Cirrus@Austlit

Catwalk was spun off from an episode of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's drama Dynasty (an episode also called 'Catwalk'), which had featured a fictional woman's fashion magazine called Lilith. Unlike Dynasty, however, it was not produced for the ABC (which was uninterested in the projected spin-off), but for ATN-7.

According to Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, compared to Dynasty, 'Catwalk is not as intense. The setting of a top women's fashion magazine provides plenty of intrigue and tension, but it is a lighter drama with touches of comedy and more of a human-interest approach'. Albert Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, suggests that the program 'was a kind of fictional version of a then very popular ATN daytime chat series, Beauty and the Beast.'

The program focuses on the relatively small staff of the magazine (now named Catwalk): Saxon Wells (owner and publisher), Ricky Novak (photographer), Cornelia Heyson (model), Jenkins (secretary), and Paula Healy (editor).

According to Storey, 'As there was little or no 'soap' content, and the established characters did not develop over such a short run, the episodes were screened mostly in random order with no detrimental effect'. Though the series rated moderately well, ATN-7 did not choose to produce a second series.

A film adaptation of Cleary's novel, which had been adapted as a television series two years earlier. This film used many of the same cast members as the television series.

A drama series set during the height of the Vietnam War, You Can't See Round Corners revolves around Frankie McCoy, a lonely, somewhat aggressive non-conformist who has spent all his life living in the inner-city suburb of Newtown. As the series progresses, McCoy is called up for National Service and although he initially fulfils his duty, he later deserts and heads back home to hide with friends. Other main characters include his girlfriend Margie and enemy Terry Howlett, the twenty-year-old leader of a small gang of thugs.

The television adaptation was contemporised by producer John Walters and screenwriter Richard Lane. Cleary's original novel is set in the Sydney suburb of Paddington during World War II. After deciding to bring the temporal setting forward to the (then) current Vietnam era, they also had to change the physical setting. Although Paddington had been a working-class suburb in the 1940s, the demographic had changed considerably by the 1960s. Newtown was subsequently considered the most appropriate location for a narrative set in a working-class suburb. Richard Lane records in Take One (1972) that he and Walters also deliberately introduced other contemporary issues into the narrative, notably the inclusion of the Greek community, which by the late 1960s had had an enormous impact on the Newtown district (p. 52).

The first episode of You Can't See Round Corners.

'Searching for a missing friend Fred Taylor uncovers an uncanny situation and goes one step beyond violence to the brink of insanity.'

Source:

[Television guide], The Canberra Times, 30 May 1966, p.19.

'Richard Lane's play about the glory and tragedy of a hero. Taking Sir Charles Kingsford Smith's historic Pacific flight as the theme, the play shows the discouragements which faced the aviator, the thrill and drama of the historic flights itself, and the bitterly tragic aftermath.'

Source: 'Drama on Radio', TV and Radio Guide, The Age, 9 February 1967, p.2.

'Based Balzac's novel [sic] — Eugenie Grandet — a study of greed and the distorting effects on human beings whom it involves.'

Source:

[Television guide], The Canberra Times, 25 October 1965, p.18.

Anne James is drawn into a search for missing security documents, when she returns home to her Perth flat to find it occupied by an ASIO officer, who tells her that a friend of hers, Darcy, is involved in a plot involving the currency.

A daytime soap opera (like its predecessor, Autumn Affair), The Story of Peter Grey follows a young clergyman newly appointed to a large parish.

Australia's first soap opera and the first serial drama made in Australia (although it had been preceded by single-episode television dramas), Autumn Affair followed Julia Parrish, a middle-aged woman in a love triangle with two men.

'Half Light is set in the New South Wales timber country, where logging townships have sprung up among forests of giant trees. As night falls, a great loneliness descends upon these centres, in the half-light.

'In one such town Frank Vickers is manager of a timber company. He is happily married, with his wife Nora and son Barry. Then into his life comes Joanna Fairweather, to whom he was engaged 12 years earlier.

'She is a strange woman, intensely lonely and seemingly grateful for the friendship given her by Frank and Nora. But gradually she begins to exert an insidious influence on the household—undermining the atmosphere of happy domesticity—until it becomes apparent that she is a bitter, fanatical woman, determined to take revenge for the happiness she feels she has missed in her life.

'One person, however, a tough woods man named Ted Michael, realises her true character. As Joanna’s vicious cunning increases, the action mounts to a tensely dramatic climax.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays of the Week', ABC Weekly, 18 March 1950, p.27.

'Radio drama serial set in a hospital and centered around the life of Dr Paul Lowe, his family and the citizens of Stanton, the town in which they live and where Dr Paul is in charge of the Miles Memorial Hospital.'

Source: 'Radio Series Collection Guide', National Film and Sound Archive, p. 65.