five out of the box

Laura and I enjoy watching The Box, it is a very good show, much better than most people would think. It is in many ways quite modern and quite 'meta'. The Box is as you know a show about a television station, and it circulates a lot of the stories and rumours about various tv stars of the period (up to the mid-1970s) with a generous dose of romantic/sexual drama. Some of the characters are clearly, winking-at-the-camera, modelled on actual people. Sir Henry is an amalgam of Reg Ansett and Frank Packer, two television magnates of the period (probably more Ansett as Sir Henry is an industrialist with a rather blunt appreciation of television, rather than a mogul with media consciousness). Gary Bourke is, yes, Irish (like Dave Allen, I suppose, whose tv career started in Australia) but he's more like Graham Kennedy (certainly when it comes to payola scandals etc and over-riffing on products to the delight of particular sponsors, not when it comes to being secretly gay which so far he doesn't appear to be). There are probably others lost in the mists of time, I am sure Vicki Stafford is modelled on someone.  

I have to say that the article below is super confusing (possibly a relic of a time when press announcements weren't very coordinated) because from our perspective as viewers there are weeks and weeks, more than a month I'm sure, between the departure of Graeme Blundell and Lynda Keane, for instance, and any of the others mentioned. Where we are up to in the program, none of the other three have left yet. But I'm not even sure that Susie and Don were in the program at the same time.*

The first half of 1974 was a mindfuck for Blundell I'm sure as he was a megastar with Alvin Purple then appearing most nights of the week on The Box as Don Cook. I think the Don Cook character is incredible, very nuanced, he's a complete charlatan, messing two women around and becoming engaged to both and it's only happenstance that they don't come into contact with each other, the anxiety is palpable. In his memoir Blundell has apparently forgotten entirely the kind of character DC was, as he just says he was a womaniser, which is barely true or at least, he probably was a young man about town (that's how he got Barbie knocked up) but we don't then see him bedding any babes thereafter aside from Cathy who he is pretty reluctant to sleep with but does because he's so weak. 

So for us, 51 years later, Don and Barbie have gone (to Sydney) but Judy, Kaye and Susie are all still in the show. Susie is not such a prominent character that she can't leave without too much fanfare, but Judy and Kaye are pretty important and will make a splash when they go. Interested to see what happens next. 

* I don't know how this pans out but according to IMDB I'm right that Don leaves the show a couple of episodes before Susie shows up, but he does come back later, like, 36 episodes later. Since Susie is in 63  episodes they must overlap at some point. Also, perhaps I'm wrong about Blundell's typification of the character, since he has another 161-220 to be even more of an Alvin Purplesque cad in. 

homicide: david's diary

Obviously I couldn't let this Homicide episode (S8 E15, 25 May 1971) go by without comment although tbh it's not a topic I am keen to dwell on. The David in question is a nice old man (actually I think he's 58, lol) whose main interest is his exotic plants in a greenhouse. He is killed by phosgene gas in same greenhouse before the opening credits. His diary reveals (unimmediately) that he is not only a sexual deviant - he draws pornographic pictures in it - but also a serial abuser of young women and a blackmailer of them too. 

I do wonder whether this storyline is, like 'The Corrupter' a few episodes prior, an attempt by the Homiciders to branch out beyond the ordinary and take on some gritty topics, in this case I suppose a version of the 'dirty old man' (though tbh David has too many strings to his bow to be a real study of anything - he's an efficient criminal as well as a deviant).  

Obviously you'd have to have a better sense of what was hot in international-tv-currently-watched-in-Australia in 1970/71, as well as films, to know how much Homicide was innovating and how much it was just running to keep up with its competition. Perhaps both. I do note (and you can see it above) the 'authentic case records' stuff, which seeks to suggest that Homicide is just a gauge of what's going on more generally. When I watched an episode called 'In the Dark' (see previous post), in which Susan Scott goes out on a mission to kill men (she only actually kills one, but she does shoot the husband of her 'lady psychiatrist') and starts a very haphazard account called 'Historical Articles' which ostensibly details her reign of terror (I think it ultimately runs to one paragraph in big writing) I was moved to think - wait a minute, could 'authentic case records' include a super-loose adaptation of Valerie Solanas shooting Andy Warhol? I mean they definitely don't say, 'authentic case records of events which happened in and around Melbourne to these kinds of people'. 

By the way speaking of the lady psychiatrist here she is pushing her recovering husband around (in the nicest possible way) on one of the balconies of the Epworth in East Melbourne having just told him that she'd quit lady psychiatry to have children with him instead. One step forward, two steps back and he's not even walking.

So that's David Williams and Beverley Dunn as Mr. and Dr. Turner in 'In the Dark' (S8E13, 11 May 1971). I would also like to say this episode has a fabulous scene where the psychopath Susan shows up somewhere in East Melbourne to shoot her flatmate's new husband while they're having their wedding pictures taken. Hubby yells at flatmate (Patti I think her name is) to jump in the fountain to get out of range of Scott's rifle and Patti says 'but my dress!'. Love that bit. 

To get back to 'David's Diary' for a second just wanted to note that Everett de Roche wrote one of my favourite movies - Long Weekend - by which I mean the original 1978 version with the amazing John Hargreaves and Briony Behets, I know there was a remake thirty years later but I haven't seen that. He also wrote Patrick, a fuckin' amazing film, and Snapshot, which frankly is not that good, ha ha. And an episode of The Saddle Club. He's dead now. 

gordon

Surely (I hope so) this week spells the peak of Gordon Ramsay's extraordinary overexposure in Australia. A few weeks ago I would not have been able to put his face to a name. This week he is seemingly on television all the time, in one of two ridiculous television programs, a british one and an american one, that both always run to the same script. Oh and apparently there is also a game. If there is more to tv at present than Gordon Ramsay and CSI I can't seem to find it (well, admittedly Mia did tape an episode of Young Ramsay (no relation) for me so that was something - why can't all tv shows have Syd Heylen and Briony Behets on them). Yesterday I was having my morning coffee and a girl said to her boyfriend across the table, 'Gordon Ramsay thinks his kids swear too much'. Last night I got out the Green Guide and Gordon Ramsay was on the front, swearing too much. I went to Glenroy Noodles and they were playing a video of an old Gordon Ramsay show in the shop. I am being swamped by this idiot. I told Mia and she said oh just blog it but I knew that wouldn't do any fucking good.