by Nick Place
ON DEBUT
> Blind Date – similar to the axed Perfect Match, again hosted by Greg Evans
> Racket – music show hosted by James Valentine
> Let’s Make a Deal – game show hosted by comedian Vince Sorrenti
> Everybody – a health show presented by Dr Kerryn Phelps
> Andrew Denton: Live And Sweaty – a weekly late-night chat show with emphasis on sport
> Half a World Away – mini-series based on the historic 1934 Great Air Race from London to Melbourne
> The Big Square Eye – music and entertainment
> Blockbusters – kids game show hosted by actor Michael Pope
> Kelly – Australian children’s TV series, about a smarter-than-average police dog
> Hampton Court – a comedy sitcom spin-off from the popular Hey Dad!
stars film actress Danielle Spencer in her TV debut
> DAAS Kapital – In-your-face comedy with the Doug Anthony All Stars
> Rose Against the Odds – mini-series about Australia’s greatest and most charismatic sportsman, Aboriginal boxer Lionel Rose
> Dangerous Women – a follow-up of Prisoner
> English at Work – a documentary drama series
> Ratbag Hero – children’s mini-series set on the banks of the Murray
> Adventures on Kythera – children’s series about a secret gang of five kids holidaying on a Greek island
> Golden Fiddles – mini-series set in South Australia during the Depression
> Which Way Home – mini-series examining the plight of boat people
> Animal Park – children’s series about a ranger who helps a boy turn a rundown zoo into an animal park
Hey Hey’s 20th birthday!
November: To celebrate its 20th birthday, Hey Hey, It’s Saturday is having the party to end all parties. In one of the most ambitious projects launched by any Australian television show, the entire cast has hopped on a plane and flown to Hollywood for two birthday specials, to be broadcast live to Australia on 9 and 16 November.
A team of 25 cast and crew, including Molly Meldrum, Wilbur Wilde, Plucka Duck and of course Ossie Ostrich, has already flown to California to prepare for the Hey Hey, It’s Hollywood specials.
The action will take place at the Warner Bros studios, also a production facility for US television shows and movies. Indeed, finding space at the busy studios hasn’t been easy. While the Hey Hey crew are in town, no fewer than four TV series and seven films, including The Return of Batman and Lethal Weapon III, are vying with the Hey Hey crew for studio space.
But the end result will be one of the most spectacular 20th birthdays ever staged for an Aussie TV show – fitting for a show that has gone from a Saturday morning kids show to a prime-time evening variety show loved by adults around the country.
Reports that Plucka, Dickie Knee and Ossie are planning to boycott the show after being forced to travel in the cargo hold have not been confirmed.
E Street pushes the limits – again
September: Popular Ten soapie, E Street, continues to push the boundaries of early evening content with a demented serial killer now stalking characters on the show.
Respectable architect Steven Richardson, played by Vince Martin, doubles as Mr Bad, with a face painted half-white and half-black. When he takes over, it’s bad news for E Street cast members, with Dr Virginia Travers (Julianne Newbould) becoming the first of his victims.
Series producer Forrest Redlich said the storyline came out of a documentary his company is making, examining serial killers. ‘It’s a good yarn, and it’s topical. Where A Country Practice and G.P. do things like alcoholism, venereal disease and such social subjects, we chose the serial killer.’
It’s not the first time this year that the soap has caused a furore. In May, a storyline saw Malcolm Kennard’s character, Harley, involved in cocaine and a graphic sex scene with two women. Redlich told Ten then that they’d have to sack him if the episodes did not go to air.
Veteran rocker Jon English, who starred in the miniseries Against the Wind in the late 1970s, has returned to the small screen in the sitcom All Together Now. The ageing pop star plays, errrr, an ageing pop star.
Chances set to show even more flesh
Chances, the series that launched on Australian screens in January, promising to be the steamiest adult drama since Number 96 and The Box, is set to become even raunchier.
Of the 17 regular cast members who have taken the show this far, only six remain. Deborah Conway, Anne Grigg, Rhys Muldoon, Cathy Godbold, Simon Grey and leading star Natalie McCurry are among the casualties, with speculation that most have left because of disagreements over nudity clauses in new contracts.
Executive producer Brendon Lunney says he is aiming for today’s ‘dynamic generation’, and therefore had to push the boundaries. He admits he is setting out to be deliberately controversial, and says: ‘I’m not out to make pap.’
Storylines for next year include Alex (Jeremy Sims) waking up next to two dead women and a knife, with no memory of what happened. He will also have an affair with a nun and become involved in the occult along the way.
ABC promises George Negus the world
December: Veteran journalist George Negus has returned to the ABC to front a new current affairs program, Foreign Correspondent. Negus says the new show, with its entirely international focus, would shake up current affairs in this country. ‘If the ABC had said, We want you to be involved in a new current affairs program which is a variation on the theme, I probably wouldn’t have said yes,’ he admitted.
In 1984, Negus was loud in his criticism of the ABC, his original employer, branding it ‘insultingly elitist’. Today he said things had changed. ‘It’s a different ABC that I’m going to work for.’
MEMORIES
> Beyond 2000 reporter Carmel Travers wins ‘Redhead of the Year’ award.
> Major TV coverage of the Gulf War features on all networks.
> Tony Barber quits Sale of the Century to escape his quiz show host label.
> Nine presents live telecasts of Test cricket in the West Indies for the first time.
> Hector Crawford dies.
> Glenn Ridge and Jo Bailey take over hosting Sale of the Century.
> Guy Pearce joins the cast of Home And Away for a seven-week guest role.
> Australian comedians Barry Humphries, Wendy Harmer, Richard Stubbs, Mark Mitchell, Kim Gyngell and Steve Vizard star in the Comedy Festival Charity Gala on Seven to raise money for the Salvation Army.
> E Street star Melissa Tkautz wins a contract to record three singles and an album. Her first single is called ‘Read My Lips’.
> Neighbours celebrates its 1500th episode.
> Sveta (Jane Turner) and Victor (Peter Moon), hosts of the Fast Forward segment ‘Good Morning Moscow’, release an album featuring Victor’s rendition of ‘Tutti Fruitti (I Want A Rutti)’, and the Russian rap, ‘The Soviet Bloc’.
> Five of Seven’s solo artists, Michael Horrocks (Video Smash Hits), Georgie Parker (ACP), Emily Symons (Home and Away), Hey Dad!’s Julie McGregor and former co-star Christopher Truswell – record music tracks and pool them on to one album under the name Farm House.
> Criminal Mark ‘Chopper’ Read claims he was asked to abduct actress Lynda Stoner on behalf of Daniel Francis McIntosh, one of Australia’s most ruthless robbers.
> Gold Logie: Steve Vizard
> Hall of Fame: James Davern
> Most popular actor: Craig McLachlan
> Most popular actress: Georgie Parker
COMEDY
The most successful comedy on Australian TV has had a singular subject, approached from many different angles – Australia itself. From Norman Gunston and Con the Fruiterer to Hoges and the D-Gen, we’ve always laughed loudest when we’ve been laughing at ourselves.
No laughing matter
Did you hear the one about the television that laughed at its audience? From the moment this med
ium entered our lives, it has been lampooning us. Indeed, many of our national icons – characters like Hoges and Norman Gunston – have come to us via comedy shows on television, and it has often been their Australianness that we have responded to.
In the earliest days of TV, vaudeville performers found one last stage on which to peddle their slapstick routines on shows like Sunnyside Up, Revue ’61 or maybe Delo & Daly. All that changed with the arrival of The Mavis Bramston Show (1965–68), which was the first locally produced show to break into the nation’s top five most popular shows.
Presented by Carol Raye, Gordon Chater, Barry Creighton and June Salter, Bramston hooked viewers with its controversial blend of social and political satire. Topical, current and biting, and delivered in sketch-show format, Bramston was the prototype for successes like Fast Forward 25 years later.
Bramston was followed by the rise of the surreal Aunty Jack, an overweight, moustachioed cross-dresser and part-time trucker. The Aunty Jack Show entertained us with parodies of politicians, clever sketches and Norman Gunston (aka Garry McDonald), a character who rose to prominence as a reporter on Aunty Jack before earning his own show. On The Norman Gunston Show (1975–79), the ‘Little Aussie Bleeder’ bamboozled celebrities like Paul and Linda McCartney, Warren Beatty, Frank Zappa and KISS with his artful, dithering and hilarious ineptitude. It would be fair to say that major international stars had never been confronted by someone like Gunston, who fell asleep in the chair reserved for McCartney before a major press conference, and who roamed the steps of Parliament House, intent only on causing trouble, in the volatile moments before and after Gough Whitlam’s sacking.
At the same time, The Naked Vicar Show (1977–78) rose to popularity, continuing the broad slapstick and sketch-based satire of Bramston, as well as introducing us to Ted Bullpitt, subsequent star of Kingswood Country.
As Bullpitt caricatured suburban Australia, raging about potential damage to his Kingswood as well as lambasting wogs and scroungers and poofs and layabouts and pretty much everybody else, so Paul Hogan’s various characters embodied the iconic lovable larrikin. On The Paul Hogan Show (1973–84), wearing work boots, a sleeveless shirt and with an accent heard in any Australian pub, Hoges made us laugh with Luigi the Unbelievable, Leo Wanker and Perc the Wino.
While Australia – You’re Standing In It (1983–84) and The Gillies Report (1984–85) also drew big audiences, it was a Seven punt, The Eleventh Hour (1985), that marked the beginning of Australia’s golden era in TV comedy. In producing it, a talented band of comics – including Mark Mitchell, Maryanne Fahey, Ian McFadyen, Kim Gyngell, Steve Vizard and Glenn Robbins, among others – learned how to make successful comedy for commercial television.
When the D-Generation (1986–88) appeared, featuring a young and fearless university revue crowd including Tom Gleisner, Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro, Michael Veitch and later Marg Downey, Magda Szubanski and Jane Turner, we switched on in droves. Channel Ten then hit the comedy bullseye with the Comedy Company (1988–90), featuring many of The Eleventh Hour’s stars and characters, which became the highest rating comedy series in the history of Australian TV. Kylie Mole, Col’n Carpenter, Uncle Arthur and Con the Fruiterer had done the impossible and knocked 60 Minutes off its ratings perch.
Simultaneously, Steve Vizard gathered Peter Moon, Magda Szubanski and other renowned local talent to create Fast Forward (1989–92, later Full Frontal), and when the ABC landed The Big Gig (1989–91), hosted by Wendy Harmer and Glynn Nicholas, there were 10 million viewers a week tuning in to locally produced sketch comedy.
The Golden Era wound down by the end of the nineties, after the D Gen had wound up The Late Show (1992–93), Jimeoin (1994–95) had drifted off to try feature films and The Micallef Program (1998–2001) had folded. The networks have kept trying to go to the well, most recently with formulaic, sketch-based comedy, such as Ten’s SkitHouse (2003–04), Seven’s Big Bite (2003–04) and Nine’s Comedy Inc (2003–), but none have captured the ‘essential viewing’ status of their more successful forebears.
Some memorable catch-cries of our comedic heroes
> ‘I’ll rip yer bloody arms off!’ The bizarre Aunty Jack’s standard response to most situations was unlikely to land him/her a place in the United Nations executive.
> Mark Mitchell’s Con the Fruiterer (Comedy Company) added, ‘Doesn’t matter!’ and ‘Cuppla days’ to the local vocabulary (once memorably uttered by PM Bob Hawke during an appearance on the show).
> On Australia – You’re Standing In It, pop-culture victims Tim and Debbie found almost anything put in front of them to be ‘amaaazzing!’
> While twirling a piece of chewing gum around her finger, schoolgirl Kylie Mole’s (Comedy Company) favourite phrases included ‘She goes ... she goes... she just goes’ and ‘Oh, how embarrassment!’
> ‘You’re a very unattractive man.’ Fast Forward’s Russian newsreader Sveta (Jane Turner) knew how to thwart the amorous advances of her co-anchor, Victor (Peter Moon).
1992
From gritty new cop shows, glossy new travel shows, to the anarchic new sketch show from the D-Gen, 1992 is a year of big debuts. It is also the year Moonface makes a popular comeback, and reality TV becomes a reality for Australian viewers.
Phoenix rises
February: The ABC’s new police drama Phoenix proves there is still a market for gritty, locally produced cop shows in the traditions of Homicide.
Phoenix is a loosely fictionalised account of the 1986 Russell Street bombings in Melbourne. In Phoenix, however, the action starts with the bombing of a police social function, sparking an investigation that takes the twelve hard-hitting weeks of the show to conclude.
‘The object was gut-realism – real cops on television,’ Alison Nisselle, co-creator of Phoenix, told the Green Guide. ‘That’s what sold the show to the ABC. I don’t think any other show has done it before in Australia.’
While based on a Melbourne event, producers also built aspects of the 1978 Sydney Hilton bombing and the 1986 Melbourne Turkish consulate attacks into the script. And if there’s one thing that immediately strikes viewers about Phoenix, it’s the realism.
‘We wanted to make a show about police work as it’s really done – not as television has shown it done,’ Nisselle said.
Building on that realistic feel, the wintry Melbourne landscape provides an oppressive backdrop for the action. Using hand-held cameras that follow characters up stairways, into lifts and through offices, Phoenix has a documentary feel, placing characters in unforgiving environments.
The ABC has also been praised for giving producers the freedom to pursue such a strong, if seemingly uncommercial, vision. Given time to properly research characters and situations, producers were also allowed to hire a cast notable for its lack of stars.
‘If you’re going to have real cops, you can’t have television stars playing them because it loses so much credibility,’ Nisselle said.
Even before the first episode has aired, the critical response has been positive. Writing in the Green Guide, John Mangan claimed Phoenix ‘can justifiably claim to be the best police drama this country has ever produced’. That would seem to be a view shared by the ABC, which has already indicated that fans can look forward to Phoenix II next year.
Trouble with Sex
June: ‘In the nineties, it’s important that people are educated about sexual matters,’ enthused Sophie Lee back in May, when her new show, Sex, was poised to go to air. When Sex appeared, fans loved it, but it seems the host quickly fell out of love with the project. By June, Lee was openly expressing her desire to end the relationship and had been relegated to filming links from the studio.
Now that Sex is off air, thanks in large part to the controversy created by ‘church groups and moral crusaders’, Lee is quietly studying acting and says she couldn’t be happier.
Bert’s back – again
February: 1992 is turning out to be a big year for Bert. First, fans have taken to Th
e Morning Show, and now Bert Newton’s New Faces is bringing new life to the amateur talent quest.
Newton, an icon of Australian TV, was sacked by Channel 9 in the mid-1980s after 26 years of loyal service. Now, after a difficult period, he has been thrown a lifeline by Ten – and he’s looking more comfortable than ever in the host’s chair.
The Morning Show is perfectly suited to Newton’s wit, professionalism and feel for live television. As host, he’s interviewing celebrities, handing out gardening and cooking tips and, as he did alongside Graham Kennedy on In Melbourne Tonight, performing live ads.
New Faces, however, is scheduled for prime time and will live or die by its ratings. Ironically, it was one of the shows Bert was hosting when he was dumped by Nine in 1985. With over 30 years of television experience behind him, and the freedom to be himself again, if Bert can’t make it work, maybe no one can.
Ten News ‘First At Five’
January: The highly competitive 6 pm news timeslot now has one less player, with Channel 10 launching a new hour-long news service to start each day at 5 pm.
According to Gary Rice, Channel 10’s Managing Director, the move represents ‘the most fundamental change to Australian television programming for many years’. With the traditional six o’clock news spot already crowded, Rice believes there will be plenty of support for a 5 pm bulletin. The decline of afternoon newspapers, the growing number of people doing shiftwork, and the ageing population are all factors in the decision.
Channel 9, of course, says the move is an admission of defeat by Ten. But Nine’s news director, Ian Cook, also said it was ‘good to see people having the courage to counter-program and do something different’.
Ten’s 5 pm news will be followed by Hinch and a US program called Studs.
