Hector Crawford Productions (later Crawford Productions) was founded in 1945 by brother-and-sister team Hector and Dorothy Crawford.
First located in Little Collins Street, the company moved as it expanded, first to Collins Street, then out into Abbotsford, and eventually to the studios at Box Hill (demolished in 2006).
With their mutual background and interest in music, Dorothy and Hector's early productions were often music based, such as Music for the People (live concerts in the Melbourne Botanical Gardens, conducted by Hector, and broadcast live on radio).
They soon branched out into radio dramas, including the highly successful crime drama D.24, the fore-runner of their television crime drama Homicide. They produced dozens of radio dramas in various formats, including musicals, such as The Amazing Oscar Hammerstein; radio serials, including adaptations of two series by British crime writer John Creasey, Inspector West and The Toff; and programs focusing on issues of social importance, such as Problem People.
In 1956, when television was introduced to Australia, Crawford Productions made the successful shift of formats (while continuing to produce radio). Among their earliest television productions were Australia's first sit-com, Take That! (1957), and a televisation of the stage play Seagulls Over Sorrento (also filmed in 1954 by the Boulting Brothers).
Although the first highly successful Crawfords production for television was the courtroom drama Consider Your Verdict, it was Homicide (soon followed by Division 4 and Matlock Police) that cemented their dominance of Australian television programming.
Crawfords specialised in crime drama throughout the 1970s, but in the 1980s, moved into successful mini-series, including All The Rivers Run and its sequel, All the Rivers Run II, as well as the six-hour mini-series The Flying Doctors, which, picked up by the Nine Network, became a highly successful, ten-season television series.
Other successful television programs produced by Crawfords include The Sullivans, The Box, The Henderson Kids, and Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left. They also produced telemovies, such as Fortess.
In 1987, Hector Crawford sold his controlling interest in Crawford Productions. In 1989, it was bought by Bruce Gordon’s Oberon Broadcasters, the parent company of WIN Television (then the Nine Network affiliate in southern New South Wales and subsequently a national regional broadcaster).
Since this change of ownership, Crawfords has produced such television programs as Cluedo, telemovie series The Feds, State Coroner, The Last of the Ryans, and The Violent Earth.
Their most recent production was The Saddle Club.
