ryan 'pipeline' (part 1)

I'm going to come back to this ep of Ryan because it has an amazing North Melbourne car chase, but first I want to honour Margaret Cruickshank in this episode and also ask: do you think she was ever denied a part because of her super long name? (And did Joe James get that part?) Also, do you think that characters had their names changed so they could fit on a line with 'Margaret Cruickshank'? I think there's basically 29 characters available on the Ryan credits screen. 'Mrs. Hall' just makes it in against MC. 

Anyway, here's Mrs. Hall who is a sympathetic character, ordinary really, nothing much to discuss. She just wonders what happened to her husband, who has disappeared. 

Could Pamela Stephenson feel less like wallpaper or a human version of a filing cabinet in this scene (really, this show)? 

I wish that when I had known James Cruickshank, which I sort of did in the late 1980s, I had asked him more about Margaret and her career. But you don't know what you don't know (iydkydk). 

That's the sort of profundity that would keep Ryan himself going for a week. Oh, by the way, here's some total madness:

Now Street? WTAF!!! Alright, I admit I looked it up, I mean I didn't think there was a Now Street in Kew (I guess Crawfords had someone to check those kinds of things in the Melways to make sure people didn't show up at real addresses looking for pretend people) but I thought maybe somewhere someone had the bright idea of a Now Street (for now people, of course). Well, no, there isn't. But I guess in a city with a Y street, anything is possible. 

Anyway that's a Y for yes I am going to get back to you* on that car chase business. 

*Y is also for you
 

bye margaret cruickshank

Margaret Cruickshank's last Homicide episode was 'Don't Be Lonely', aired 30 September 1975 in which she played the supine Jennifer Marriott, who, spoiler, doesn't get out alive. The gentleman is I forget his name (he has several in the episode) played by Keith Lee if I'm not mistaken. 

I think I would have a soft spot for MC even if I didn't feel a slight, very slight connection to her as I semi- partially- kind of- knew her son James for a while. His last name was actually Watson (so was hers, I suppose?) and he took the stage name to be a musician, most famously in the Cruel Sea. I was under the impression he wrote the song 'Better Get a Lawyer', which I note is actually credited to many people and I also note, my memory is shitful, but I'll tell you what I recall just to have it written down and I can comprehensively forget it. 

I was visiting mutual friends in, I'm guessing, 1992? 1993? and James turned up unannounced, with a tape of a song that he'd recorded with the Cruel Sea - in my memory it was 'Better Get a Lawyer' and he was really enthused about it. After he left we all shook our heads because we thought it was so fucking awful and tryhard. Of course it became a big hit, probably played at weddings etc.  

homicide s5 e46 the hero

This episode was written by John Dingwall who I mentioned recently. 

Apparently there is some shitty program or other called, fuck, I can't even remember what it's called, Bag of Turds or something but it's a prequel to Game of Thrones, of which I would have to say, who fucking gives a toss. I bet most (OK, I'll just say many) people who really love this Game of Thrones show have never even seen every episode of Homicide well, I mean, neither have I ok. But I am getting there. 

So this one is the seventh to feature Norman Yemm but the last to feature him as a guest (which I think has always meant, playing a criminal) before he joined the regular cast as a detective. He is brilliant in this, absolutely brilliant and they make the most of him too in a way that (I'm not even exaggerating) significant parts of the show - particularly at the very end - are like some Hungarian art film from 1958. Incredible!

The following shots do not do this sequence justice, you have to see it, it's extraordinary. The only thing that would have improved it would be disjarring 'mind-madness' audio. That's what you'd do if this was a longer narrative with more background to Yemm's character Malcolm Timms other than 'he grew up in the Northern Territory'. 

This is Timms at the very end, not dead but just completely worn out:

So I'm explaining this all out of sequence OK. In this ep two criminals escape from Pentridge (shots of Pentridge, rather bizarre sequence in which the detectives show up at Pentridge after the escape and then we cut straight to the criminals running away which certainly gives the impression that they've got out two minutes before and are very nearby, though presumably this is not what is meant to be conveyed). They hole up in the showgrounds for a while - some nifty locational material there - and then one of them leaves and is caught at the North Melbourne post office. I mean that's more or less my local. You don't see any of the post office which is part of the Town Hall building on the corner of Errol and Queensberry, but they went to that corner to shoot these brief sequences. Here are a few shots from that brief moment:

The Rainbow Room was a nightspot at the Savoy Hotel which had a sponsorship deal with Homicide but surely it's a complete coincidence that there is an ad for it in this scene. As you can see the ad is on the side of the Courthouse Hotel which is opposite the town hall. Also, down the lane you can see a sign for the premises (probably just a branch) of E. A. Machin & Co, automotive spare parts merchant, which had a shopfront at 114-116 Errol. 

This is from the street outside the town hall looking across to the north side of Queensberry. That's G Sutherland Smith & Sons, Wine Merchants at 508-12 Queensberry and next to it on the left is Haddow's Hardware. 

Here's the street today. The main thing missing is the veranda. Oh and the parking spaces.

This laneway (really more of a driveway - it has no name and as you can see it once had a gate though that is now gone; back in '68 it was between the Ruskin Press' warehouse and 'T. R. Services Pty Ltd'). This shot includes some of the same buildings as the one above i.e. from l-r 502, 500, 498 (part-obscured) Queensberry. 

That's all we see of North Melbourne and in fact most of the North Melbourne action takes place in descriptions relayed from the postmaster to Inspector Connolly over the phone.

Can I have a moment to give a shout out to Vaughan Tracey, here on the right, who gives a tremendous performance as Mick Webb, a local fool who takes Timms in because Timms starts to gain a bit of celebrity as a 'Ned Kelly' figure. Here Webb is about to boast to his mates at the pub that he is harbouring a criminal and he does a terrific little turn in his glee where his fingers dance on the shoulders of the man in the middle as he can barely wait to tell them what he's done. This by the way doesn't end well (see below). 

Norman Yemm is a hero and it's extraordinary what he does in this episode. I mean seriously he could quite obviously have died crossing these rapids but he just does it. Just does it. He gets right in. 

Here's a little exchange at the end which is curious to me because clearly from the outset the makers of Homicide have relied on the good will of the Herald (which owned Channel 7, the broadcaster of the show) to make mock-up front covers, etc for use in the program. This is one of the journalists, he is not a developed character but the detectives use him to spread disinformation, apparently through the Herald because that's the only newspaper they talk about. At the end the journalist says to Mack that the pursuit and capture of Timms made a great story. 

Mack says something sardonic about the mayhem and waste of resources and death that Timms has caused and then says words to the effect of, 'yes, I suppose it is a great story' i.e. it's not about stories you petty fool. But you know. It's a police drama show, so um of course it's about a story and also, this is the newspaper you relied on to try and persuade these escapees that you thought they'd left the state. So huh? 

Now a final shout-out to the redoubtable Margaret Cruickshank! She is Mick Webb's sister Sheila and Timms stabs her with an unreasonably big carving knife she has supplied him with a few minutes earlier (she also looks remarkably grossed out when he eats butter). Great 'I've been stabbed' face from MC. 

Anyway everyone in this episode is great but just one more hurrah for Norman Yemm, runner, singer, actor. Here's an article about him from the Age TV-Radio Guide for 21 Jan 1965, p. 3. I love how he says he 'did not do much' before acting, before the journalist goes on to describe all the things he did do:

on homicide walls

I have been passively regarding a few episodes of Homicide from early '67 but I don't want to bore you with the details, they're frankly not the most incredibly impressive or scintillating episodes either in terms of storylines or locations (though the episode called 'Keeper of Lions' has a lot of interesting stuff from Royal Park and the Zoo). I am pretty intrigued, as I think I've mentioned earlier, by the interior decoration in Homicide. The image below is from the episode I just mentioned; it's the kitchen of a woman who we only see in one scene (I think the character is Nora Padgett, played by Margaret Cruickshank, the mother of Cruel Sea/Widdershins member James Cruickshank nee James Watson) and know pretty much nothing about. 

The three images below are from an episode of a few weeks before, 'A Long Shadow'. This is the lounge room of a no-hoper mother, I wonder if the photographs on the wall are film stars or just 'ooh, I like the look of him'. 

(Donald Barker as Pat Rainsford)

(June Berry played by Amber Mae Cecil). But what on earth is the picture on the left? A chaise longue or something?! Did June Berry think 'Ooh, I like the look of that.'

I love thinking how these scenes are surely all the same wall with a few different props in front, or possibly shot in a corridor or something...