50 Years of Television in Australia
Page 16
It’s Johnny Young’s time
July: Horoscope fan Johnny Young appears to be on the money with his astrology-fuelled prediction that 1971 is shaping as his biggest year yet. Young has scored one of the most surprising hits of the year with a low-budget children’s variety show blitzing all opposition and now broadcast nationally.
Young Talent Time started with modest ambitions, not least because it screens in Melbourne in opposition to Victorian Football League match replays on the three other channels. But Channel 0 has done well to tap the non-football market.
Each week Young is joined for performances by six regular child stars – Jamie Redfern, Jane Scali, Debbie Byrne, Philip Gould, Rod Kirkham and Vicki Brougham – as well as an established entertainment star. Already the King and Queen of Pop, Johnny Farnham and Allison Durbin, have performed and even Graham Kennedy turned up for a guest appearance recently.
Young is not surprised by Young Talent Time’s success. ‘The show is wholesome, clean and good fun,’ he told TV Week. ‘It proves there is room on television for talented youngsters performing in an adult setting.’
More than 100 child performers auditioned for Young Talent Time and four of the six turned out to be graduates from Brian and the Juniors on Seven, hosted by Brian Naylor.
YTT was developed by Young, already famous as a singer, songwriter, radio DJ and producer. The writer of such hits as ‘The Real Thing’ (performed by Russell Morris) and ‘Thank You’ (performed by world champion boxer Lionel Rose), Young had tried to sell the concept to several networks before Channel 0 gave him a shot, albeit on a tight budget.
Young admitted that the success of such a wholesome show had forced him to play down his long-established image as a ‘swinger’.
‘I try to keep my private life as private as possible,’ he admitted. ‘I was born under the sign of Pisces. The symbol consists of two fish going in opposite directions so it follows that Pisces people have a kind of split personality. You can be a swinger on one hand, but get a great kick out of children on the other.’
Sue not blue, despite axe
September: The woman known as ‘TV’s most glamorous housewife’, sultry hostess Sue Donovan, sees a bright future, despite being told she was no longer required on Seven’s Mike Walsh Show, shortly before being recognised for her work on that program with a Victorian Logie for Best Female Personality.
Sue is still seen compering ABC TV children’s show Adventure Island, and has been announced as a new cast member on Matlock Police, playing policewoman Irene Bishop. That means there are now two cops in the Donovan household, with husband Terry a star of rival police show Division 4 on Channel 9. The couple also have a baby son, Jason.
Hey Hey, who’s this?
Channel 9’s new afternoon children’s show, Cartoon Corner, has won plenty of fans since airing this year. And that has much to do with the popularity of young host Daryl Somers, who displays great energy and enthusiasm in the role. He’s now expanded into a Saturday morning show too. Somers was a finalist on New Faces and is also a talented drummer. Channel 9 believes he has a big future ahead of him.
Logies at odds with executives
March: This year’s Logie Awards have shown a large gulf between viewer tastes and the decision-making of TV executives. Despite being axed recently by Nine, Jimmy Hannan won the Victorian Logie for Best Male Personality and his show, TWESH (The Weekend Starts Here), was voted Best Show.
‘I take it all philosophically now,’ Jimmy told the media. ‘After all, it’s not the first time this has happened. I don’t get upset any more. It’s a management decision and they pay my wages every week.’
The Logies this year were hosted by Bert Newton and featured international guests including Hogan’s Heroes’ Bob Crane and the obviously inebriated Michael Cole from popular cop show The Mod Squad, who memorably dropped a four-letter word starting with ‘S’ during the telecast.
ON DEBUT
> Dead Men Running – serial
> The Godfathers – family drama series
> Nightclub – interviews, discussions and debates with Peter Ross
> His and Hers – talk program hosted by John Laws with panellists Sue Becker, Dita Cobb and Bobo Faulkner
> The Marriage Game – hosted by Gordon Boyd
> Money Makers – rich quiz hosted by Philip Brady
> Bachelor Gaye – comedy series starring John Meillon, Janne Gouglan and Al Thomas
> Fly Wrinklies Fly – contemporary music program
> Jokers Wild – comedy panel game
> Hey Hey It’s Saturday – children’s Saturday morning cartoon show, hosted by Daryl Somers
> Matlock Police – another police show from Crawfords
> The Thursday Creek Mob – comedy series And from overseas comes:
> Sesame Street – iconic US children’s series
> Special Branch – British undercover series
> San Francisco – airport drama
> The Persuaders – starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore as playboys-cum-detectives
> The Mary Tyler Moore Show – US comedy serie
> The Odd Couple – comedy series starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall
> Whicker in Europe – interview series
> Doris Day Show – sitcom
> Family at War – BBC drama series
> Nanny and the Professor – drama series
Network in a splutter over ads
September: Channel 0 has been embarrassed by the alleged screening of a banned anti-smoking advertisement twice on the same night.
One of the banned satirical adverts – which featured the line ‘Come to cancer country!’ and satirised the tough, outdoorsy he-man smoker – was reportedly screened twice during the Saturday night movie.
A Network 0 executive denied it had gone to air, saying the advert was in a locked drawer at the time and no mistake could have been made.
Viewers vote on Seven’s new shows
August: Viewers got to play programming director of ATN-7 earlier this year, when the station was trying to decide between five pilot episodes of new comedies and dramas.
Casting aside its preference for in-house drama production, and looking to boost its levels of local content, ATN-7 invited proposals from outside packagers for a new series.
Five pilots were produced as a result: Catwalk, a spin-off from an episode of the ABC series Dynasty, about a group who work for a fashion magazine; Kill and Cure, a suspense anthology; The Undertakers, a comedy that unfolds in a funeral parlour; and two offerings from the newly formed Don Cash–Bill Harmon Productions: View From Beyond, a controversial comedy about a ‘receiving station’ halfway to heaven; and The Group, about three single guys and two single girls sharing a house. Viewers were invited to vote through coupons in newspapers, and overwhelmingly favoured Catwalk and The Group.
The Group was rushed straight into production. It features Ken James, Gregory Ross, Gregory De Polnay, Jennee Welsh and Rosalyn Wilson as the twenty-something housemates, and Terry O’Neill as Tinto, their puritan landlord, constantly looking for an excuse to evict his free-wheeling tenants. The series debuted last week and was well received by audiences.
Catwalk, meanwhile, will not hit our screens until next year. The glamorous series commenced shooting in July and stars John Forgeham, Cornelia Francis, John Woods and Cecily Poulson as the team behind a top women’s fashion magazine.
Channel 0’s new family adventure series Barrier Reef has been filmed on the Great Barrier Reef and is believed to be the first series in the world to feature extensive use of colour underwater filming. Network executives are hoping the show is a great success, and with the cast wearing such natty outfits, how could it fail?
Mike’s new affair
December: Mike Willesee appears to be at a pivotal stage of his career, with an uncertain start to his new Nine Network program, A Current Affair. Willesee fronts the new show, which has set its sights on becoming the commercial
network equivalent of This Day Tonight. But media critics are unconvinced about A Current Affair, labelling even the name as uninspired and questioning its political integrity.
‘Politics don’t feature much in A Current Affair and I doubt if they ever will,’ wrote Jerry Fetherston in TV Week, noting gimmicky segments such as attractive new reporter Lindy Hobbs being lowered into a Marineland tank with sharks.
Hobbs was a late addition to the show. In October, Willesee was forced to defend the fact that the entire reporting team was then male, telling TV Times: ‘I would hire a woman if I could find one good enough. They don’t come up well in this kind of program.’
Tony Barber: the new Bob Dyer?
November: The Cambridge Whistler, Tony Barber, has been the big winner from quiz king Bob Dyer’s retirement from regular TV, stepping in to reign over the evening slot once occupied by Pick-a-Box. Barber has been hosting the daytime favourite, New World Temptation, since June last year, and he’s now added the night-time derivative, Great Temptation.
Great Temptation is similar to the afternoon show but features men as well as women contestants, more difficult questions and bigger prizes. The evening show is already in the lists of top 10 programs right across the country. Barber is hoping his heightened popularity will aid the launch of his first record, Sara Jane, at Christmas and also his acting aspirations.
Spy on the rise
September: The folk in the Narrabeen district, some 18 miles out of Sydney, have noticed some strange goings-on of late: submarines submerged in their lake, armed Japanese soldiers on patrol and Australian diggers engaged in battle. But there’s no cause for alarm. It turns out the jungles near Narrabeen are very like those in Bangkok, where initial filming took place on Nine’s new wartime drama Spyforce, which debuted last month.
Spyforce stars Peter Sumner and Jack Thompson, who’s tipped to be the big star of Australian TV this year. Thompson got his big break in Seven’s afternoon soap, Motel.
MEMORIES
> The ABC’s new six-part serial, Dead Men Running, begins. It is adapted from the Darcy Niland novel of the same name and features 27 of Australia’s top actors, including Chips Rafferty and Ruth Cracknell.
> Johnny Famechon joins TV Ringside as a referee.
> Matlock Police goes to air in Melbourne, with other states to follow. It stars Vic Gordon, Grigor Taylor, Michael Pate and Paul Cronin and is set in the fictional town of Matlock.
> Bob Dyer walks away from Pick-a-Box, before that quizzical ‘old girl’ grows too tired, after 15 years on TV. Bob and wife Dolly were presented with a special Logie at this year’s awards for their services to television.
> Barry Crocker stars as Barry McKenzie in the feature film The Wonderful World of Barry McKenzie, written by Barry Humphries and Bruce Beresford.
> John Laws comperes two shows, on two different networks – a first.
> Eric Pearce retires as GTV-9’s chief newsreader. After 14 years, he makes his final appearance – as a news item. He receives glowing tributes from Sir Robert Menzies and Sir Henry Bolte, among others.
> A team of eight Australian writers, headed by David Sale (who once wrote for Mavis Bramston), is assembled for the upcoming 0-10 series Number 96. Fifty episodes are planned.
> Workers at the South Mine at Broken Hill wear black arm bands to mark the passing of Gil Land, a regular in the ABC drama, Bellbird.
> Gold Logies: Gerard Kennedy and Maggie Tabberer
> Special Gold: Bob and Dolly Dyer
1972
Get your gear off! It’s time to farewell some classy old favourites and welcome in some fleshy good-lookers. For the clothing inclined, just make sure it’s nothing too modern – or Hector will be onto you. Meanwhile, we farewell a couple of trusty favourites and witness a controversy about casting.
TV’s naked ambitions
November: The bare backs, boobs and bums that have appeared on our screens this year have not been a symptom of slashed wardrobe budgets. Rather, the times, they seem to have a-changed, and our tolerance for the once-taboo naked form has shot right up.
Things heated up early in the year with a couple of controversial documentaries, one about the bust line and the other about the role of women. Each featured ladies stripped down to their bare essentials, a hot insight into the world of strip clubs and a racy look at see-through fashions.
Full frontal nudity also appeared in a 10.30 pm National Nine News program, in a report on peeping toms caught harassing the residents of a nudist colony. Then current affairs shows raced to put to air the controversial nude sequence from the ballet Mutations, being performed in Melbourne, and Nine’s drama Spyforce has also incorporated its fair share of naked jiggly bits.
But it’s the 0-10 Network’s new series Number 96 that’s really set tongues wagging and repositioned clothing as purely an optional extra. From Cash–Harmon Productions, the brains behind The Group, Number 96 revolves around the residents of a block of flats in Sydney’s Paddington–Woollahra area. It stars Norman Yemm, Elaine Lee, Joe Hasham, Ron Shand, Pat McDonald, Vivienne Garrett and British sex symbol, Abigail.
Eyebrows were raised by clauses in the contracts of the cast, which specified they must be prepared to appear nude, as demanded by the program’s scripts. Most were happy to sign away their outer layers. Co-producer Bill Harmon insisted that nudity was only used in the series for realism where the story required it, not for gratuitous attention grabbing.
By March, the 0-10 Network was ordering Cash–Harmon to tone the series down, but it wasn’t the publicity-attracting nudity that they objected to so much as the daring storylines involving rape, adultery, drugs, incest and homosexuality. Their calls to protect the network’s public image seem to have fallen on deaf ears, though, if last week’s black mass, naked virgin sacrifice plotline is anything to go by. But with viewers switching on in their droves, it’s unlikely the network will continue to take objection.
Fashion police on patrol at Crawfords
July: You’d think TV cops would be used to toeing the line, but their latest order has put a few of their hard noses out of joint. And, it’s come straight from the top. Head of Crawford Productions, Hector Crawford, recently issued a memo to the casts of Homicide and Matlock Police, ordering them not to dress in too modern a fashion.
Younger cast members, like Matlock’s Grigor Taylor and Homicide’s Mike Preston, have been letting their own snappy style impact on their character’s dress and, it’s not the image Crawford wants his programs to project. The banishing of flared trousers, double breasted suits and floral shirts has been complied with – albeit begrudgingly.
The boys of Division 4, who were not addressed in the memo, must be feeling quite out of touch with the latest trends. Apparently, the only cast member who’s ever received a reprimand is Ted Hamilton, who on occasion needed reminding to trim his hair.
From YTT to USA
February: Young Talent Time star Jamie Redfern has made a new friend in a very high place. When Liberace was in town for last year’s King of Pop Awards, where Redfern won Best New Talent, the master showman was highly impressed by the young singer and set in motion a plan to take him back to America.
Redfern jetted off to New York in January, accompanied by his father Sam, joining Liberace for TV appearances and a concert tour.
Leylands out of this world
July: TV adventurers the Leyland Brothers have come across some ancient rock carvings they believe prove that Australia had some outer space visitors in the distant past. The carvings in the Tanami Desert of Central Australia, estimated to be about 10,000 years old, show spacemen-type figures wearing helmets and breast plates. The carvings feature in an episode of the Leyland Brothers’ series, Journey to a Desert Crater, and Mal Leyland is expecting quite a response once the program airs next month.
‘We didn’t want to say too much before because we felt people would have thought we were ridiculous,’ he said. ‘But the more we go into it the more we ar
e convinced that we are right. They have got to be more than the average rock engravings.’
ON DEBUT
> Surprise! Surprise! – hosted by Tommy Hanlon
> Tonight Italian Style – national Italian-focused program compered by John Mahon and Anne Luciano
> Wonderful World of the Young – with Fredd Bear and Judy Banks
> Past the Post – race details
> Perryman on Parade – music from the 1930s, featuring Jill Perryman
> Fair Go – game show from Perth
> Matt Flinders – variety show
> Over There – wartime drama
> Gerald Stone – interviews
> Wild Australia – wildlife series
> Science Australia – science show
> Behind the Legend – Australian celebrity profiles
> Split Second – quiz program with Ken James as host
> Catwalk – drama series (below)
> A Nice Day at the Office – comedy
> The Spoiler – crime series
> The Far Country – ABC mini-series
> Lane End – ABC serial And from overseas comes:
> Frost Over Australia – interviews and satire with Englishman David Frost
> The Liver Birds – BBC comedy series
> Love Thy Neighbour – British comedy series
> Marty Feldman – British variety show
> Cannon – private detective series
> The Good Life – BBC comedy series starring Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal and Paul Eddington
Aboriginal actors with a Boney to pick
August: Casting the lead role in the Seven Network’s new drama series has proven to be a bone of contention. The series, Boney, revolves around the half-Aboriginal detective Napoleon ‘Boney’ Bonaparte, a fictional outback sleuth created by Australian author Arthur Upfield.