"His word against mine' and 'today ends at dawn'

'His word against mine' is an interesting penultimate episode for D4 because it seems like it's really keen to not say what it wants to say, which is, this is the final episode with Gerard Kennedy as Frank Banner. The storyline aside from Banner's resignation (to get married) is a bit slender from a 2025 POV but perhaps it had more impact when it was first broadcast - it's a slightly non-sequiturish story of a local councillor who's accused of being gay and ultimately, well, is. Or is bisexual, rather. He concedes/confesses this to the Ds but he doesn't outright confess to his wife - which isn't the usual D4 way, there's no real closure there, not that we necessarily needed it.

And nor is there any real closure on Frank Banner. We simply end on the three originals in the car driving to do some job or other, I'm not entirely sure what. 

The following episode starring John Stanton still has Kennedy in the opening credits, i.e., they didn't bother making a special opener for what they already knew was a dead show. Stanton's character Tom Morgan is completely brilliant, very non-sexy (but how sexy was Frank Banner?) and more like Columbo than anything else. The character has taken a transfer from Bairnsdale, where he's been a long time, and he has attitude plus. 

The moustache isn't a bad look for Stanton but presumably also he had to distinguish himself from the character of Pat Kelly in Homicide. Those Homicide eps were still screening while this was being filmed. 

I'm 99% certain these images above are from a car park close to the Crawfords Abbotsford premises, somewhere near Duke St. 

Mick Peters here is reading the Age from 16 April 1975 p. 2, probably the article by John Pinkney, below. If the third paragraph in the second column isn't an easter egg, what is?! Add to the mix the fact that John Pinkney (who was married to my aunt) also wrote scripts for Crawfords shows, and you get... um... something added to the mix. I don't know what pen name John used, he didn't use his real name, I suppose it would have been a conflict of interest considering he was also a TV critic.*

Admittedly the episode does end on a rather crappy note with a madwoman wandering alongside the Yarra saying 'boy, where are you boy?' - fairly silly really. But D4 could have gone so much further into the late 70s with Stanton as Morgan, in many ways (from what little we saw) a lot more complex than Banner whose character roots were in tawdry soap opera. 

* Though IMDB says he wrote thousands of episodes of Bellbird so, I don't know. 

momentous events

I'm not being glib. Labor won the election tonight in a landslide, unbelievable, I loved it, I am still a bit stunned by the whole thing.

I mentioned a few days ago the death of David Thomas but not the death of Gerard Kennedy. Obviously this impacted on me as he has been decidedly very prominent in my life over the last year. I am about three episodes from the end of the series (GK was only in two of the final 3!). Will definitely get around to watching these this week, will report back. 

Laura and I went to the German Film Festival screening of the first five episodes of Berlin Alexanderplatz (and we are going to see the rest of them over the coming weeks). Pretty extraordinary, but some parts preposterous, but others marvellous. I love a wallow. 

other places

Whether it's on foot or in cars, one of the great elements of every Crawfords show - and almost always obligatory - is (at least one) chase sequence. One more element that testifies to the quality of these programs: it never seems rote or bolted-on. 

But even in a time before, you know, online banking and surveillance and similar shit, the question still really remains - where are they running to and why? I guess there's an innate impulse amongst human beings, when in trouble, to get out of the immediate situation and worry about the details later. Nevertheless, it's silly. If they're ever pressed for their plans they're always about to shoot through, to Sydney or Adelaide or Surfers.* Presumably until the heat dies down, and I guess if I think about it I assume that police resources (or lack thereof) do mean that a lot of things, then and now, get put on the back burner or even dropped down behind the stove, so you have to assume that if you do get away on the day you only have to stay away a short time and they'll move on to something else. The perps in D4 and Homicide of course don't know that the detectives remember every crim they've ever met, whether it's the next day or the next decade. 

The small but effective sequence above is from an episode from 4 August 1975, 'Just for Kicks', which is the first time we really get some backstory/ storyline with one of the 'new' uniform cops to (essentially) replace Ted Hamilton: John Hannan as Paul Gray. Gray is in a relationship with a girl called Jan (JAN!!! So old school) played by Noni Hazlehurst in her third (of four) Division 4 episodes. 

By the way I wish I had kept better track of the paintings on the wall since D4 went colour, because the one on the left here is in every second house. Maybe they bought special new paintings for colour TV, but not many. 

*In this case, the teenage hoodlums initially plan to go to Surfers but it's later suggested by the mothers of one of them that he is going to Adelaide, by which Vickers deduces he is either going to Sydney or Brisbane. 

division 4: life's a gamble

Just wanted to mention how much I enjoy it when Janne Coghlan makes an appearance in Crawfords shows. What do I know about Coghlan? Really not much, except that she was on the stage a lot in the 50s-60s and then in Crawfords programs and a few other minor films up until the very early 90s, then nothing heard of her thereafter. Somewhere along the way there, for some reason, she lost the extra 'n' in 'Janne'. Here she is in the ABC Weekly for 15 May, 1954. 

 Let's say she was twenty then, so I guess she's 90 now if she's alive, and she was 40 or so in 1975 when she played loyal-wife-to-a-loser with Tom Oliver in the episode of D4 'Life's a gamble' (7 July 1975). 

You can (well I can) imagine them looking at these scenes in the Crawfords meeting, or whatever they did, and saying 'this is real Janne Coghlan stuff' - a lot of domestic two-hander with Oliver where it's like, they have a deep attachment but he is a terrible man. 

This is a rare D4 where you can actually go back and watch it again and it's different all over because you (or I - gullibly) believed that Oliver's character had killed the underworld identity. Actually he hadn't. But when she shows him this paper and he's all like 'the papers are full of lies', it's actually really interesting to see it a second time. 

Yeah, yeah, I know. The real crime is that beard. 

Well, that crime is solved about half way through the episode. 

Anyway, I wonder what happened to Janne Coghlan? I suppose she retired. Let me know if you know.

Also a nod to Luigi Villani, who has a small role in this episode as a boat hirer. It's always best for him when he's not affecting some sort of Chico Marx accent. He was Mick Moloney in The Box the previous year, but usually he's got a kind of bastardised Italian name - he had ten roles in D4 including 'Pastrani', 'John Zammitt', 'Tony' (twice, but I think different Tonies), 'Mario' and 'Musso', but here he's 'Bert Williams'. Villani was born in Wangaratta, don't know about Bert. 

division 4: the human factor

The final year of D4 was patchy. 

This might be (I haven't looked it up - yes I just did - and it is) the last of 13 appearances of Keith Eden in the show. This time he's an older man in a car accessories firm who sets fire to a computer because he can't stand progress, or whatever. 

He's good. He has a twinkle in his eye. I have a lot of time for him. He's gone now. He died in 2003. 

I'm guessing this opening shizzle was shot from atop the Crawfords building in Abbotsford. I haven't compared anything but it looks familiar. All of this. 

This is not the greatest episode, particularly given the weird bit where even though Eden's character commits arson, then steals some car radios to try and cover it up then dumps them, then tries to do himself in, the company still wants to redeploy him to personnel (!!!!!!!!). Explain why!

OK one more thing of note: this twenty-year-old. It wasn't her first TV appearance, she'd already been in The Box for six episodes as 'Office Girl' and 'Debbie - Office Girl' and now here she is: 

For some el weirdo reason IMDB thinks she is reprising the role of 'Office Girl' and also that this is true: 

But it is not true:

I don't think she says anything, but I didn't notice her in the show until I noticed her name in the credits. I am looking forward to seeing her in The Box though. 

more keith eden

A fine late period two-part D4 (6 May 1975) in which suddenly Keith Eden, who has shown up numerously in various roles as various crims, is now suddenly Frank Banner's old mentor and confidant. 

I just liked this image because it's a composite phone call. Cool. I think it's from 'A Bird in the Hand', 28 April 1975. 

Oh, and note to self: the episode from 12 May 1975, 'No Prize for Second', is a rare example of where the crooks get away with it. Amazing non-sequitur ending. Pretty unsatisfying! 

 

'middleman'

A pretty fine episode (although it has some odd cuts in it, such as when the main character is just about to molest? attack? fondle? a girl (Carole Yelland) and suddenly he's being roughed up by her crim associates).* The protagonist here, played by Alan Penney, is known only as Raincoat. He's a fence who went straight and he is clearly a sex, er, maniac. These are the final scenes of the show which as far as I'm concerned represent director John Jacob and/or David Hinrichsen paying homage to firstly, North by Northwest (the final double entendre) and Breathless (the last seconds of that film). 

It's arty yes but it works as well. 

The loving concentration on the railway bridges is in itself quite delightful too. 

Also, top marks to the set designer of this episode. Raincoat's living quarters are also a work of art.

You will be pleased or disappointed or unconcerned either way to know that after this I am onto the last full DVD compendium of D4. 

*What I wonder is whether Channel 9 insisted on cuts here in what is, if you count the nudie pictures on the wall, a pretty explicit ep.