1991: August 10-16

Lucy turns nasty… very nasty!
A bitter custody battle is set to show A Country Practice’s Lucy Tyler (Georgie Parker, pictured) in a disturbing new light.  The turnaround in her character has even shocked Parker herself.  In recent episodes, Lucy and husband Matt (John Tarrant) have settled into foster-parenthood with their child, Jason (Sam Boggs).  Now, when Jason’s mother, played by Lisa Hensley, returns to collect him after winning custody through the courts, Lucy refuses to give the child up. “It’s a dimension to Lucy that nobody has seen before,” Parker tells TV Week.  “She turns nasty, very nasty.”

Soap wars!
A war is brewing behind the scenes between rival soaps Home And Away (Seven) and Neighbours (Ten).  TV Week sources say that Neighbours producers have been trying to poach some of the more popular Home And Away stars.  “They have been secretly offering contracts to try and get some cast to leave Home And Away and move to Neighbours,” one source said.  “One major cast member was formally approached.  They are trying to do what Seven did when Craig McLachlan swapped networks (from Neighbours to Home And Away).”  It is believed that Ten also tried to sign up new Home And Away cast member Alistair MacDougall, but Home And Away have since secured him with a two-year contract.  Meanwhile, one former Neighbours cast member, Richard Norton, has joined Home And Away with a two-year contract.

Skippy’s making a comeback… and the new Sonny is a daddy!
The Nine Network has commissioned 26 episodes for a Nineties version of the classic TV series Skippy The Bush Kangaroo.  The original series, which ran for 91 episodes and was syndicated around the world, featured child actor Gary Pankhurst as park ranger’s son Sonny Hammond.  In the Nineties version, Sonny is grown up, a widower with two children, and running his own animal park in Queensland.  Andrew Clarke (pictured), former star of Sons And Daughters, Anzacs, Sword Of Honour and Flair, has signed on for the role of Sonny Hammond.  Filming of the new series is due to start at the Warner Bros studios on the Gold Coast in the next few weeks and the series will go to air next year.

Briefly…
Neighbours is welcoming two new cast members as the long-running series celebrates its 1500th episode.  Former Cleo Covergirl of the Year Rachel Blakely and actor Scott Michaelson join the series as Gaby and Brad Willis, daughter and son of Doug and Pam Willis (Terence Donovan and Sue Jones).  Despite his new role, Michaelson jokes that he is an “old hand” at Neighbours.  “I was first on as an extra when it was on the Seven Network.  Then about four years ago, I had a small part as one of the school kids,” he said.

As the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes approaches its 500th edition, reporter Mike Munro is asked about some of the women he’s interviewed over the years.  His favourite?  “Katharine Hepburn, without a doubt.”  The hardest to get to was Madonna.  “The string of entourage was incredible,” he told TV Week.  “Hepburn had an assistant and a maid.  Madonna had six bodyguards, a personal assistant and four public relations people.”

When former Prisoner star Sheila Florance went into hospital for her fifth cancer operation in June, most people – including Florance herself – thought it would be the last time they saw her.  But she has come out of the operation and celebrated her 75th birthday with friends and former Prisoner co-stars.  Her birthday also became a double celebration, as she has also been nominated for an AFI Award for her recent performance in the film A Woman’s Tale.

John Laws says…
”I’ve been a bit perplexed at how Peter Couchman’s program – ostensibly established to canvass Australian issues, otherwise why the name Couchman Over Australia – has seen fit to travel overseas to bring us its talkfests.  I can recall Couchman and his considerable entourage turning up in various countries, including Turkey, New Zealand and some others.  Has it all been worthwhile?  Do we really need a taxpayer-funded Australian TV personality to travel the world organising talk-ins about problems that affect countries thousands of kilometres away from Australia?  In critical economic times – as we now face – all organisations, private and public, have to tighten the purse-strings and in the case of the ABC there has to be a realisation of this essential truth to business life.”

Program Highlights (Melbourne, August 10-16):
Saturday:  Ten debuts a new children’s series, Kelly, about a smarter than average police dog, starring Gil Tucker and Alexander Kemp.  Ian Moss, James Freud and Martin Plaza are guest stars on Hey Hey It’s Saturday (Nine).

Sunday:  ABC presents live coverage of the 21st annual City To Surf road race from Sydney. 60 Minutes (Nine) celebrates its 500th edition.  Sunday night movies are Dead Poets Society (Seven), Lethal Weapon II (Nine) and Major League (Ten).

Monday: Former Neighbours star Guy Pearce guest stars in Col’n Carpenter (Ten).

Tuesday:  Beyond 2000 (Seven) reports on a team in Sydney that has developed a new way to monitor the heart that goes one step further than the ECG.

Thursday:  In Embassy (ABC), a Ragaani mail-order-bride is murdered by her Australian husband.  In response, Mahmoud (Joseph Spano) orders that no passports are to be issued to Ragaani women.

Friday:  Bathmat-turned-celebrity Agro is an unlikely guest on this week’s Burke’s Backyard (Nine).

Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide.  10 August 1991.  Southdown Press

1990: August 18-24

‘Whatever happened to old-fashioned romance?’
Being an actress since the age of nine, 16-year-old Rebekah Elmaloglou (pictured) has not had the most normal of childhoods and often yearns to be 'just an average teenager'.  Although while she let go of her childhood earlier than most, she believes young people should not rush to reach adulthood.  “There is no hurry to grow up,” she told TV Week.  “I think that a lot of teenagers miss out on so much.  They go out with each other and on the first night they are doing things that shouldn’t happen until a relationship has developed further.  Whatever happened to old-fashioned romance and innocent friendship?”  Meanwhile, her Home And Away character Sophie is about to embark on a simple 'old-fashioned' romance with Blake (Les Hill) and Elmaloglou hopes her character can be a good role model for teenage viewers.

Number 96 set to re-open its doors!
The Ten Network, battling flagging ratings, has been the subject of many rumours and reports around the television industry – only two weeks ago the network was reported to be seeking an exclusive output deal with Grundy Television.  TV Week now has it on good authority that Ten is considering a revival of Australia’s most infamous soap, Number 96, thirteen years after it ceased production.  Some network executives have believed that there is room on the network for a strong adult drama, much tougher than its current teen-based soaps Neighbours and E Street.  TV Week is informed that a group of Ten bosses have been viewing old episodes of the series with a plan to produce a 1990s version of the show.  Some of the show’s original cast may be joined by fresh faces in the revival.  When Number 96 debuted in 1972 it was dubbed ‘the night Australian television lost its virginity’ with a cast including sex symbol Abigail (pictured).  The series went on to shock and titillate its audience for the next six years with its popular mix of sex, drama and comedy.  The show won a swag of TV Week Logies, including several for best drama and a Gold Logie for cast member Pat McDonald.

Everyone’s Friend
Former Neighbours star Rachel Friend (pictured) is rapidly becoming one of TV’s hottest properties.  The 19-year-old has a lead role in the Nine Network’s big-budget mini-series, Golden Fiddles, and will soon play a ditzy hairdresser in the Ten Network’s upcoming comedy series Lipstick Dreams.  Then in December, she’s off to England to play the princess in the pantomime Aladdin’s Lamp.  “Neighbours seems a long time ago, and yet it’s not really,” she told TV Week.

Briefly…
The audience response to Seven’s Skirts might be lukewarm but that hasn’t stopped some of the show’s stars attracting the interest of producers of other shows.  Ben Mitchell, who plays Constable Bevan “Beverley” Quinn, is currently being targeted by the producers of Neighbours and has apparently already been offered a role should Seven not renew Skirts for another series.  In the meantime the producers of E Street are keen to sign up co-star Antionette Byron.

The Nine Network has had to revoke plans to move Graham Kennedy's Australia's Funniest Home Video Show to the Wednesday 7.30pm timeslot following an ultimatum from the host.  The new timeslot would have seen the show put up against Seven's comedy Hey Dad! which is produced by a close friend of Kennedy's, Gary Reilly, and the Nine Network host refused to put both shows into a ratings battle.

Former Chantoozies band member and manager David Reyne has decided to move from the music business and concentrate on acting.  The 31-year-old has already completed roles in the Seven Network mini-series Flair, the telemovie Bony, and is to star in the Nine Network mini-series Golden Fiddles.

John Laws says…
”If there’s one thing you don’t get on SBS’ Dateline current affairs program it’s a good laugh.  Dateline has a knack of looking at just about every issue from a worst-case scenario.  There is precious little middle ground as far as its reporters are concerned.  Issues are black and white.  Mostly black.  When Dateline’s hour is over, there’s just one more piece of “news” – the following week, announces host Paul Murphy, Dateline will reveal the shocking story of the plight of poverty-striken Indian peasants in war-wracked Guatemala.  Goodnight Paul.”

Program Highlights (August 18-24):
Sunday:  Mark Mitchell and newsreaders David Johnston and Tracey Curro present ATV10’s coverage of the 1990 Young Achievers’ Awards from the Hilton Hotel, Melbourne.  Sunday night movies are Starflight One (HSV7), Choices Of The Heart (GTV9) and Blue Collar (ATV10).

Monday:  ATV10 debuts a new Australian series A Waltz Through The Hills, based on the classic children’s novel which tells the story of two children living in a small Western Australian town in 1954.

Tuesday:  The debut of comedy series Let The Blood Run Free (featuring Jean Kittson and Peter Rowsthorn, pictured) on ATV10.  Meanwhile, ABC crosses to Canberra for a one-hour telecast of the 1990 Budget. 

Wednesday:  ABC’s Wednesday night special is Ladies In Line, a 90-minute documentary focusing on the successes and failures of a group of female recruits in the Australian Army. 

Friday:  HSV7 presents a re-run of the 1989 special Oz TV’s Greatest Commercials, taking a look back at some of the commercials that have been imbedded in the minds of Australian audiences.

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

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.