Cirrus@Austlit

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

'FREDA CLARK 30. Lenny's widow. A warm but strong character. Knows exactly what her husband is and what he does. Loves him deeply in the true sense of the word. A realist.

'SENIOR DETECTIVE HARRY BROWN About 40. A seasoned member of the Breaking Squad.

'WHITE 28. Good looking, flashy dresser. Hard, callous, utterly ruthless. He is a very dangerous crim, who, when cornered, never stops thinking of how he can get out of a tight corner, and never caring who gets hurts when he does so.

'JOAN 30-ish. Freda's neighbour. A plump, contented housewife. Knows the Clarks, likes them, knows what they do and accepts it as perfectly normal.

'MRS. JOHNSON 45. Church bazaars, a garden, a gentlewoman. Not an inkling of an idea that her husband is a crim.

'SMOKEY STEVENS 50. A small wiry pro. crim. An old "customer" of Fox's. Proud of his prowess as a safebreaker. He knows Fox is a straight cop, and expects Fox to treat him as a professional.

'DAVIS 40. Shifty. The kind of bloke you couldn't trust as far as you could throw him. Tries to be a smart alec with a loud mouth, but cracks badly when the pressure is really on.

'KEN HUME 35. Forensic man, friendly, explains things to Grey.

'MR. GREY 50. Manager of the supermarket. All "hail-fellow-well-met" type. Finds it difficult to stop talking, thinks the robbery is most exciting and fancies himself as an amateur detective. He calms down a lot after he discovers Lenny's body.

'BOAT YARD OWNER 35. Pleasant, slow-moving, outdoor type.

'JIMMY SMITH 30-ish. Round-faced, smiling aboriginal [sic]. Friendly, down-to-earth.

'DOCTOR Normal-type doctor.

'FIRST HOUSE-HOLDER 25. Young motor enthusiast. Pleasant, average bloke.

'SECOND HOUSE-HOLDER 55. An average bloke.

'JOHNSON 40. Typical commerical traveller type, but not flamboyant.

'LENNY CLARK Small, 30-ish. A body only on the screen, but practically the major character.'

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'.