homicide - crime against nature

This Homicide (aired 21 Jan 1974 in Sydney / 5 February 1974) is a messy show structurally but if any Homicide gets to be called 'ahead of its time' perhaps this one could. First, just want to mention... 

The episode opens at the Hazienda Steakhouse. Whatever that was (I mean, I can guess). There's an article in the Age from 1980 that says it's a hang for celebrities. Satisfyingly for me (progress!) this building is now a very good vegetarian restaurant called Sisters of Soul. Anyway, that's not important here. This was a controversial episode that needed sensitivity from Channel 7: 

Age TV-Radio Guide 31 January 1974 p. 3, 

Note however Channel 7 in Sydney had absolutely no such qualms:

SMH 21 January 1974 p. 27

This episode is about the murder of a man apparently on a beat somewhere though it's super confusing where as it's clearly St Kilda (see above) but a lot of the action takes place in a housing estate which looks to me like Broadmeadows but could as easily be anywhere where LJ Hooker had his fingers in the pie. Possibly the billboard below would give some detail though it's not very clear at all. 

So the murder's solved reasonably easily - the murderers were a big bunch of teenagers, and the weak link in the chain (I don't think we see any more than one of the teenagers actually) was inculcated into hating gay men by his father, who is a weaselly English migrant. 

What's more interesting IMO is the various opinions put forward about gays in the episode. Lawson (Bud Tingwell) at one point tells Paul Karo's character (Ernst Brenner) that he enforces the law as it stands and he doesn't need to know if any law was broken, which comes fairly close to saying that he doesn't think the law is right, or perhaps I'm being too kind. There's not a lot of in-depth discussion of homosexuals or what they do, beyond when Lawson confronts Brenner with some love letters he had written to the victim.*

Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention but there is a weird sub plot (?) where some young kids on the estate, one of whom is the younger brother of the boy who is ultimately found guilty of the murder, are bullying another kid. That seems to go nowhere except when the bullied boy vandalises a police car and Lawson loses his temper and tells other Ds to find the child who did it. I don't know if they do. I got lost. 

*That Brenner had written, obviously, not Lawson.  Keep up. 

Homicide September 1973

So this is the Homicide line-up in late '73 as per the opening credits. The police car still gets a lot of prominence. 

Even though it's still really based around the four detectives, the opening credits tries to give a sense that they're at the heart of a big operation of coworkers (who are never seen at any other time). Here's a guy who we never see in the actual show - 'D24' I guess - the heart of communications for the police. 

Then the men: 

These episodes are excellent, and each of them could have been a movie really. One of them, 'To Tell You the Truth', has a young and groovy Michael Caton in it.