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. 

cop shop, first four episodes

So I ripped off the bandaid of mourning for D4 by jumping straight into Cop Shop.

Here, we're heading into terrain I actually personally remember. I was 12 when CS started in 1977 and we watched it in our household, though whether we started from the first episode I don't recall (in fact, I don't recall much). Now, I'm looking at it from the POV of Crawfords having all their police shows cancelled on them in rapid succession (for no particular good reason) and then three years later they start another one up, now with everything they've learned about soap opera laid upon everything they already knew about police/crime shows. It's a good blend of cast members with the old (George Mallaby as a very key figure) and the new (OK, not much of the new, really, so far). The actor who might feel the most jangled by the new show is Rowena Wallace who was the rookie WPC in the final year of D4, all youth and inexperience and idealism, and who is now three years later in CS the bored housewife mother of a 14-year-old (and married to George M's character). 

Peter Adams is the firstnamed actor in the credits, perhaps because his last name starts with 'A', but his JJ is a major character from the outset. Adams had quite a bit of tv presence in the 70s including a lot of petty crim characters in Crawfords shows. One thing I found intriguing was that JJ was generally called 'Double J' in the early episodes, presumably at some point (once the show went to air perhaps?) someone told them about 2JJ in Sydney. 

Double J is an interesting character because he brings elements of the wisecracking vaudeville star and he's also on the make like a British tv comedy character with the bizarre added extra that he does actually succeed, well, he has sex at least once in the first couple of weeks of the show. That's a fine balance - he's a comedy figure, you're not meant to envy him (I don't think so, anyway), it's not women want him men want to be him exactly... hmmm... I'll think about it further. 

Meanwhile, just want to note a marginally interesting element of the first show. The poster for the Saints' I'm Stranded on the wall. 

I continue to be intrigued by the dichotomy between Ed Kuepper's testimony that the Saints never had any profile in Australia and the fact that this kind of thing happened. I admit in and of itself this kind of thing (blink and you miss it promo albeit on a major mainstream show) is probably pretty minor. The fact that they were on big K-Tel style hits compilations in the mid-to-late 70s is more of a challenge to that narrative. But it makes me think. 

Oh also, that picture above with Adams, Mallaby and Tommy Dysart. Dysart is playing an evil gangster and guess what his name is? Dimonicus. Brilliant.

Oh and also also, the storyline in the first couple of episodes features a policeman named Tom Foster (the eminent Peter Sumner) who is bashing gay men trying to find the teacher who seduced his son Gary  (played by Andrew McKaige). It's just sign-of-the-times stuff - Mallaby's character Glenn Taylor tells Tom at the end of the storyline that ultimately he's unlikely to be charged with bashing all those men, and Gary is of the opinion that his teacher shouldn't be blamed for anything because he (Gary) started it. All pretty gross really.

Also #3: This show debuted in November 1977. November?! 

d4 - petty cash

A lot to love about this episode originally broadcast 1 August 1973. Great actors, like Bill Hunter (as usual, playing a vicious crim)

Keith Eden, playing the part of Russell Ward (so, obviously, not the same name as the extremely famous historian Russel Ward).* 

Gerry Duggan, what an amazing face! As Charlie Reid. 

Peter Adams as Harold Jones 

And, wonderfully... 

This time, they call her Louise Homfrey, probably so she could still collect the dole or something, I don't know. She plays Mrs. Adams, and her boarding house (oh yeah, of course she runs a boarding house - of course she does) has her name in big letters out the front, which might have made Peter Adams feel a bit weird. Or seen. 

Also, kudos to Marie Redshaw who is terrific as 'Mrs. Jones', an ebullient drunk who doesn't leave the living room for any of her scenes or if she does she takes the gin bottle with her. 

A while ago I was very excited about the fake (of course they're fake, it's not real) newspaper headlines in Homicide, you don't often see them in D4 though but here's one! Bad capitalisation irregularities and all.  

One more novelty - for this episode the usual final scene announcer Bruce Mansfield is dispensed with, and I think Gerard Kennedy is given the job of telling us everyone's sentences, but whoever it is, they're not credited. Mansfield is back the following episode but not the one after it. Go figure. 

PS! 

The building in the first picture is 503 Orrong Road. It seems it no longer has a wall around it as it once did. 

* In fact, although Eden is credited as playing 'Russell Ward' in the show, actually it's a false name and his name is something that sounds a bit like Russell Cock but it can't be can it. 

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. 

homicide august 1965

 

For better or worse, my second Homicide box arrived today. 

Melbourne Age 5 August 1965 p. 29

This is a clumsy episode, but it starts well, and it's almost kind of meta in a strange way. 

This is Leonard Teale's third episode of Homicide and his first as David MacKay. But we've seen him twice before as different crims and here he is, being a crim. OR IS HE

No apparently he's just utilising the perfectly normal police procedure of pretending to be a crim, getting crims to do criminal work for him, and then I guess the plan is to arrest them for things he encouraged them to do or something. Anyway, it all goes pear shaped for MacKay until someone confesses or something (I don't remember) and he is cleared and welcomed to the team to replace Rex. 

Pretty sure I've seen those pictures on someone else's wall in a previous episode - maybe he stole them lol. 

This is his block of flats, I can't identify them. It's a bit annoying because the name is prominent on the front when he drives out but just not legible. 

Peter Adams, who would become very well known as JJ in Cop Shop in the next decade, plays one of the criminals, Charlie Samson. 

The other is Bruno Zalteck played by Peter Aanensen

Some nice action towards the end when Bruno is captured at some junction, I can't tell where on earth it is, but there does seem to be a lot of traffic around. 

By the way, 'Bon Radio'. This is referred to a couple of times as being in Ashburton. As I mentioned, access to Sands and McDougall directories is limited right now, so I only had access to the newspapers. There were branches of Bon Radio in Chelsea and Cheltenham in the early 70s but I can't find reference to a Bon Radio in Ashburton. But I suppose it must have been, because what advertising advantage was there to Bon Radio in being described as being in Ashburton if it wasn't. 

This ad is from the Age of 23 Jan 1965 p. 75, so I guess within six months of this episode. Note the phone number on the window of the Bon Radio above - it actually looks like 2450950. I can't pretend to know how phone numbers worked in Melbourne in 1965 but they seem to mainly be six digits, not seven. Well (shrugs).

The music in Homicide was, I read somewhere but I don't remember where, ambit film music that Crawfords licensed. It's awful and sometimes borders on the inappropriate, I don't mean it's rude. The sequence above, for instance, has music to it that's more light cocktail romp music than catching a crook in traffic music. They must have been pretty desperate sometimes for the appropriate soundtrack. Makes you appreciate actual composers.