With its coverage of the minor tennis tournaments now out of the way – and the Australian Open about to start on the main Seven channel – 7TWO from Monday will resume screening classic soap Sons And Daughters and early episodes of Home And Away in their morning timeslots.
From Monday afternoon, 16 January, 7TWO will also roll-out two more vintage classics. Young Ramsay, a family drama that ran from 1977 to 1980 starring John Hargreaves (pictured with co-star Barbara Llewellyn) as a country vet, and Five Mile Creek, a period drama set in the early gold rush days of Australia that featured Liz Burch, Gus Mercurio, Michael Caton and a young Nicole Kidman.
Although Young Ramsay is being played out from episode one, Five Mile Creek is being resumed from season three as it had a brief run of episodes on 7TWO last month.
Both dramas were originally screened on Seven and produced by Crawford Productions, though Five Mile Creek was a co-production with the American Disney Channel in the early-‘80s and gained a loyal following in the US.
Seachange told the story of city lawyer Laura Gibson (Sigrid Thornton) who after a string of personal crises adopts a change of lifestyle and moves her family to the fictional seaside town of Pearl Bay, hoping for a more peaceful and less dramatic existence as a local magistrate but finding herself immersed in a town of somewhat eccentric characters.
Although Thornton played the central character in Seachange, the series featured a strong supporting cast of veteran performers and new talent, including John Howard, Kerry Armstrong, David Wenham (pictured with Thornton), William McInnes, Jill Forster, Kevin Harrington, Fiona Corke, Tom Long, Alan Cassell, Shaun Micallef and Mark Mitchell.
The series, produced by Artist Services (best known for producing Fast Forward), delivered high ratings for ABC in the competitive 7.30pm Sunday timeslot and its popularity led to the initial batch of thirteen episodes in 1998 being followed by another in 1999 and a third in 2000.
Over its three-year run Seachange collected nine TV Week Logies – including three for Most Outstanding Drama Series – and three AFI awards.
The series has been repeated on a number of occasions on ABC but this is its first airing on a commercial channel.
Other ABC titles to have featured on 7TWO since its inception are Mother And Son and Barry Humphries’ Flashbacks.
Young Ramsay and Five Mile Creek, weekdays from 12.00pm, starting 16 January. Seachange, Fridays 7.30pm, starting 20 January. 7TWO.
Source: Five Mile Creek, Seachange, Australian Television Information Archive
ABC is set to expand its premises in inner-city Melbourne with construction of a new television studio.
The Elsternwick studios, located next door to the historic Ripponlea homestead, were opened in May 1958 – eighteen months after ABC’s Melbourne television station ABV2 commenced transmission. For the previous eighteen months the various functions of the new television station were carried out from makeshift premises scattered around Melbourne.
Bill Hunter, one of Australia’s most recognisable and prolific actors, has passed away in Melbourne at the age of 71.
The Nine Network next week launches a modern reinvention of the classic This Is Your Life format.
This Is Your Life had been a success in the United States and United Kingdom for many years before an Australian version was first launched on the Seven Network in September 1975. Mike Willesee (pictured) was the show’s first host, later replaced by Digby Wolfe twelve months later. Sydney newsreader Roger Climpson continued to front the show from 1977 until the early 1980s.
Coming up next month in ABC’s weekly interview series Talking Heads, host Peter Thompson talks to one of Australia’s most well known actresses, Kerry Armstrong.
After thirty years in a career that has also included movie roles and winning AFI and TV Week Logie awards, Armstrong concedes that she is re-thinking her future as an actor. “It feels like I’m almost all done,” she says.
