homicide sixth season and albion

A milk bar scene in S6E6. They have a new Passiona poster.

So I have got a little concerned that I am becoming a bit of a Homicide bore (becoming!). But I also want to make sure I stay on top of the changes in the show. So I just want to mention that by season 6 it's really comfortable in its skin. There are still some weird non sequiturs but essentially the plotting is tight and the actors know why they're there. There are no weird one-scene characters like there were in early years, and there are even some good solid nuanced set pieces. Series 5 ended with a chronically terrible storyline (featuring Lorraine Bailey no less) about a couple who wanted to adopt a little boy (to replace one that died - that's a really weird angle, the script could have just said they couldn't have children, but maybe there were other reasons that couldn't be said, although still it begs questions) and George Mallaby and Lionel Long sang a ghastly song at a children's christmas party that just should never have happened and some little boys dressed as the four detectives sang a song too. That was terrible. But the new season is very solid. It also has different closing titles - I'm not really sure why, since the new closing titles are basically the same idea (shots from the back seat of a car of some unidentifiable detectives driving through some streets). Maybe the film wore out.

In other news today I had to take a photo in Albion so I dropped by the old townhouse where I lived 2017-9 to see what had changed. Answer is, nothing. It's still a dive but (as mentioned a few weeks ago) also there's some new build going on. Pics say it all. 

I had no feelings about the Albion place, it was not a time in my life that really held much meaning in the scheme of things. Nancy had a friend then though so it would have meant something to her. It was probably a mistake to move to Albion when it comes down to it but who knew. 

some monkeys use stone tools for pleasure

Benign image of well-behaved macaque from the Tamworth Herald 29 December 1934 p. 7

When I read the headline in the New York Times 'Some Monkeys Use Stone Tools for Pleasure, Study Suggests' I came to a quick realisation about the way I think about the monkeys. Firstly, I thought 'how can the monkeys enjoy anything with the world the way it is?' and then I realised, 'the monkeys don't know how the world is', and then I thought 'well, I know how the world is, and I can still enjoy things' although not stone tools, but that extra element of the reality just occurred to me. Nevertheless I think somehow the monkeys might be smarter than me - assuming they would not enjoy things if they knew how the world was. 

The article continues: 

Scientists had previously observed that these macaques frequently handle stones, with what appears to be no obvious purpose. The monkeys might clack the stones together in their hands, for instance, or pick them up and drop them over and over again.  

“It’s some sort of playful manipulation, in which there doesn’t seem to be an apparent function...” 

I wish 'we' didn't continue to regard monkeys as providing some key to 'our' behaviour. It's as dim as that life on other planets thing. We find out about 'ourselves' by looking to ourselves and what we do, not by looking at species we are related to but which are obviously just as likely to have developed beyond our common ancestor as we have. Anyway, the NYT article is getting off on the idea that the macaques were masturbating with the stone tools (I have to say, they draw a long bow with this) and to me (paradoxically, given what I just said above) the fact that a major newspaper thinks that's news says more about the human race than any macaque. The article goes on to suggest that the macaques being studied in this case were fed by humans all day and didn't have to do much else with their hands anyway, implying that they were somehow decadent. No-one at the NYT seemed to correlate this scenario with the reality of NYT readers' interest in masturbatory habits of macaques. 

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:

when nancy had a friend

Well, I am Nancy's best friend there is no doubt about that, and so she will always have a friend, but there was a period of a few months when Nancy and I lived with Huntley (& Joni) and Huntley and Nancy really did get on well, the only time Nancy has really bonded with another cat. I was foolish to imagine this was just how she was and that any extra cat would do - clearly that's not the case at all. Maybe there's only one cat in the world Nancy really cares for. I wonder if she thinks about Huntley. 

These pics from 24 August 2017. Apparently we had a copy of Frankie in the house, that's interesting too. 

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

homicide s5 e41: the mask

Mildly interesting episode of Homicide which features Stanley Page as a kind of mad married monk figure operating a little coven of weirdoes for no really explicated reason in somewhere rural like I'm guessing Maldon. A barely notable quirk of (lack of) continuity is that whereas in the previous episode we first encounter Alwyn Kurts playing Colin Fox (as a rural inspector) (this character and actor would go on to become a stalwart of the show) in this episode there is another presumably completely unrelated character called Joe Fox. We only see him in the first scene. I suppose the Crawfords people being incredibly urban artsy people just had an inclination to give people from the regions the name 'Fox'. Anyway, here are Mack and Peter spying on the group in their ritual basement:

Bruce Thompson is Richard Wagner (I shit you not), Cheryl Stroud is Donna Slater and Page is Frank Slater. As you can see it's quite a temple they have there. 

The story is essentially about a girl who is murdered and it is made to look like a suicide, then the married man who impregnated her (who we never see - and of the girl all we see is her feet) also dies, poisoned. These crazies are the most likely to have done it. 

Well, spoilers sorry it's Richard Wagner who did it. 

This is the mask they like to wear in their rituals. I make no comment. 

You'll be shocked and amazed to hear that everyone gets there just in time to stop Wagner killing Slater. We are left with this as the closing shot. 

Stanley Page was born in Geelong (I am fighting not to suffer from intense irritation that IMDB notes this and then calls him a British actor) and worked for a long time in the UK, coming back in the 60s-70s periodically for things, such as appearing in the Emerald Hill production of The Bedsitting Room:

He was also a contributor to one of Melbourne theatre's great cultural milestones: 

Melbourne Age 17 May 1972 p. 16

btw

'Collecting' (how I hate that word) (let's say 'acquiring') Finnish records can expose you to all kinds of humiliations, not least:

I'm debasing myself getting involved with these people (who seem in any case to be a kind of JB of Finland but they only sell records and merchy things).

Here's something that's pertinent but very old hat in 2022 but in a few years will look staggeringly quaint: