bluey at the gasworks

This is episode S1.E37 of Bluey - called 'Tit for Tat'. The only listing I can find for this episode is 11 June 1977. I interpret its title correctly it refers to Graham Rouse's character Joe Fulcher (Tat) being exchanged in a kidnap deal with Gerda Nicholson's Monica (i.e. Tit). Anyway the reason I'm interested really is that the exchange takes place at the South Melbourne Gasworks, which are now a park in South Melbourne. 

Here's that building as it is now from the park's website. I will go down there sometime and get the proper lay of the land OK. 

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. 

the pip proud-homicide connection - 54 years ago today

It's all very well to say 'what I wouldn't do to see this episode of In Melbourne Tonight (7 April 1969) because, you know, I just love Lucky Grills lol. Well I don't hate him but of course what fascinates me is that this is the episode that my long gone and much missed friend, Pip, was on. I vaguely remember him telling me about this - that Preston tried to put him down and Pip turned the tables on him on live TV - don't know how. I was only dimly aware of who Mike Preston was when Pip mentioned this story - I think I was mixing him up with someone else. 

But I don't think I quite appreciated until a few minutes ago that MP was an actual celebrity, who'd had his own IMT for a long time, and that like Lionel Long, his tenure in Homicide was probably more of a 'get new audiences in with a famous face' thing than it was a 'here's a new guy for the long haul'. 

Anyway the NFSA, which as far as I know is the only real place for this kind of thing, has some Mike Preston's IMT from 1968, and a fragment from 1969, but I have to assume that the Pip episode is gone, gone, gone. Sad but real. 

*BTW (10 April) I thought to check up who else was on that show. Lucky Grills, already mentioned, was of course the comedian who later played Bluey in the cop show Bluey. Nelson (not Neilson) Sardelli was/is a Brazillian-born US-based singer of Italian descent, famous for having had a relationship with Jayne Mansfield (who had died two years before this show was aired). Elaine McKenna is/was a singer famously associated with Channel 9 in the 60s. Laurie Wilson was a TV personality. Ted Hamilton was in an episode of Homicide (Break Out, 1968) and also 227 episodes of Division 4. Overall, very, very conventional showbiz - Pip really needed gumption to be amongst those people.