homicide s5 e46 the hero

This episode was written by John Dingwall who I mentioned recently. 

Apparently there is some shitty program or other called, fuck, I can't even remember what it's called, Bag of Turds or something but it's a prequel to Game of Thrones, of which I would have to say, who fucking gives a toss. I bet most (OK, I'll just say many) people who really love this Game of Thrones show have never even seen every episode of Homicide well, I mean, neither have I ok. But I am getting there. 

So this one is the seventh to feature Norman Yemm but the last to feature him as a guest (which I think has always meant, playing a criminal) before he joined the regular cast as a detective. He is brilliant in this, absolutely brilliant and they make the most of him too in a way that (I'm not even exaggerating) significant parts of the show - particularly at the very end - are like some Hungarian art film from 1958. Incredible!

The following shots do not do this sequence justice, you have to see it, it's extraordinary. The only thing that would have improved it would be disjarring 'mind-madness' audio. That's what you'd do if this was a longer narrative with more background to Yemm's character Malcolm Timms other than 'he grew up in the Northern Territory'. 

This is Timms at the very end, not dead but just completely worn out:

So I'm explaining this all out of sequence OK. In this ep two criminals escape from Pentridge (shots of Pentridge, rather bizarre sequence in which the detectives show up at Pentridge after the escape and then we cut straight to the criminals running away which certainly gives the impression that they've got out two minutes before and are very nearby, though presumably this is not what is meant to be conveyed). They hole up in the showgrounds for a while - some nifty locational material there - and then one of them leaves and is caught at the North Melbourne post office. I mean that's more or less my local. You don't see any of the post office which is part of the Town Hall building on the corner of Errol and Queensberry, but they went to that corner to shoot these brief sequences. Here are a few shots from that brief moment:

The Rainbow Room was a nightspot at the Savoy Hotel which had a sponsorship deal with Homicide but surely it's a complete coincidence that there is an ad for it in this scene. As you can see the ad is on the side of the Courthouse Hotel which is opposite the town hall. Also, down the lane you can see a sign for the premises (probably just a branch) of E. A. Machin & Co, automotive spare parts merchant, which had a shopfront at 114-116 Errol. 

This is from the street outside the town hall looking across to the north side of Queensberry. That's G Sutherland Smith & Sons, Wine Merchants at 508-12 Queensberry and next to it on the left is Haddow's Hardware. 

Here's the street today. The main thing missing is the veranda. Oh and the parking spaces.

This laneway (really more of a driveway - it has no name and as you can see it once had a gate though that is now gone; back in '68 it was between the Ruskin Press' warehouse and 'T. R. Services Pty Ltd'). This shot includes some of the same buildings as the one above i.e. from l-r 502, 500, 498 (part-obscured) Queensberry. 

That's all we see of North Melbourne and in fact most of the North Melbourne action takes place in descriptions relayed from the postmaster to Inspector Connolly over the phone.

Can I have a moment to give a shout out to Vaughan Tracey, here on the right, who gives a tremendous performance as Mick Webb, a local fool who takes Timms in because Timms starts to gain a bit of celebrity as a 'Ned Kelly' figure. Here Webb is about to boast to his mates at the pub that he is harbouring a criminal and he does a terrific little turn in his glee where his fingers dance on the shoulders of the man in the middle as he can barely wait to tell them what he's done. This by the way doesn't end well (see below). 

Norman Yemm is a hero and it's extraordinary what he does in this episode. I mean seriously he could quite obviously have died crossing these rapids but he just does it. Just does it. He gets right in. 

Here's a little exchange at the end which is curious to me because clearly from the outset the makers of Homicide have relied on the good will of the Herald (which owned Channel 7, the broadcaster of the show) to make mock-up front covers, etc for use in the program. This is one of the journalists, he is not a developed character but the detectives use him to spread disinformation, apparently through the Herald because that's the only newspaper they talk about. At the end the journalist says to Mack that the pursuit and capture of Timms made a great story. 

Mack says something sardonic about the mayhem and waste of resources and death that Timms has caused and then says words to the effect of, 'yes, I suppose it is a great story' i.e. it's not about stories you petty fool. But you know. It's a police drama show, so um of course it's about a story and also, this is the newspaper you relied on to try and persuade these escapees that you thought they'd left the state. So huh? 

Now a final shout-out to the redoubtable Margaret Cruickshank! She is Mick Webb's sister Sheila and Timms stabs her with an unreasonably big carving knife she has supplied him with a few minutes earlier (she also looks remarkably grossed out when he eats butter). Great 'I've been stabbed' face from MC. 

Anyway everyone in this episode is great but just one more hurrah for Norman Yemm, runner, singer, actor. Here's an article about him from the Age TV-Radio Guide for 21 Jan 1965, p. 3. I love how he says he 'did not do much' before acting, before the journalist goes on to describe all the things he did do: