1991: February 16-22

Private property!
Home And Away star Rebekah Elmaloglou (pictured) is determined to keep her professional and personal lives separate.  Unlike many fellow soap stars, Elmaloglou has refused to talk publicly about her boyfriend of twelve months and the pair have never been photographed together.  “It’s just one of those things I don’t find important to talk about,” the 17-year-old told TV Week.  “My private life is the same as any other girl of my age.  I’ve got my schoolfriends, I’ve got my family, I’ve got my boyfriend.” 

It was 20 years ago today…
Hey Hey It’s Saturday returns to air this week, starting its 20th year.  “The official celebration is in October (the show debuted on 9 October 1971), but we’re out to make this the best year ever of Hey Hey so we’re starting the celebrations early,” host Daryl Somers told TV Week.  This year the show is taking on some changes as Somers and colleague Ernie Carroll take over producing the show after last year’s split from producer Gavan Disney.  “Ernie and I are happier, and I know a lot of the people around us are feeling happier, too,” Somers said.  “I think it’s going to be a very harmonious situation for all concerned this year.”  The year ahead could also see Hey Hey head to London and even Hollywood for some special shows.  Somers is also excited to have new executive producer Jim McKay on board for the show.  McKay was the program manager at GTV9 who originally named the program back in 1971 and hired the 19-year-old Somers for the job of host.  “He came up with the name and paid me $75 a week, that was it!  It’s taken me 20 years to get him back – that’s what he’s on now,” Somers laughed.

‘If it was me, I wouldn’t do it’
Andre Eikmeier (pictured), the 18-year-old who is probably best known to viewers as the pizza delivery boy in Kylie Minogue’s Coca-Cola commercial, has been acting for ten years but is taking on the change from child actor to young adult with a controversial role in ABC’s medical drama GP.  In an episode to air this week, Eikmeier plays the role of student Tony Wood who is suffering from stomach ulcers and the pressure of exams and finds himself under attack from his father who discovers that he has been having a relationship with a man ten years older.  For Eikmeier it was a challenging role to take on.  “It was very hard, because I’d never had any contact with gay people.  I guess I’d been sheltered from it, so I didn’t really know how to approach it.  I gave the part a lot of consideration, and my dad said, ‘Well, it’s up to you – but if it was me, I wouldn’t do it’,” he told TV Week.

Briefly…
Jeff Phillips (pictured), host of Network Ten’s new talent quest series Star Search, says he knows that shows like this can give a young star their big break.  “I was a product of this type of show,” he told TV Week.  “I drove from Perth to Melbourne in my Volkswagen to go on New Faces.  I went on the show on Sunday night, won it, and was immediately invited by Graham Kennedy to be on In Melbourne Tonight and got sudden recognition.  I was only 19 at the time.”

The Flying Doctors star Brett Climo makes his dramatic exit from the series this week as his character, Dr David Ratcliffe, attempts a rescue on a cliff face and finds himself hanging upside down from a safety rope before falling to a ledge below.  “This episode is definitely among the best moments of my career,” Climo told TV Week.

Actress Kaarin Fairfax, best known to viewers as Dolour in The Harp In The South and Poor Man’s Orange, is joining Network Ten comedy Col’n Carpenter as the show’s new female lead following the departure of Vikki Blanche.  The series will also be seen in a new timeslot – Sunday nights at 8.00pm, after The Simpsons – when it returns to screens next month.

Lawrie Masterson’s Sound Off
”On went the VCR for a first look at Chances (featuring Natalie McCurry, pictured), the new Nine Network series so heavily publicised, yet so closely guarded at the same time.  All the pre-publicity had promised adults only fare and, while this was hardly a return to the full frontal days of Number 96 or The Box, it did make it seem worthwhile checking that the little ones were, indeed, just like everyone in the show – in bed.”

Program Highlights (February 16-22):
Saturday:  Daryl Somers and Ossie Ostrich head Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s return for 1991, up against the debut of Ten’s new talent quest series Star Search, hosted by Jeff Phillips.  Seven crosses to AFL Park, Mount Waverley, for the Fosters Cup: St Kilda versus West Coast Eagles.

Sunday:  SBS begins a national screening of the twelve-part documentary series My Place, My Land, My People – a production of Queensland-based regional broadcaster QTV and a winner at the 1990 TV Week Logie Awards for most outstanding achievement by a regional television station – followed by the series return of SBS viewers’ feedback program Hotline.  Sunday night movies are Beverly Hills Cop II (Seven) and Working Girl (Ten).

Monday:  SBS debuts a new weekly music series, MC Tee Vee, and later in the evening Pria Viswalingam hosts the series return of nightly current affairs program Dateline.  Ten presents the movie-length debut of popular US series Twin Peaks.  After the late edition of Ten Eyewitness News, Ten presents US talk show Donahue, with each night’s episode repeated the following afternoon.  Ten’s overnight coverage of the Gulf war continues via CNN.

Tuesday:  In A Country Practice (Seven), Bob Hatfield (Gordon Piper) becomes a vegetarian after he is asked to kill six sheep.  Aussie actress Penny Downie (The Box, Prisoner, The Sullivans) stars in the new six-part British series Campaign which debuts on ABC.

Wednesday:  ABC presents 90-minute documentary One Australia?, a study on racism and multiculturalism in Australia and asking whether cohesion in our society can be achieved while maintaining diversity.

Thursday:  Veteran actor George Mallaby (pictured) guest stars in Nine’s drama Chances.  SBS current affairs program Face The Press and sports magazine The Sports Machine return for 1991.

Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide.   16 February 1991. Southdown Press.

1990: July 14-20

‘By the time my son is a teenager I’ll be in a sewing circle’
A Current Affair host Jana Wendt (picture), mother of two-and-a-half-year-old Daniel, says that if he was to get a younger brother or sister then she would reconsider her role on television.  “I think two children is a very large number if you want to keep working,” she told TV Week.  And the ACA host admits it is quite a juggling act as TV’s first lady on camera, while being mum at home.  “I think my son is conducting a campaign to stop me reading newspapers, which could jeopardise my job!  That’s a struggle in the mornings – the struggle against listening to the radio, which you must do, and watching Here’s Humphrey.  Sometimes both happen at the same time, which leads to both of us being confused.  It works itself out.”  And while Daniel things it’s pretty cool recognising his mum on TV now, she is asked will he feel the same when he is a teenager.  “I don’t think that 13 years from now I’ll be in the business.  By the time he’s a teenager I will be in a sewing circle.  Yes, absolutely,” she says. 

Fast lane Jane!
When Jane Turner isn’t raising laughs on Fast Forward, she is juggling two other very different roles.  First, there is looking after her young son, Rupert – and then her other role is as the diplomat’s wife and the various official social engagements that come with that job.  Turner and her husband John Denton met at Melbourne University, courted in Russia, married in Melbourne, had an 18-month “honeymoon” in Canberra and then moved to Bangladesh, where Denton is deputy head of the Australian High Commission in Dacca.  The talented Turner came back to Melbourne to start on Fast Forward, and her husband will be following later in the year.  “He’s always very supportive and encouraging,” she told TV Week.  “We’re both so satisfied with our careers.  You have to take the opportunities when they come and play it by ear.  But it can be a drag.  We miss each other, but it’s always been this way.  One day we’ll compromise.”  When she isn’t working on Fast Forward, Turner joins her husband overseas to mix with the elite on the diplomatic cocktail circuit.  And after creating such Fast Forward characters such as the tongue-in-cheek Inga Harlot (pictured) and Doctor Van Noodle Rooter (“they’re loosely based on Scandinavians I met in Moscow.”), Turner is considering creating a Bangladeshi character.  “Let’s see how they react to that!,” she says.

‘We felt like we were selling out’
Countdown Revolution’s Tania Lacy has spoken out after she and co-host Mark Little were sacked from the show for being anarchic.  It’s a bizarre situation for the pair, considering it was for that particular quality they were hired to do the show in the first place.  Lacy, a familiar face from ABC’s The Factory, said there had been a lot of problems leading up to the taping of the episode where she and Little staged an on-air strike.  “It was a fight for our credibility,” she told TV Week.  “We regard ourselves as credible performers and that is the heart of the issue.  We were originally asked to present a revolutionary, comedic and anarchic pop program.  We really believed in that concept, but suddenly some very ugly factors came into it.  We felt like we were selling out, that we were puppets for the producers and record companies.  Mark and I were not employed to sell records.  We were also told to cool it with the clowning around and they also stopped us from saying what we believed in.  We felt so strongly about it we thought the audience should know how we’re feeling.”  The pair arrived for the Friday night taping carrying some quickly-made placards, reading ‘TV is a lie’ and ‘TV lip service’, which were handed out to audience members.  The pair were later notified of their dismissal by fax.  Actors Equity have taken up the case and Lacy and Little are hopeful they will be able to sit down with ABC management and deal with the issue face to face.  The show’s former producer, Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum, says that while he wasn’t involved in the show by this stage, he defended the broadcaster’s actions:  “Any performer knows you don’t air your grievances on camera.  And that no one performer is bigger than the show itself.  Any artist who abuses members of the production team in front of an audience, or tears up their script and refuses point blank to listen to the show’s director, or tries to encourage members of the audience or other performers to interfere with the production of the program – all over matters of either self-indulgence or ego – is definitely asking for trouble.”

Briefly…
The Flying Doctors star Alex Papps is set to kill his boy-next-door image with a role in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of This Old Man Comes Rolling Home.  “It’s a play about a family living in Redfern in the Fifties.  My character is one of the sons of the family who doesn’t work… he’s a real layabout.  He seduces a young English girl, so I get to play ‘Mr Bastard’ this time around.  He’s a lecherous type,” he told TV Week.

As a judge on Nine’s New Faces program, Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum was so impressed with the performance of 17-year-old Queenslander Peter Andre (pictured, centre, with Meldrum and host Daryl Somers) that he immediately signed him up to his record label, Melodian Records.  “Peter impressed us all and he has a unique voice that can be developed,” Meldrum told TV Week.

Darryl Cotton and Marty Monster found themselves unemployed when the Ten Network axed the long-running children’s program The Early Bird Show (which was known as Club 10 at the time of its axing).  But now the pair have a new profile as presenters of a Sunday morning radio show on Melbourne radio station TTFM.  “We’ve picked up the ratings by 200 per cent since we began three months ago.  It’s a radio version of The Early Bird Show and it’s great fun,” Cotton told TV Week.

John Laws says…
”The recent repeat screening of ABC’s Bush Tucker Man series, first shown in 1988, scored excellent ratings.  And no wonder.  It was just as engrossing the second time around as it was the first.  Which leads me to ask why is it taking so long for ABC to bring us a new series of the Bush Tucker Man?”

Program Highlights (July 14-20):
Sunday:  SBS presents a new series of Anne’s International Kitchen, featuring Anne Luciano.  Rowena Wallace (pictured), Richard Moir and Justin Rozniak star in The Big Wish, the third in the More Winners children’s series on ABC.  GTV9 presents the debut of Unknown Australia, the five-part documentary series from Brisbane-based newsreader Dean Felton.  After a six-month hiatus, The Comedy Company returns to ATV10 with a new format and some new faces.  Sunday night movies are Without A Clue (HSV7) and Frantic (GTV9).  ATV10 debuts the two-part mini-series Murderers Among Us – The Simon Wiesenthal Story.   ABC’s Sunday Stereo Special is the Australian Ballet’s production of Spartacus, recorded in Melbourne with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra conducted by Ormsby Wilkins.

Monday:  Sale Of The Century (GTV9) presents the first in the week-long Celebrity Challenge, commemorating the show’s tenth anniversary.  Taking part in the challenge are high-profile contestants including Bert Newton (pictured), Andrew Gaze, Simon O’Donnell, Peta Toppano, Gough Whitlam, Lisa Curry, Cameron Daddo, George Negus and Jennifer Byrne.

Tuesday:  In Beyond 2000 (HSV7), Iain Finlay reveals a new technique for viewing 3D television without the need for special glasses, while Simon Reeve travels to Gothenburg, Sweden, to report on an electronic newspaper for the blind.  SBS launches a new weekly sports program, The Sports Machine, hosted by Les Murray and a team of reporters looking at the playing fields, dressing rooms and board rooms of sporting clubs around Australia.

Wednesday:  ABC’s Documentary Unit presents a controversial new film, The Devil You Know, examining the popular myth surrounding two drugs – heroin and alcohol.

Thursday:  ABC’s The First Australians series presents a documentary on Arnhem Land rock group Yothu Yindi on their tour of North America with Midnight Oil.

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