cop shop episode 25

You can't tell me this isn't Louise Homfrey, I hope you weren't going to try. She's in one scene of episode 25 of Cop Shop, as 'Mrs Price', but as was so often the case, she is not in the credits (Mrs Price isn't listed as a character either). 

As I said earlier, Cop Shop is Crawfords demonstrating 'everything they've learned about soap opera laid upon everything they already knew about police/crime shows'; I was thinking earlier that perhaps I should take a sample episode or two and try to figure out what proportion is soap, and what proportion is action/crime solving. There'd also be value in figuring out the ratio of outside action to indoors (i.e. sets). Homicide and D4 distinguished heavily between the outdoor and the indoor stuff, and for long periods both shows had two directors per episode, focusing on each. 

CS has also learnt a lot from D4, particularly the upstairs-downstairs nature of a police station, so Riverside police station has the front desk and the uniform with the detectives upstairs and interaction - conflict between them as well as against the outside world of crims and conspiracies. 

Most of the time, it's the detectives and their home lives (JJ and Valerie and Glen, Pamela and Gayle - and for a short time early, Don and Carol McKenna and Kerrie) but also spare a thought by the way for Paula Duncan as Danni Frances, who gets handed around quite a bit early on... I'm only in the early stages though.

This is going to be a long ride. Sorry, you don't have to put up with it if you don't want to. 

arden station

Things are really going to change when Arden station and the other stations open - change A LOT. For one thing, instead of 20 minutes to campus it's going to be, you know, five.* I feel very indulged and spoiled by this reality. 

It is a weird time when you know that your everyday life is going to be so altered soon but it hasn't happened yet. But once it happens, you're going to forget how it used to be. Well, I assume I'll take the train every day. Actually maybe the bus might still be an option now and then. 

What a dull ponder. 
 

*Alright maybe ten, because the station is further away than the bus stop. 

rozo the roo: the journey begins

 

Frankston and Somerton Standard 14 May 1937 p. 1

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?! 

"His word against mine' and 'today ends at dawn'

'His word against mine' is an interesting penultimate episode for D4 because it seems like it's really keen to not say what it wants to say, which is, this is the final episode with Gerard Kennedy as Frank Banner. The storyline aside from Banner's resignation (to get married) is a bit slender from a 2025 POV but perhaps it had more impact when it was first broadcast - it's a slightly non-sequiturish story of a local councillor who's accused of being gay and ultimately, well, is. Or is bisexual, rather. He concedes/confesses this to the Ds but he doesn't outright confess to his wife - which isn't the usual D4 way, there's no real closure there, not that we necessarily needed it.

And nor is there any real closure on Frank Banner. We simply end on the three originals in the car driving to do some job or other, I'm not entirely sure what. 

The following episode starring John Stanton still has Kennedy in the opening credits, i.e., they didn't bother making a special opener for what they already knew was a dead show. Stanton's character Tom Morgan is completely brilliant, very non-sexy (but how sexy was Frank Banner?) and more like Columbo than anything else. The character has taken a transfer from Bairnsdale, where he's been a long time, and he has attitude plus. 

The moustache isn't a bad look for Stanton but presumably also he had to distinguish himself from the character of Pat Kelly in Homicide. Those Homicide eps were still screening while this was being filmed. 

I'm 99% certain these images above are from a car park close to the Crawfords Abbotsford premises, somewhere near Duke St. 

Mick Peters here is reading the Age from 16 April 1975 p. 2, probably the article by John Pinkney, below. If the third paragraph in the second column isn't an easter egg, what is?! Add to the mix the fact that John Pinkney (who was married to my aunt) also wrote scripts for Crawfords shows, and you get... um... something added to the mix. I don't know what pen name John used, he didn't use his real name, I suppose it would have been a conflict of interest considering he was also a TV critic.*

Admittedly the episode does end on a rather crappy note with a madwoman wandering alongside the Yarra saying 'boy, where are you boy?' - fairly silly really. But D4 could have gone so much further into the late 70s with Stanton as Morgan, in many ways (from what little we saw) a lot more complex than Banner whose character roots were in tawdry soap opera. 

* Though IMDB says he wrote thousands of episodes of Bellbird so, I don't know. 

rozo the roo - an important appointment

 

Frankston and Somerville Standard 7 May 1937 p. 1

momentous events

I'm not being glib. Labor won the election tonight in a landslide, unbelievable, I loved it, I am still a bit stunned by the whole thing.

I mentioned a few days ago the death of David Thomas but not the death of Gerard Kennedy. Obviously this impacted on me as he has been decidedly very prominent in my life over the last year. I am about three episodes from the end of the series (GK was only in two of the final 3!). Will definitely get around to watching these this week, will report back. 

Laura and I went to the German Film Festival screening of the first five episodes of Berlin Alexanderplatz (and we are going to see the rest of them over the coming weeks). Pretty extraordinary, but some parts preposterous, but others marvellous. I love a wallow.