other places

Whether it's on foot or in cars, one of the great elements of every Crawfords show - and almost always obligatory - is (at least one) chase sequence. One more element that testifies to the quality of these programs: it never seems rote or bolted-on. 

But even in a time before, you know, online banking and surveillance and similar shit, the question still really remains - where are they running to and why? I guess there's an innate impulse amongst human beings, when in trouble, to get out of the immediate situation and worry about the details later. Nevertheless, it's silly. If they're ever pressed for their plans they're always about to shoot through, to Sydney or Adelaide or Surfers.* Presumably until the heat dies down, and I guess if I think about it I assume that police resources (or lack thereof) do mean that a lot of things, then and now, get put on the back burner or even dropped down behind the stove, so you have to assume that if you do get away on the day you only have to stay away a short time and they'll move on to something else. The perps in D4 and Homicide of course don't know that the detectives remember every crim they've ever met, whether it's the next day or the next decade. 

The small but effective sequence above is from an episode from 4 August 1975, 'Just for Kicks', which is the first time we really get some backstory/ storyline with one of the 'new' uniform cops to (essentially) replace Ted Hamilton: John Hannan as Paul Gray. Gray is in a relationship with a girl called Jan (JAN!!! So old school) played by Noni Hazlehurst in her third (of four) Division 4 episodes. 

By the way I wish I had kept better track of the paintings on the wall since D4 went colour, because the one on the left here is in every second house. Maybe they bought special new paintings for colour TV, but not many. 

*In this case, the teenage hoodlums initially plan to go to Surfers but it's later suggested by the mothers of one of them that he is going to Adelaide, by which Vickers deduces he is either going to Sydney or Brisbane. 

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.