaps.'

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

'BOBBY DUNCAN: 12 years old (well nearly). A likeable lad and usually well adjusted to the disappointments he's had on his previous birthdays, but this time he decides it's once too often and he runs away, only to regret it as soon as he does, running away isn't all that it's cooked up to be.

'BILL DUNCAN: 30 years old. Bobby's father, a hard working man with a stubborn streak, like a lot of parents, he can't understand why Bobby doesn't understand that disappointments are part of growing up. The trouble is, Bill's forgotten what it was like to be a boy.

'LOUISE DUNCAN: 29 years old. Bobby's mother. Like her husband, hard working, unlike her husband she does understand what it's like to be Bobby's age, but she also understands the problems her husband faces, so she finds herself caught between the two.

'JOHN PRITCHARD: 11 years old (11½ really). Like Bobby, likeable. He's used to disappointments and doesn't expect things to change. He's always talking about running away, but would never do it on his own. Allows himself to be led by Bobby in most things. He also finds out that running away isn't all that it's cooked up to be.'

The following script is an episode of Homicide that was seemingly never produced and certainly never aired. The title bears no resemblance to any of the extant episodes of Homicide, and it is not included in Don Storey's list of Homicide episodes (although Peter Schreck's unaired episode 'Covet Thy Neighbour', which was pulled from the schedule by the network's request, is included in Storey's list).

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

'PETER OSCAR COUTURE: 33 years old. Attractive in a weak sort of way. Sexually impotent. Through the years he's built up a strong hatred for women. Brought on by having found out that his mother was a Nude Model, and dancer as a young woman. That to him made her a whore. Over the years his mind becomes warped. He begins to kill. He reads about Lawson heading the investigations. Feels it would be fun to play Cat and Mouse with the Police. But he soon tires of this and wants to be caught. That's the only way he'll stop killing. Loves wearing womens' underwear.

'SERGEANT FRED THOMSON: 45 years old. Homely looking man. The type of Policeman you'd expect to find working in a small town. Friendly, knows and does his job well. Married with two sons.

'SUSAN LESLEY CROMER: 32 years old. Also known as 'Claudine' Manager of a Massage Parlour [sic]. Married with one child. She's a high class Pro. Who leans towards blackmail. Very attractive. Good figure.

'YOUNG WOMAN 20. Quite pretty. Good figure. Loves to swim naked in the sea. Even in winter.

'POLICE CONSTABLES: 4. In Uniform. 3 in Civvies.'

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'.