Cirrus@Austlit

The script held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection contains the following character notes (excluding regular characters):

'PAUL SMITH Slim, moderately good-looking, bookish. Aged 32. The only son of a senior Public Servant. Strict upper-middle class upbringing. High I.Q. Outstanding scholastic record. Excellent Honours degree in History. One of the youngest full professors ever appointed. Because of his studious childhood, he is shy and does not make friends. Is a very serious person. The only uncharacteristic thing he ever did (apart from murdering June Best) was to marry Beverley. Her extrovert, rather flashy style seemed to him romantic and glamorous. She could do all the things he couldn't do: dance, be the "life of the party", laugh easily and make others laugh. She also exuded a surface sexuality which attracted him powerfully. No-one was more surprised than Paul Smith when she accepted his diffident proposal.

'For some six months, the marriage was a moderate success. Later, however Smith's wife became moody, bored and withdrawn. She began to deny him his conjugal rights on the grounds of unspecified ill-health. She began to practise her latent talent for sadistic humiliation.

'Not equipped to deal with this situation, and still infatuated with his wife, Smith becomes upset and frustrated. He seeks an outlet for his newly awakened sexual appetites by resorting to prositutes, but is unable to consummate these (to him) degrading liaisons. On the night of the murder, his condition has reached flashpoint and he is close to a full scale mental breakdown.

'Throughout the ensuing events, he is increasingly unable to cope and after his final confrontation with Beverley, he lapses into insanity.

'BEVERLEY SMITH Aged 22. The sixth child of a factory hand. Very little formal education but possessed of a strong native intellect. Learned early that her chief attribute was her good looks. Knew herself to be attractive to men. Determined to better herself, marry up the social scale and be respected. The idea of marrying Paul Smith attracted her for these reasons. She fancied herself as the wife of a University Professor.

'In the early days of the marriage, she worked hard at fulfilling this new image of herself. However, Smith bored her, as did his associates, who tended to exclude her as not being one of "them". Smith's naive sexual attentions became repellent to her, his devotion and compliance made her despise him. She began to amuse herself by needling him and discovered a spectacular talent for emasculation. She provides an alibi for Smith during the first police interview because she fears the publicity that her husband's involvement in a murder would bring her. When Smith later gives himself up and confesses, she is furious and decides to get rid of him as soon as the trial is over. She has never loved him (she has probably never loved anyone), and at no stage feels pity or compassion for him - only disgust at what she regards as his weakness. She takes no pleasure in her sexual appeal, only uses it as a weapon to get what she wants.'

'MORRIE WATTS: Very small time crook trying hard to give the impression that he's big time. Getting on a bit, could be anything from mid-forties to mid-fifties. Dresses in a cheap, flashy way. Fancies himself as something of a ladies' man. Underneath all this, he's not a bad bloke who wouldn't hurt a fly.

'Observes his own moral code - (won't dob in a mate) but co-operates with the police when he sees the brutally explicit photos of the dead girl. He, too, had quite a genuine feeling for June Best.

'SUE RYAN Early 20's. A prostitute by trade, but not yet coarse or hard. Not well educated and a bit dumb - doesn't have a particularly broad Australian accent. Quite attractive. Bright and cheerful by nature, she is genuinely upset at her best friend's death.

'NEIGHBOUR (MRS TRAINER) In her sixties. A widow. Suspicious, garrulous, disapproving. Presumably living off her pension and her late husband's life insurance.

'LANDLORD (MR FOSTER) In his fiftes. A small time property owner. A rather nondescript character, he emerges as a most unlikeable person. His only interest in June Best's death is what he can get out of it.

'SENIOR CONSTABLE Been in the force a long time. A correct and conscientious constable, he shows he is human by his appreciation of Fox's handling of the landlord.

'POLICE DOCTOR Neat and professional. Has examined many bodies and is no longer touched by the horror of his calling.

'TENANT Middle-aged man. Surly.

'TART A really hard old boiler about 40, trying desperately with the aid of lavish make-up and little-girl clothes to look 20, and failing miserably. No education, sounds very "strine", hates cops.

'PENTRIDGE GUARD

'BYSTANDER A small non-speaking part, the bystander is seen in the background throughout the scenes in which Watts is picked up by the D's. He closes the scene by picking up the tart and going off with her. To justify his existence he must look like the last person in the world who would do such a thing. In his 60's, neat, well dressed, silver hair. Looks like everybody's favourite grandfather.

'MISS THOMPSON Smith's assistant. Early 30's. Somewhat severe looking.

'AL GRIST An ordinary bloke. Honest, industrious, devoted to his footy club. Has executed his duties as club secretary with great zeal. Because of a healthy appetite and capacity for beer, he is considerably over-weight - explaining his unhappy presence on the exercise bike when Delaney interviews him in the gym.

'HUDSON 30-40. Used car salesman.

'HAROLD JAMES Mid 50's to mid 60's. A wealthy successful businessman. A snob and a hypocrite. Is concerned for his reputation when Mac consults him about his visits to June Best. To his credit he did have a genuine fondness for the dead girl and when his bluff is called, accepts defeat and co-operates fully.

'SECRETARY (MISS FELIX) Mid 20's. Attractive.

'FAIRCHILD About 50. A shrewd, successful lawyer. He has a job to do - get Smith off - and he does it. Can be charming when necessary, but doesn't hesitate to ride Smith mercilessly to get the information he needs.

'TAXI DRIVER (ACTUAL).'

Running for twelve years and a total of 510 episodes, Homicide was a seminal Australian police-procedural program, set in the homicide squad of the Victoria Police. According to Don Storey in his Classic Australian Television, it represented a turning point for Australian television, prompting the development of local productions over the purchase of relatively inexpensive American dramas. Indeed, Storey quotes Hector Crawford as saying that his production company intended three outcomes from Homicide: demonstrating that it was possible to make a high-quality local drama series, counteracting criticism of local performers, and showing that Australian audiences would watch Australian-made dramas.

As Moran notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series, the program adopted a narrative structure focusing on crime, detection, and capture, rather than on character studies of the lead detectives. The early episodes were produced by a small crew (Storey notes that the crew was frequently limited to four people: cameraman, grip, director, and assistant director), requiring some degree of ingenuity to achieve a polished result (including, in some cases, the actors performing their own stunts). However, the program received extensive support from the Victoria Police (who recognised, in its positive portrayal of police officers, a valuable public-relations exercise) and, as its popularity grew, from the public.

The program's cast changed extensively over its twelve years on the air, though it remained focused on a small group of male detectives, with the inclusion of irregular characters such as Policewoman Helen Hopgood (played by Derani Scarr), written on an as-required basis to reflect the involvement of women in the police force. In Moran's words, 'The other star of Homicide was the location film work. These ordinary, everyday familiar urban locations were what gave the series a gritty realism and familiarised audiences with the shock of recognition at seeing themselves and their milieus on air'.

Consider Your Verdict was a television adaptation of Crawford Productions' radio programme of the same name, which (according to Storey at Classic Australian Television) ran from 18 August 1958 to 1960, for a total of 312 episodes. Soon after the radio program ceased, Crawfords began developing Consider Your Verdict as a television program.

As they had with the radio version, Crawfords made a number of production decisions aimed at increasing the apparent authenticity of the program. According to Storey, these included consulting legal professionals (including the Crown Law Department, Victoria Police, and Melbourne University's Department of Law), limiting the actors playing witnesses to a brief overview of the script and requiring them to ad-lib their lines (resulting in an authentically hesitant delivery style), and occasionally casting actual legal professionals in roles (notably homicide detective Gordon Timmins and Eugene Gorman QC). The intention was to suggest that audiences were watching a broadcast of an actual trial; in keeping with this illusion, as Moran notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series, the program carried no production credits.

The majority of the cases were criminal cases (primarily murder), though the program did present some civil cases. Inexpensive to produce, the program occasionally suffered from the suggestion that it adhered rather too closely to legal process, rendering episodes slower and less dramatic than they might otherwise have been.