still watching cop shop

I am continuing to enjoy Cop Shop - I'm on the second volume now, there are 22 of them (gulp). Above see Luigi Villani as 'Patsy' in episode 1.28, in-between Terry Norris and John Orcsik obvs. 

It's a hard rhythm to get used to. There were two episodes a week. Storylines seem to overlap across a few, more than two, sometimes, episodes - but I'm not keeping close tabs on that so maybe I'm wrong, maybe the crime plots are resolved in pairs while the soap storylines are endless or infinite or whatever. It's interesting seeing actors more used to hard TV cop roles wrangle softer plots. Perhaps viewers were having trouble keeping track of things - there's a lot of recap at the beginning of each episode, dare I say way too much. 

Peter Adams has the biggest shoes to fill. JJ is such a child, at the same time, has to do street chase cop things, and not only be pervy with the girls but also a lover (fiance!) to Valerie. Phew! Tough stuff. 

Here's an article from the Age 2 December 1978 p. 22. 

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. 

the great australian bite

So I don't think I've mentioned that lately I've been watching Ryan, the Rod Mullinar private detective show which also has Pamela Stephenson in it. I'll tell you more about it sometime. But right now I just want to fill you in on an episode (Episode 21) I've been looking at in which a lot of the action centres around a locale about two minutes' walk from where I live, notably at a restaurant called The Great Australian Bite. It was on the corner of Molesworth St and, I guess, Harker St (though that corner seems to be exactly the spot where Harker becomes Curzon). 

Molesworth, looking south. 

Looking down Curzon. 

I think this is the interior of the Great Australian Bite, but maybe not. It's surely not a set. 

The actual establishment. Sometime soon I'll show you what it looks like today. 

Cornelia Frances in Harker st

And the flats across the street. So that's about it. Oh, except here's an ad. 

homicide s5 e43 'the peace man'

So people at Crawfords were clearly having a laugh with the Foxes. This is Henry Fox, another Fox character on three out of four successive episodes of Homicide (all from late 1968). He's played by Luigi Villani. This episode is set in Dandenong, which is not really a rural area. Bizarrely he claims his girlfriend's name is Betty Fox, and that they started going out together because their names were both Fox, and that when they got married they'd both be Foxes and their children would be... (he then trails off) but the whole thing makes no sense obviously because if he married her the family's name would all be Fox anyway so... huh? 

Jeff (here credited as Jeffrey) Kevin as Michael Bolton, a conscientious objector, being followed by some bodgies (who beat him up). Five years later Kevin was playing Arnold Feather in Number 96. He told the Sydney Morning Herald in early 1973 that: ‘In the Crawford productions I was usually type-cast. I always seemed to be the misunderstood youth who looked as though he did it… but did not.’* 

This episode was written by John Dingwall, who would go on to write the incredible 1975 film Sunday Too Far Away. 

*‘Who’s that behind that sharp, hurtful Arnold?’ SMH 19 February 1973 p. 14