1991: March 30-April 5

Cover: Sophie Lee (The Bugs Bunny Show)

Christopher nudges himself out!
Actor Christopher Truswell dropped a bombshell on the producers of Seven’s Hey Dad! by announcing that he would quit the show at the end of the current series which is due to complete production soon.  Frantic last-minute negotiations have since seen Truswell agree to appear in the next batch of 13 episodes to be taped later in the year – but how many episodes he will appear in is up to him.  “Chris may do two, four or six episodes,” Seven’s programming chief Glen Kinging told TV Week.  Truswell is interested in pursuing film roles and also has musical ambitions.  “I enjoy singing more than acting,” Truswell told TV Week.  “But acting pays the bills.”  Meanwhile, production is ready to begin on the Hey Dad! spin-off Hampton Court (formerly Hampton House), starring Julie McGregor as ditzy secretary Betty.  The new series is also set to star Adam Willits (Home And Away), Henri Szeps, Danielle Spencer and Rod Zuanic.

Street’s ahead!
Australia’s most successful series, Neighbours, chalks up another milestone this week – its 1400th episode.  The milestone will see Neighbours overtake The Young Doctors (1396 episodes) as the longest running Australian soap opera.  It will be a particularly special celebration for cast members Anne Haddy (pictured), Alan Dale and Stefan Dennis, who have been with the series since episode one went to air in March 1985 on the Seven Network.  They survived the show’s controversial switch to the Ten Network in 1986 and have seen the rise to fame of younger cast members including Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Craig McLachlan and Peter O’Brien.  For Haddy, her casting in the series showed enormous faith by the producers as her health had caused interruptions and script re-writes for other Reg Grundy productions that she had worked on.  “I really caused them so much trouble,” Haddy told TV Week.  “And the darlings cast me in this very important new show knowing I could drop dead at any moment.”  Dale was the producers’ second choice for the role of Jim Robinson, but took on the role when the original actor chosen had backed out.

What an Event!
”A pizza with everything on it!” – that’s how Larry Emdur (pictured) described his latest television game show.  The Main Event – created by former soccer player Craig Johnston – makes its debut soon on Seven in the competitive Sunday 7.30pm timeslot.  Despite the strength of the competition it will be up against – 60 Minutes on Nine and The Simpsons on Ten – Emdur is confident of success.  “I have a very good feeling about this,” he told TV Week.  It is a rapid turnaround for Emdur who only four months ago was “retrenched” from the financially-troubled Ten Network where he was a reporter for Good Morning Australia and had earlier hosted the ill-fated Family Double Dare.

Briefly…
Legendary actor Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell might be the new producer on the set of Ten’s Col’n Carpenter, but he and the show’s star Kim Gyngell are old mates.  “I directed Kim in an episode of Cop Shop,” Tingwell told TV Week.  “We’ve known each other as long as that.”  Tingwell has also worked with actress Kaarin Fairfax, a newcomer to the show’s cast.  They worked together on mini-series Poor Man’s Orange and he was familiar with Fairfax through her performances with St Martin’s Youth Theatre in Melbourne.

Seven’s Home And Away is about to introduce a second generation foster mum, with Bobby Simpson (Nicolle Dickson) taking on a foster child, seven-year-old Sam (Ryan Clark).  Dickson said her new co-star was a joy to work with.  “He’s the sweetest little boy to work with.  He has a lovely charm,” she told TV Week.  “He hadn’t acted before, and he’s only seven, but he knows his lines and takes direction.”

Network Ten’s Eddie McGuire and Steve Quartermain have had to give up their Sunday night social routine since launching their new weekly sports program, Sportsweek.  The late-night show, according to Quartermain, will feature AFL prominently but will also give a wrap up of other sports including basketball, tennis and golf and will catch up with other overseas events from during the week.  “I think that’s something that’s lacking in weekend news services,” he told TV Week.

John Laws says…
”Kerry O’Brien and the ABC must have been completely satisfied with the way Lateline performed last year because the 1991 series has brought not one single change in the rigid format.  Even the host’s nightly affliction of the current affairs program disease “interviews interruptus” shows no sign of abating.  O’Brien, you see, is one the world’s great interrupters.  I often wonder if he brings guests on his program to hear them talk or just for the pleasure of interrupting them mid-sentence.”

Program Highlights (March 30-April 5):
Saturday:  Seven’s Saturday evening includes highlights of the day’s AFL matches plus live coverage from Carrara, Queensland, of the match between Brisbane Bears and Melbourne.

Sunday:  Ten crosses to Bathurst for coverage of the James Hardie 12-Hour Race, hosted by Tim Webster.  Coverage starts at 6.00am for an hour, then resumes at 2.00pm for the next three-and-a-half hours.  Sunday night movies are Unnatural Causes (Seven), Tess (Nine) and Miracle Of The Heart: A Boys’ Town Story (Ten).  ABC’s Compass looks at the implications for parenthood when a child has been created by artificial insemination.

Monday:  In A Country Practice (Seven), pandemonium reigns at Wandin Valley Hospital as new matron Rosemary Prior (Maureen Edwards) arrives amid an outbreak of food poisoning.

Tuesday:  Former Number 96 and Home Sweet Home star Arianthe Galani and Steve Bastoni are guest stars in GP (ABC).  Former Cop Shop star Lynda Stoner guest stars in Nine’s All Together Now as a groupie from Bobby Rivers’ (Jon English) rock’n roll days.

Thursday:  In The Flying Doctors (Nine), Vic Buckley (Maurie Fields, pictured with wife and co-star Val Jellay) decides to turn his staid Majestic Hotel into the ultimate Outback Aussie experience and bring in loads of overseas tourists.

Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide.  30 March 1991.  Southdown Press.

Final episode for Talking Heads

ABC’s weekly interview program Talking Heads with Peter Thompson (pictured) signs off next week for the last time.

The half-hour program, based in South Australia, started in March 2005 and since then has featured almost 250 guests from all walks of life. The program has delivered a startling insight into its guests’ backgrounds and personal and professional histories as well as highlighting some of the significant moments and people in their lives.

Some of the TV names to have featured in the program over the last six years have included Paul Mercurio (the show’s first interviewee), Max Gillies, Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, Lorraine Bayly, Paul Cronin, Simon Townsend, Clive Robertson, Toni Lamond, Jeff McMullen, Jeanne Little, Stuart Wagstaff, Noeline Brown, Graeme Blundell, Shane Bourne, Bill Collins, Denise Drysdale, Patricia Lovell, Barry Crocker, John Blackman, Hazel Phillips, Wendy Hughes, Todd McKenney, Googie Withers, John McCallum, John Clarke, Lorrae Desmond, Rex Hunt, Posie Graeme-Evans, Tina Arena, John Wood, Anne Deveson, Garry McDonald, Richard Roxburgh, Mark Holden, Ray Martin and Kerry Armstrong.

The final Talking Heads features environmentalist David Suzuki.

Talking Heads – final episode. Monday 29 November, 6.30pm. ABC1

1990: July 28-August 3

‘There’s no point in denying it any longer.’
TV Week Gold Logie winner Craig McLachlan has announced his engagement to former Neighbours colleague Rachel Friend.  “We are very, very happy.  It’s obvious we are in love.  There’s no point in denying it any longer,” he told TV Week.  The marriage will be the first for Friend but the second for McLachlan, whose marriage to first wife Karen Williams ended amicably over a year ago.  The newly-engaged couple (pictured) first met as cast members on Neighbours and when McLachlan left the show to join rival series Home And Away, Friend soon followed him to Sydney.

Steve sued over newsreader role
Jennifer Keyte might be enjoying success as the newsreader on Seven’s Tonight Live With Steve Vizard, but it seems she was not their first choice for the part.  Virginia Haussegger, a reporter and producer for the Melbourne edition of The 7.30 Report, was approached several months before the show was to launch and performed the newsreading role in the show’s pilot episodes.  Haussegger quit The 7.30 Report but was informed just prior to Tonight Live’s debut in January that she would not be required for the show.  Consequently, Haussegger sued the Seven Network and Steve Vizard’s production company and has since settled out of court with the network for an undisclosed sum, while returning to The 7.30 Report.  “Seven, Vizard and I have had our differences but fortunately it’s all over.  This has been a lesson in the politics of commercial television,” she told TV Week.

Ta-ta to tartar!
After fifteen years of “tuff teef” and dunking chalk into glasses of blue water, the character of “Mrs Marsh” is to be phased out of Colgate-Palmolives’ ad campaign for toothpaste.  But while the role of Mrs Marsh has been very good for actress Barbara Farrell (pictured), it was also limiting her ability to find work.  “It was inhibiting, because the face was so firmly identified with the product,” she told TV Week.  And while the Mrs Marsh character was initially formed as a carbon copy of a US concept, as the campaign continued she was allowed to develop her own persona and had softened a little after research showed that mothers thought she was a little too authoritarian.  But one person who was not always thrilled with the fame of Mrs Marsh’s was Farrell’s husband.  “He objects to being called Mr Marsh.  He’s not pleased with that at all!”  

Briefly…
Cameron Daddo has joined the cast of ABC’s GP as doctor who makes a fatal error in prescribing drugs to a patient without knowledge of the side-effects, and the results are tragic.  The 25-year-old, who recently completed work on the Seven Network telemovie Bony, is also about to start work on the mini-series Golden Fiddles for the Nine Network.

Also starring in Golden Fiddles is Wheel Of Fortune hostess Adriana Xenides (pictured) in her first major role away from the popular game show.  The $5.1 million mini-series, a Canadian-Australian co-production being made by the South Australian Film Corporation, also stars Rachel Friend, David Reyne and John Bach. 

The Seven Network this week debuts its two-part mini-series, Flair, tracing the lives of two sisters involved in the ruthless world of high fashion.  The $4.5 million mini-series stars Andrew Clarke, Gary Day, Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, Rowena Wallace, Elaine Smith, David Reyne, Imogen Annesley and US actress Heather Thomas.  Also starring in the series is Irish-born actor James Healey who grew up in Australia before working in London and the US, where he starred as Joan Collins’ lover in Dynasty.   Healey is now back in the US, starring in the daytime soap Santa Barbara.

John Laws says…
”Is it really possibly that a combination such I am going to describe can actually win enough ratings to maintain a slot in prime time?  Here’s that combination:  A veteran actor who sleepwalks through his leading role, scripts so lacking in credibility you could drive an express train through the holes, and a cast of support actors so wooden you could hammer a nail into them and not draw blood.  This is Nine’s (American) Matlock series.”

Program Highlights (July 28-August 3):
Sunday:  ABC presents The Party’s Over, a 90-minute documentary in the Hindsight series presented by Geraldine Doogue (pictured), looking at the story of the Communist Party of Australia, an organisation that had as many as 100,000 members over its 70-year lifespan before it was quietly wound up after the fall of Eastern Europe.  Sunday night movies are Invasion USA (HSV7), Nuts (GTV9) and Emerald City (ATV10).

 

Monday: Neighbours stars Kristian Schmid and Amelia Frid (pictured) battle the blue slime in a celebrity edition of children’s game show Double Dare (ATV10).

Tuesday:  Cameron Daddo joins the cast of GP (ABC) in tonight’s episode, Playing It By The Book.

Wednesday/Thursday:  HSV7 screens the two-part mini-series, Flair, where Tessa Clarke (Heather Thomas) returns to Australia intent on establishing her own design empire.  However her plans are crushed when a former employer wins a court claim on her designs and she flees to the Gold Coast where she falls for a handsome nightclub owner who drags her into a seedy world.

Friday:  With Graham Kennedy’s Funniest Home Videos clocking up ratings for GTV9, HSV7 tonight digs out an episode of Graham Kennedy’s World Of Comedy.  ATV10 screens the 1985 Australian movie Cool Change, starring Jon Blake, Lisa Armytage and David Bradshaw.

Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide.         
28 July 1990. Southdown Press.

1990: July 21-27

Hey Sister!
While 18-year-old Beth Buchanan prepares to move into TV’s most famous neighbourhood, her older sister, Simone, is looking forward to moving on from TV’s most famous Aussie family.  After more than five years in the role of Debbie Kelly, there are strong hints that Simone will not be renewing her contract with Hey Dad! beyond September.  And the younger Buchanan is now settling into her new role as Gemma Ramsay in Neighbours, although despite her youth she is already a veteran of the small screen – with stints in Hey Dad!, A Country Practice, Home And Away and the mini-series The Last Frontier.  And the two sisters (pictured) have inevitably copped comparisons to those other famous sisters, Kylie and Dannii Minogue.  “Please don’t compare us to them,” Simone tells TV Week.  “Everyone seems to be asking if we’re the next Kylie and Dannii – we’re not!”

New kids on the beach
Home And Away is about to welcome two new foster children.  Karen and Blake Dean, played by Belinda Jarrett and Les Hill, come into Summer Bay as foster children to Alf and Ailsa Stewart (Ray Meagher and Judy Nunn) after the death of their mother from cancer.  “It’s a dream come true,” Jarrett told TV Week.  “I’m a huge Home And Away fan.  I usually wolf my dinner down so I don’t miss an episode.  It’s amazing to think I’m now a part of the all the goings-on taking place in Summer Bay.”  While Jarrett has had no prior television experience, Hill has had some appearances in the ABC medical drama GP.  “The thing I’m finding most daunting about working on Home And Away is the pace of the production,” he says.  “It’s fast but I’m enjoying the challenge.”

‘In the morning we always wrap our arms around each other’
Val Jellay talks about life after thirty years of marriage to Maurie Fields – a partnership that began in the days of vaudeville and later followed into television when the pair were a hit on the variety show Sunnyside Up, and they’ve rarely been out of work since – with both currently appearing as husband and wife in The Flying Doctors.  Despite the busy and demanding schedules that the industry can demand, the pair have rarely spent more than two days apart.  “We’ve never tired of each other,” Jellay tells TV Week.  “Maurie is easy to live with and has a placid nature.  When we’re doing a scene together, I can stare him in the eyes and the tears just come.  In the morning we always wrap our arms around each other, like it’s our first day.” 

Briefly…
Actor Kim Gyngell, best known as Col’n Carpenter, is set to shatter the image of the “lovable dag” with his role in the new movie, Heaven Tonight, in which he co-stars with John Waters, Rebecca Gilling and Guy Pearce.  Gyngell plays Baz Shultz, a former rock star whose life has been affected by drugs. 

Neighbours’ producers aren’t saying much, but it seems that the show is set to have its most celebrated wedding since Scott and Charlene (Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue), with ‘Bouncer’ and ‘Rosie’ set to become television’s first canine couple.

Half A World Away is a lavish mini-series being produced for ABC for airing next year.  The series is based on the 1934 Great Air Race, in which millionaire “Mac” Robinson put up a fortune in prize money for the fastest plane from London to Melbourne.  The series has an impressive cast including Caroline Goodall, Gosia Dobrowska, Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, Gary Day, Johnathan Hyde and American actors Barry Bostwick and Helen Slater.

John Laws says…
”Recent audience research figures suggest that comedy and games shows are continuing to win satisfying ratings for all networks.  I guess it’s a sign of our rather desperate financial times that viewers are more and more seeking light relief to escape the pain and problems of everyday life.  There are a number of highly successful shows around right now, and it’s pleasing that local comedies like Hey Dad! are attracting the sort of healthy ratings that make worth while all the effort that goes into them.”

Program Highlights (July 21-27):
Saturday:  ABC presents highlights of the first day’s competition from the 1990 Goodwill Games, being held in Seattle, USA.  ABC will present an hour of highlights in the early evening on each day of competition as well as a further hour later in the night.

Sunday:  Sunday night movies are Overboard (HSV7) and Bull Durham (ATV10).  GTV9 presents the first of a two-part mini-series, Dress Gray, and ABC debuts mini-series Mussolini And I, featuring Bob Hoskins, Anthony Hopkins and Susan Sarandon.

Monday:  Mark Mitchell launches his new comedy series, The Big Time (ATV10), featuring his family in real-life situations while he dreams he is a late-night TV show host.

Tuesday: In Beyond 2000 (HSV7), reporter Amanda Keller visits the US where there has been some success with a vaccine used to treat a similar disease as AIDS.  ATV10 presents a one-hour special edition of Candid Camera On Australia with Tony Murphy.  This week’s GP episode, The Very Long Goodbye, tells the story of a patient with a brain tumour, told he has six months to live, going on a last wild binge – then discovers that the diagnosis was wrong.  The episode guest stars George Spartels.

Wednesday:  Noni Hazlehurst (pictured), Deidre Rubenstein and Tony Barry star in the documentary-drama Breaking Through (ABC), focusing on the real-life case of Cathy Ann Matthews and her frightening and painful childhood.  The physical, emotional and sexual abuse perpetrated by her father was so distressing that she shut it out of her conscious mind for over 40 years.  Hazlehurst also appears in the mini-series The Shiralee, starring Bryan Brown, Rebecca Smart, which begins a re-run on HSV7.

Thursday:  In E Street (ATV10), the wedding between Abby (Chelsea Brown) and Ernie (Vic Rooney) does not go off without a hitch.  Bob (Tony Martin) has a plan to patch things up with Elly (Penny Cook) once and for all.

Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide.         
21 July 1990. Southdown Press.

Logies Hall of Fame names leaked

The Australian’s media columnist Amanda Meade has leaked an “unauthorised” list of names being considered for this year’s TV Week Logie Awards’ Hall of Fame.

Normally the award is nominated and voted in private by an industry panel, with the winner announced prior to the awards ceremony.

According to Meade the following names are on the short list:

Brian Henderson, host of ‘60s pop music show Bandstand and a newsreader for TCN9, Sydney, for almost forty years, retiring in 2002.

Brian Naylor (pictured), host of children’s talent show Brian And The Juniors before becoming newsreader for HSV7 and later GTV9 before retiring in 1998.  Hosted Nine’s Carols By Candlelight for ten years.  Was tragically killed last year in the Black Saturday bushfires.

Les Murray, one of the founding presenters at SBS and has led the network’s World Cup soccer coverage since it first telecast the event in 1986.

George Negus (pictured, in 1981), former This Day Tonight journalist who became a household name as one of the founding reporters on 60 Minutes in 1979.  Later hosted Today, Foreign Correspondent and George Negus Tonight and is currently host of Dateline and contributor to The 7PM Project.

Ken Sutcliffe, sports presenter who got his big break being hand-picked by Graham Kennedy to co-host his new late night show, Graham Kennedy’s News Show, in 1988.  Continues to present the sports report for Nine News in Sydney and various Wide World Of Sports telecasts.

Maggie Tabberer (pictured, in 1970), former fashion model turned publishing identity and TV personality.  A two-time TV Week Gold Logie winner (1970, 1971) and more recently a presenter on pay-TV.

Ian Ross, long-time journalist and newsreader for National Nine News in Sydney and, for several years, for Today nationally.  Came out of a brief retirement to front Seven News in Sydney, and led the 6.00pm timeslot for the next six years at the expense of traditional rival Nine.  Retired from Seven at the end of last year.

Ray Meagher, veteran actor and the only founding cast member of Home And Away to still be on the series, 22 years on.

Prisoner (pictured), the Grundy Productions drama series that broke new ground when it launched in 1979 with a predominantly female cast and without the usual gloss of prime-time soap operas.  The series ran for eight years, sold well overseas and won a swag of TV Week Logie awards.  As testament to its long-standing popularity, all 692 episodes of the show have been released on DVD – the largest such DVD release in Australia, if not worldwide.

One name that this blog might suggest would be worthy of a Hall of Fame award is Western Australian TV personality Jeff Newman (pictured).  Newman recently retired from TVW7, Perth, after over 40 years of service, including an outstanding commitment to TVW7’s annual Telethon.  Although Newman is not well known outside of Western Australia, his commitment and service to the television industry in WA is a fantastic achievement.

Previous winners of the TV Week Logie Awards’ Hall of Fame have included Graham Kennedy, Bert Newton, Mike Walsh, Don Lane, Mike Willesee, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, James Davern, Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, Ruth Cracknell, Maurie Fields, Sam Chisholm, Bruce Gyngell, Johnny Young, Bill Collins and Steve Irwin.  Three programs have also been entered into the Hall of Fame – 4 Corners, Neighbours and Play School.

Expect TV Week to announce this year’s inductee to the Hall of Fame prior to this year’s Logies telecast, scheduled for 2 May.

Source: The Australian

Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell

Australia has lost one of the legends of the showbusiness world with the passing of actor Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell at the age of 86 after complications with prostate cancer.

Born in Sydney, Tingwell’s first job was as an announcer at radio station 2CH.  In 1941 he joined the Royal Australian Air Force and served in World War II.  Upon returning to Australia he married girlfriend Audrey Wilson and ventured into an acting career that would continue for the rest of his life – taking in film, radio and stage productions and later television.

After seventeen years working in the United Kingdom – where he starred in many TV and film roles but not least being a voice artist for the ‘Supermarionation’ sci-fi series The Thunderbirds – Tingwell and his family returned to Australia in 1973 when producer Hector Crawford signed him up for a leading role in the long-running series Homicide.

After Homicide, Tingwell stayed with Crawford Productions as a director for other series including The Box, The Sullivans, Cop Shop, Skyways, Holiday Island, Carson’s Law and the mini-series The Flying Doctors.   He featured in just about every other major drama series on Australian TV – Prisoner, Neighbours, Zoo Family, A Country Practice, GP, The Flying Doctors, Bellbird, Blue Heelers, All Saints, Round The Twist, Changi, Something In The Air and The Secret Life Of Us, just to name a few.

Movie roles included Breaker Morant, Puberty Blues, Innocence, The Dish, Evil Angels and Jindabyne.

As well as drama, Tingwell’s career also had a lighter side, appearing as “Gramps” in the “Charlie The Wonderdog” series of comedy sketches for ABC’s The Late Show, as a judge in Mother And Son and as a lawyer in the modern-day suburban classic The Castle.

In 1994, Tingwell was inducted into the TV Week Logie Awards’ Hall of Fame and in 1999 received an Order of Australia medal in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

One of his last TV roles was as British prime minister Winston Churchill in the ABC telemovie Menzies And Churchill At War.

Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell is survived by son Christopher and daughter Virginia.  Wife Audrey passed away in 1996.

Source: IMDB, Herald Sun, Bud’s Blog