'billy's choice'

D4 7 October 1974, 'Billy's Choice'. It's a half decent storyline but what means the most to me is the marvellous three guest stars of Hilda Scurr, Keith Eden and John Stanton. YESSSS. And one other wonder (see below). 

Stanton is a mad bastard. 

Scurrfection! 

One scene with the amazeballs Denise. 

Scurr and Eden are terrific in this, a really sympathetic criminal couple (well he's a crim, she just deals with it). Great work everyone. 

d4 young hennessy

26 September 1973's episode of D4 was called 'Young Hennessy'. It was less worse than it might have been considering the somewhat unpromising storyline and other components (basically, Young Hennessy is an o-o-o-ld boxer who everyone thinks has a lot of money hidden somewhere in his house). The acting is stellar. There's Gus Mercurio actually playing a good guy, and get this, you really don't know if he is good, up till the end. There's Hilda Scurr, playing Mrs Hennessy and really making a meal of a role which is really not much more than a pissed-off old wife. Jeepers, even Simon Drake as a young boy called Luke isn't the terrible kind of child actor that most child actors are. Perhaps best of all - this is like a Logie contender performance, though I don't think it was one - is John Fegan as Young Hennessy. Fegan was four years out of Homicide by this stage, and while he was a compelling presence as Connolly in Homicide he wasn't exactly required to do anything more immense than deliver lines in a fairly pissed off and stern tone, a lot. Here he really puts in the time and gives such a committed performance well, I'm not sure if this is an example of good acting exactly, but... often you can't tell what he's saying. But you feel like you can. 

By the way they go to Puffing Billy including getting off at Clematis. 

tiring week

Yeah so I don't have anything to tell you, particularly after the bombshell about the Coburg Lake Reserve being in Division 4. How many more headlines can you seriously take? This week has been ridiculously hot and unpleasant for everyone, except people who enjoy temperatures in the mid-30s, are they really people? Cast them out! I have had too much work on, and haven't really done anything of value since going to see Todd Rundgren play in Castlemaine last Saturday, which was by the way excellent. I decided my cutlery drawer needed cleaning, I mean it's not outright unhygienic but you know, it's just been used for its intended purpose. 

I have watched a few D4s - I'm into September 1973 now as was inevitable per the previous post - but I'm finding that by this time Crawfords or the D4 team are getting a bit tired and unfocused, just an impression. I suspect that the regular cast were finding it all a bit draining and a few episodes concentrating heavily on other actors taking the lead in stories with the Yarra Central crew very peripheral, was considered order of the day. So, the 29 August episode 'Willie' which concentrates a lot on Ernie Bourne as the titular character in a somewhat rollicking adventure where, and this is the other issue, crime is considered somewhat fun. Now, that's a change from what we're used to in this show. Then there's 'Damsel in Distress' with Helen Morse and Serge Lazareff as Angela and Ivan; she seduces him so he'll kill her father's new wife, but you know, the whole thing is farcical really (though it does have Hilda Scurr as Ivan's mother, her usual magnificent self in a typically low-key role). And the episode 'Bella' which is mainly concerning the adventures of a prostitute called, yeah, Bella (Margo Lee), her boarder/lover Toby (Brian Hannah) and, very late in the piece but playing I suppose an important role, her daughter Kathy (Rosalie Fletcher). 

Now it's rained and the sun's gone down so Perry and I are going to go out for a while. Talk to you later. 

ryan and more hilda scurr

The last episodes of Crawfords shows are particularly good because they get a bit ramshackle when (I assume) everyone's thinking about their next show and how to keep it going for more than a year, etc. This is episode 33 of Ryan, a ridiculously convoluted plot I only understand enough to know it's dependent on a host of crazy conspiracies. It does have Vince Martin in it as a threatening heavy.

It also has more unconvincing tension between Ryan and Julie where she seems to pine for him in some way and he is unwilling to, I don't know, marry her? It's not subtle, it's just weird. 

But the best thing is it has Hilda Scurr! As a matron who unknowingly keeps a man in a coma at the direction of a doctor who has created a conspiracy whereby a racing car driver has been 'set up' with a fake will leaving his money to a woman who doesn't exist and etc etc etc etc 

 

division 4 - my mate death

This post is more like a note to self than anything. Interesting-ish in the Division 4 world. Although it is quite an intriguing episode in itself. It's about a smallpox scare with a criminal played by Peter Adams carrying smallpox around town with him as he plans a lucrative theft. It also has a weird gay subtext which may only seem like a gay subtext in the 2020s (the extreme hero worship that John Derum's character has for Adams') and a weird relationship between the character played by 'Judith' Morris and Adams' character which she facilitates on the advice of Derum's character's mother for reasons that just aren't clear to me. 

Here's the corner shop with the only newspaper on sale being Newsday. Poor old Newsday, by the time this episode came out on 9 June 1970 the newspaper had already gone under. It didn't die for want of Division 4 promotion. 

Ok but the real thrill here is that Hilda Scurr is the mother. Hilda Scurr!!!

Also, Peter Cummins, who sources tell me died earlier this year, also gets a very short and inexplicable look in for one brief scene. 

The other thing that is worth mentioning about this episode is that it's the first to feature a new, far more pumping, opening credit sequence.

As you know, I watched Homicide to the end earlier this year, so I perhaps became too used to more sophisticated, mid-70s Homicide, and that's why late 60s/early 70s Division 4 seems a bit amateurish, at best patchy. But also perhaps Crawford's were spreading themselves a bit thin, pushing the same writers (and actors) to do more work. That said, everyone has off days and this episode was a very fine one. It was shown in the UK the following year as well, at least on Yorkshire TV, as this from the Hull Daily Mail 11 September 1971 p. 6.

I don't know what Big Jack's Other World is but I have to say it seems likely to me that D4 was the best thing on that station that day. 

hilda scurr again

Well so I ordered the box of Bluey, the 1976 Crawfords show that ran for 39 episodes and gave Lucky Grills the career boost he never could have dreamed of. I have no idea what Lucky Grills was like as a comedian but I sort of imagine him as an Ugly Dave Gray type. He's a good ratbag in Bluey but in a way Bargearse was not a million miles removed from the reality, well, Bluey doesn't eat all the time but he is a slob who doesn't care who he offends. I guess. Well, the show is formulaic (in a way that Homicide, honestly, wasn't and even Special Squad is more varied and surprising) but it has good characters and the sets look good. In a horrendous way. 

Here's Hilda Scurr, once again doing a Crawfords turn, not looking terribly old or anything (I suppose she was only ten years older than when she first started turning up in Homicide) and in fact she'd only been in Homicide the year before.

Of course she dies. That's what old people do on TV, that's what they're for. 

I was moved to wonder about the Crawfords trope where people get badly injured then go to hospital but spend quite a bit of time coming round to dying, long enough to have conversations and decide to confess etc etc. I guess I've just answered the mystery of why this happens, but it's still odd that it happens so much. I suppose it might be - laziness?! Sorry Crawfords I'm mean. 

Meanwhile, I'm killing it on Drops, the new app I'm now learning Finnish on (I still do one or two duolingo lessons a day but I have moved on - Drops has so much more). 

One quibble: I don't think people can meet on their phone, and I do think they can sit on their phone. But apparently I'm wrong:

But really who cares. I'm doing so well! 

I am not sure what this means (the graphic) but I am not going to complain. I am unstoppable. 

homicide ep 12 s 5, 'surprising what people can do' (and a bit of 'a nameless grave')

This is a very fine, tight, well-scripted, documentarily fascinating episode of Homicide first screened on 8 April 1975. Thrillingly it stars Hilda Scurr who I've discussed here before, as well as Peter Corbett. You don't need to know the various bits and pieces of the story, but here are some of the locations. 

Corbett's character is called Kenneth Cook. This is him (yes, he's just been shot in the arm, don't worry he's ok) in the car park of Coles New World. I am assuming this is the Coles in Swanston St (I may be wrong).  

Age 29 December 1972 p. 8. Presumably this is Coles' nice new (or at least nice newish and recalibrated for Coles) supermarket car park. It has other shops in it, which I can't quite imagine. 

I'm not sure where this is, I think I might be able to find it out. I also don't know who owned the car with the registration number KSN 968, sorry. 

This is Kenneth Cook standing in the car park of his block of flats, which today is known as Perry Palms (124 Perry St). He's looking towards 200 Hoddle St, which was at that time the HQ of Patterson Press. To the right of the picture is the huge Hoddle St Housing Commission complex, but the choice was made to omit this. 

2 and 4 Egan St Richmond, the Hilda Scurr character Frances Brown lives here. 

Egan st looking east. 

Hilda Scurr was brilliant. 

Bizarrely in the episode 'A Nameless Grave' (which aired two weeks later on 22 April) the Ds are in Egan St again - this time trying to visit Sheila Florence's character. 

Just above Dennis Grosvenor's head you can see 2 Egan St. I suppose they were all set up in Egan St so why not fit in a bit of extra filming. 

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.