1990: September 29-October 5

‘It’s a dream come true!’
Home And Away star Craig McLachlan (pictured) was hoping that his reduced profile on the series would make it easier to fit time in for his music career – but now it looks like the TV Week Gold Logie winner is going to be busier than ever.  The Seven Network is believed it be wanting McLachlan for an upcoming mini-series, The Battler, plus there are plans for a role in an upcoming movie, with the working title of Light Of Day, which producers hope can also secure the services of Mel Gibson.  “It’s a period piece, set at the turn of the century,” McLachlan told TV Week.  “Ever since I was a little guy film has always been the ultimate thing to aspire to.  It’s a dream come true.”

The challenge is on!
Following his recent resignation from the Nine Network, former Coast To Coast co-host John Mangos (pictured) is believed to have been offered a role at the Ten Network to front a weekly current affairs program with former 60 Minutes reporter Ian Leslie.  The new show, which could slot in against 60 Minutes, comes after Leslie was forced to step aside from reading Ten’s Sydney evening news after poor ratings and a recurring throat virus.  He has also suffered a setback when the documentary unit he headed at Ten was wound up as a cost-cutting measure – plus he had suffered personal trauma with the death of his mother.  Mangos, a veteran of 14 years at the Nine Network, suddenly found himself being a “personality without a profile” after the axing of Coast To Coast and with no other network projects in the pipeline.  The last straw came when the former US correspondent for the Nine Network was asked to co-host the weekly NSW Lotto draw.

The year of living drearily!
Comedian Anthony Ackroyd, currently appearing in ABC’s The Big Gig, has spoken to TV Week about his early, and short-lived, career as a public servant in his home state of Tasmania.  “All the world’s biggest losers were there.  I’d have these half-hour toilet breaks just so I could get away from it all and read a good magazine.  They must have thought I was constantly constipated.  After exactly one year I went straight back to social security!”  Ackroyd is finding The Big Gig to be somewhat more rewarding with his two characters, Addam the advertising executive (pictured) and Shakespeare. “Addam’s the coke-snorting ad-head with the deep voice who considers himself a creative genius,” he told TV Week.  And the Shakespeare character is proving to be popular with female viewers.  “I did a lot of Shakespeare theatre and it’s nice to be putting that codpiece on again.  The girls go crazy over it… I suppose the sight of those pert buttocks is just too much for them,” he says.

Briefly…
Derryn Hinch, who recently celebrated the 700th edition of Hinch At Seven, has decided to commit to the Seven Network for another two years.  Seven, he says, is the network at which he started and will end his television career.  Meanwhile, while he concedes that Sale Of The Century’s recent 10th anniversary specials gave his show a battering, he is pleased to see that another rival, Network Ten’s Neighbours, is showing signs of fading popularity.

E Street star Richard Huggett (pictured) has had to draw on past real-life experience to help him play the part of bad boy Sonny Bennett.  “I never actually did anything bad,” he tells TV Week.  “I was arrested a couple of times for drunk and disorderly.”  On one occasion he ended up in a padded cell.  “They wanted my fingerprints and I wouldn’t give them.  I kept telling them that I hadn’t done anything wrong, so they couldn’t arrest me.   I was climbing up on the bars and acting like a monkey.  Anyway they didn’t like it, so they put me in a padded cell with one window.”

Former Home And Away star Nina Coburn has filmed a guest role in the Seven Network’s Hey Dad! – and it is expected that producers have bigger plans for the actress as a potential replacement for cast member Simone Buchanan who has filmed her last episode for the series.

John Laws says…
”When, in a few months, we count up the TV successes of 1990, one name will – once again – stand out: Graham Kennedy (pictured).  Graham’s return to TV in recent years has seen him perform a succession of ratings miracles.  He gave Clive Robertson a start and a thorough beating with his late-night news and giggle show on Nine, and when that ended, because he didn’t want to be involved any longer, he switched to his latest ratings-puller, Graham Kennedy’s Funniest Home Video Show.  It’s now one of Australia’s most popular programs – and I’m convinced that it’s the personal appeal of Graham Kennedy which has enabled it to command such a dominant position.”

Program Highlights (September 29-October 5):
Saturday:  HSV7 presents the last Saturday night AFL replay of the season with the Preliminary Final.  The finals schedule was forced to be extended a week due to an earlier drawn game, pushing the Grand Final to a rare October appearance.

Sunday:  HSV7 crosses to Mount Panorama, Bathurst, for the Tooheys 1000 – featuring 55 drivers from seven countries.  The telecast starts at 8am and continues through to Seven Nightly News at 6pm.  ABC presents live coverage of the VFA Grand Final in the afternoon.  Sunday night movies are The Living Daylights (HSV7), Arthur 2: On The Rocks (GTV9), Big (ATV10).

Monday:  ATV10 presents late-night coverage of the Uncle Toby’s Australian Indoor Tennis Championships, from the Sydney Entertainment Centre.  Late-night coverage continues each night to Thursday as well as two-hour coverage on Tuesday to Friday afternoon.

Tuesday:  A special edition of Beyond 2000 (HSV7) looks at the increasingly important role of science in sport, examining the pursuit of optimum human performance.  Olivia Hamnett guest stars in ABC’s GP.

Wednesday:  David Franklin, Leone Carmen and Adrian Lee guest star in The Flying Doctors (GTV9).

Friday:  ATV10 presents live prime-time coverage of the final night’s play of the Uncle Toby’s Australian Indoor Tennis Championships.  And on the eve of the 1990 AFL Grand Final, Drew Morphett hosts HSV7’s annual Football Marathon, starting at midnight and running through to 8am Saturday morning, featuring the Grand Finals of 1966, 1967, 1972, 1977 and 1989 as well as the greatest marks and goals from the past 25 years.

Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide.  29 September 1990.  Southdown Press.

1990: April 14-20

‘I didn’t think I would ever get married’
Home And Away star Nicolle Dickson (pictured, with co-star Craig McLachlan) is soon to walk down the aisle to marry her fiance James Bell, but confesses that she had never considered the thought of ever being married:  “It’s nothing I ever really thought about before now.  I’m very excited.  I didn’t think I would ever get married.”  The couple met at a party and they announced their engagement at Dickson’s recent 21st birthday celebration.  But despite her profile on Home And Away, which is enjoying success in Australia and the UK, the wedding is planned to be a simple affair. “I didn’t want it to become a circus like some other people’s weddings.  It’s important for us and it’s your private life, so you don’t want it to get out.  But it does, because you’re on TV.” 

Catherine doubles up Down Under
Former Dynasty star Catherine Oxenberg (pictured) has begun her second major project in Australia this year.  Having just completed production on the Seven Network telemovie Bony, Oxenberg has had a week at home in the US before returning to Australia to start on a new mini-series, Ring Of Scorpio, for the Nine Network.  The mini-series, also starring Rebecca Gibney, Caroline Goodall, Linda Cropper, Peter Kowitz and American actor Jack Scalia, is being filmed in Sydney, Spain and Morocco as it follows the story of three Australian women on holiday.  Ring Of Scorpio has already been sold to Paramount for international distribution and is expected to screen on Nine by the end of the year.

The fax about Graham!
Having announced that he would not be returning to host Coast To Coast this year, Graham Kennedy (pictured) stunned everyone when he subsequently announced he would be returning to TV to host a new weekly show, Graham Kennedy’s Funniest Home Video Show.  TV Week recently interviewed Kennedy, by fax of course, on his surprise return to TV.  “I stated that I would not return to nightly television in 1990,” he told TV Week.  “I didn’t say that I would not return to weekly television this year… I believe the life of this kind of program is very limited.  Even if it was a ratings success I doubt if it would go into a second series… I haven’t discovered yet the size of the emolument that the network has in mind.  I suppose it will be Terry Willesee’s old salary multiplied by 100, or some token fee like that.”

Clive Robertson courts death, goes to Nine
Former Newsworld presenter Clive Robertson had virtually retired when he left the show last year – but after a cancer scare for himself and two of his friends, he decided that life is too short to fritter away in retirement and has returned to TV in a new late-night show, The World Tonight, which replaces the recently-axed Coast To Coast on Nine. 

Briefly…
Actress Tracy Mann has been reluctant to commit to an ongoing TV series – her last such role was 16 years ago in the soapie The Box – but when she saw the scripts for Seven’s new police drama, Skirts, she changed her mind:  “I’ll do things I think are quality and this is a great role.  I liked the scripts – it ain’t no Cop Shop, that is for sure.”  The new series, set around the welfare-based Community Policing Squad, debuts this week in a two-hour episode on Seven before settling into its regular timeslot of 7.30pm Sundays.

Sale Of The Century hostess Alyce Platt (pictured) is about to return to television drama with a new role in the Nine Network series Family And Friends.  It will be her first dramatic role since leaving Sons And Daughters in 1985, and is hoped to give Family And Friends a much-needed ratings boost.  Her role as social worker Stephanie Collins is not expected to interfere with her weekly taping schedule for Sale Of The Century.

Terry Willesee, co-host of the ill-fated Live At 5 and Eye On Australia, is set to leave the Nine Network to take up a new role as co-host of Network Ten’s Good Morning Australia, alongside Kerri-Anne Kennerley.  Current GMA co-host Mike Gibson is stepping down from the show to concentrate on his Sydney-based current affairs program, Sydney With Mike Gibson.

Jill Ray, former host of children’s program Wombat, and her husband Michael are expecting her first child in late May.  The recent TV Week Logie award winner feels that after ten years in children’s television, she feels adequately prepared for the challenges of parenthood:  “I’m not scared of having a child of my own.  It’s the idea of being responsible for a little person’s future that weighs heavily on me.”

John Laws says…
”You could say a lot of things – glowing and critical – about the ABC’s recent two-part mini-series Come In Spinner.  At the very least you’d have to say it was a brave and mostly successful attempt at producing a quality piece of soap.  If nothing else, it confirmed that Rebecca Gibney (pictured) – when she is afforded the opportunity of a substantial role – is a fine actress.”

Program Highlights (April 14-20):
Saturday:  Actress Rowena Wallace presents a one-hour special, Some Of My Children, telling of her moving experiences in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zambia and Cambodia.
Sunday:  Easter Sunday night movies are Lawrence Of Arabia (HSV7), The Last Wave (GTV9) and The Ten Commandments (ATV10) – the latter running from 7.30pm until almost midnight.
Monday:  Ray Warren, Stephen Phillips and Rob Gaylard host GTV9’s Wide World Of Sports coverage of the annual Stawell Gift foot race.
Tuesday:  In Beyond 2000 (HSV7), Andrew Carroll looks at Europe’s space shuttle escape capsule.  Simon Reeve discovers how a non-steroid muscle-building drug could be a major breakthrough in the treatment of MS.  Maxine Gray visits a musk deer farm to examine the latest efforts to save it from extinction.
Wednesday:  ABC presents Burrows, Ceberano And Morrison Plus Fireworks, a concert recorded on the bank of Adelaide’s Torrens River during the opening weekend of the Adelaide Festival.  HSV7 presents the two-hour series debut of its new police drama, Skirts, starring Tracy Mann (pictured), Nicholas Ball, Mary Coustas and Kate Gillick.
Thursday:  ATV10 screens the one-hour special Phar Lap: The Verdict, presented by Ian Leslie.  The special focuses on the trial, commissioned in late 1989, dealing with the question of who killed champion racehorse Phar Lap.

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

YouTube: TVTV, Gretel and Logies

An interesting find on YouTube this week with two clips from an ABC series of the 1990s - TVTV.

TVTV, initially hosted by Simon Townsend but later replaced by Mark Mitchell and Tiffany Lamb when production moved to Melbourne, ran from April 1993 to June 1995 and was a nightly review of all things TV - sort of like a '90s version of today's websites like TV Tonight - and being on ABC allowed it to take an objective view at all the commercial networks' offerings as well as discussing programs seen on ABC and SBS.

In 1994, TVTV took to reviewing the upcoming TV Week Logie Awards, with a segment featuring guest presenter Gretel Killeen who, of course, became far more famous in later years as host of Big Brother, but in the early-'90s was known as a comedian and voice-over artist, and had been a regular on Midday With Ray Martin and was also one of three co-hosts of Nine's Coast To Coast which continued for a brief period after Graham Kennedy resigned at the end of 1989.

The second clip from the same program includes a report by Kay Stammers, featuring previous TV Week Gold Logie winners Daryl Somers, Rowena Wallace, Barry Crocker, Don Lane and Bobby Limb, former Logies host Bert Newton and an interesting insight into the early "rigging" of TV Week Gold Logie votes by former magazine editor Frank Crook.

YouTube: beanisacarrot