AustLit

Catwalk was spun off from an episode of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's drama Dynasty (an episode also called 'Catwalk'), which had featured a fictional woman's fashion magazine called Lilith. Unlike Dynasty, however, it was not produced for the ABC (which was uninterested in the projected spin-off), but for ATN-7.

According to Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, compared to Dynasty, 'Catwalk is not as intense. The setting of a top women's fashion magazine provides plenty of intrigue and tension, but it is a lighter drama with touches of comedy and more of a human-interest approach'. Albert Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, suggests that the program 'was a kind of fictional version of a then very popular ATN daytime chat series, Beauty and the Beast.'

The program focuses on the relatively small staff of the magazine (now named Catwalk): Saxon Wells (owner and publisher), Ricky Novak (photographer), Cornelia Heyson (model), Jenkins (secretary), and Paula Healy (editor).

According to Storey, 'As there was little or no 'soap' content, and the established characters did not develop over such a short run, the episodes were screened mostly in random order with no detrimental effect'. Though the series rated moderately well, ATN-7 did not choose to produce a second series.

Based on Norman Lindsay's novel of the same name, the narrative explores issues around the subject of growing up in a small rural community.

As with its predecessors, The Interpretaris and Vega 4, Phoenix Five took its name from the spaceship that was the show's focus: the flagship of Earth Space Control, with a two-man, one-woman team, assisted by their computeroid, Karl. The show had two primary villains. For the first thirteen episodes, the villain was Zodian (the evil scientist of Vega 4, now re-cast and with a newly blue skintone), who sought galactic domination from his base on Zebula 9, with the support of his twin computers, Alpha and Zeta. When Zodian was captured, he was replaced as villain by Platonus, assisted by a computer called Tommy.

Rather than following a single story arc as its predecessors had, Phoenix Five was a series of self-contained stories, allowing the script writers to move freely around the galaxies, and explore whichever crisis the crew happened to come across.

Soourece: Moran's Guide to Australian TV Series and Don Storey's Classic Australian Television (Sighted: 6/10/2011)

A film adaptation of Cleary's novel, which had been adapted as a television series two years earlier. This film used many of the same cast members as the television series.

A drama series set during the height of the Vietnam War, You Can't See Round Corners revolves around Frankie McCoy, a lonely, somewhat aggressive non-conformist who has spent all his life living in the inner-city suburb of Newtown. As the series progresses, McCoy is called up for National Service and although he initially fulfils his duty, he later deserts and heads back home to hide with friends. Other main characters include his girlfriend Margie and enemy Terry Howlett, the twenty-year-old leader of a small gang of thugs.

The television adaptation was contemporised by producer John Walters and screenwriter Richard Lane. Cleary's original novel is set in the Sydney suburb of Paddington during World War II. After deciding to bring the temporal setting forward to the (then) current Vietnam era, they also had to change the physical setting. Although Paddington had been a working-class suburb in the 1940s, the demographic had changed considerably by the 1960s. Newtown was subsequently considered the most appropriate location for a narrative set in a working-class suburb. Richard Lane records in Take One (1972) that he and Walters also deliberately introduced other contemporary issues into the narrative, notably the inclusion of the Greek community, which by the late 1960s had had an enormous impact on the Newtown district (p. 52).

An Australian-made version of the Sumner Locke Elliott script initially produced as part of American anthology series Playhouse 90 the previous year. The Australian version had an entirely different cast and crew from the original American production.

The drama was intended as the flagship program for a planned anthology series called General Motors Hour, based on the radio series of the same name (see 'Harry Dearth Will Host G.M.H Drama Venture on TV'.)

Locke Elliott's script was based on the so-called 'Shark Arm Case' (1935), and Patrick Brady, the defendent in that trial, brought an application for an injunction to prevent ATN (Channel 7) from televising the court scene in The Grey Nurse Said Nothing, which his lawyer argued was defamatory. The application was denied (see 'Application to Stop T.V. Play Rejected').

According to the news article on Brady's planned injunction, lawyers for ATN/Channel 7 claimed that 'the production would have a cast of 72. It was the most ambitious T.V. play produced in Australia, and cost more than £4,000 to produce'.

Further Reading

• 'Application to Stop T.V. Play Rejected', Canberra Times, 28 May 1960, p.7.

• 'Harry Dearth Will Host G.M.H. Drama Venture on TV', The Age, 18 February 1960, p.12.

In response to the success of Lola Montez, Peter Stannard, Alan Burke, and Peter Benjamin were commissioned by ATN-7 and Shell to write a family-orientated musical for television. That production, Pardon Miss Westcott, was performed and broadcast live around Australia a few weeks before Christmas in 1959. Starring Wendy Blacklock and Michael Cole, it was orchestrated by ATN-7's musical director, Tommy Tycho, along with Julian Lee.

The musical begins in Sydney in 1809, just after Governor Bligh's departure and before Governor Macquarie's arrival, and tells the story of Elizabeth Westcott, a convict transported for serving a pompous magistrate at her father's inn in England his own lamb. She is assigned to work at Government House and quickly rules the roost. When she is granted a ticket of leave, Miss Westcott opens an inn in Pitt Street, with the help of an assortment of saints and sinners. A serving army officer, Richard, who was also on board the convict ship, is captivated by her and eventually overcomes the social gap between them by getting himself into trouble. All ends well.

A woman searches for her missing son, who may have been taken by her husband.

Australia's first soap opera and the first serial drama made in Australia (although it had been preceded by single-episode television dramas), Autumn Affair followed Julia Parrish, a middle-aged woman in a love triangle with two men.