person or book cover
Peter Hepworth (left, with Stephen Lee) in 1974's Alpha Scorpio (screen cap)
Peter Hepworth Peter Hepworth i(A30624 works by)
Born: Established: 1948 Lismore, Lismore - Goonellabah, Lismore area, Far Northeast NSW, New South Wales, ; Died: Ceased: 19 Sep 2011
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

Peter Hepworth, son of Oriel Gray and John Hepworth, began writing for the screen in 1968 with Bellbird. According to his agnecy, he had well over 250 hours of produced drama and comedy to his credit by the end of his career.

Over the next four decades, he wrote for a wide variety of Australian television programs, including The Bluestone Boys, Cop Shop, Skyways, Holiday Island, The Sullivans, Zoo Family, The Flying Doctors, The Henderson Kids, Saturdee, Kelly, Ocean Girl, Sky Trackers, The Adventures of the Bush Patrol, State Coroner, Good Guys, Bad Guys, Chuck Finn, and Li'l Horrors.

He also wrote the script for the film Hammers Over the Anvil, based on the stories of Alan Marshall.

Hepworth was the creator or co-creator of a number of television programs, including series two of The Henderson Kids, the two ABC series House Rules and Inside Running, and, according to his agency, programs called Small Tales of Nowhere and Eye Wonder (which are not yet traced).

As a story editor, he worked on Ocean Girl, the spoof soap opera Shark Bay, Good Guys, Bad Guys, Chuck Finn, Li'l Horrors, and Stingers.

As a script editor, he worked on the feature film Muggers (written by R. B. Taylor and directed by Dean Murphy) and The Flying Doctors.

Hepworth began acting in his early teens, and during the 1960s and early 1970s worked on a number of Crawford Productions series, including Homicide, Division Four, and Ryan, as well as appearing in the ABC's 1965 production of Macbeth. His last known role was as Andrew in the 1974 science-fiction television series Alpha Scorpio.

Further Reference

Diana Mann, 'Young Actor in New Role'. The Age, 10 May 1966, p.11.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

form y separately published work icon Good Guys, Bad Guys ( dir. Brendan Maher et. al. )agent 1997 Australia : Beyond Simpson Le Mesurier Nine Network , 1997-1998 Z1367327 1997 series - publisher film/TV crime

An edgy and off-beat crime series that relies heavily on humour, contemporary music, and a touch of the bizarre, centring on the character of Elvis Maginnis. An ex-cop from the wrong side of the tracks, Maginnis now runs his own dry-cleaning business but still finds himself drawn into the shady side of life.

1998 nominated Logie Awards Most Outstanding Drama Series
form y separately published work icon Blue Heelers ( dir. Mark Callan et. al. )agent 1994 Sydney Australia : Hal McElroy Southern Star Seven Network , 1994-2006 Z1367353 1994 series - publisher film/TV crime

A character-based television drama series about the lives of police officers in the fictitious Australian country town of Mt Thomas, this series began with the arrival of Constable Maggie Doyle (Lisa McCune) to the Mt Thomas station in the episode 'A Woman's Place'. Doyle and avuncular station boss Senior Sergeant Tom Croydon (John Wood) were the core characters of the series until the departure of Lisa McCune.

Immensely popular for a decade, Blue Heelers was cancelled in 2006 after thirteen seasons. The announcement was front-page news in Australia's major newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney's Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun and The Age in Melbourne, and Brisbane's Courier Mail.

On June 8, 2006 Ross Warneke wrote in The Age:

'It's over and, to be perfectly blunt, there's no use lamenting the demise of Blue Heelers any more. When the final movie-length episode aired on Channel Seven on Sunday night, 1.5 million Australians tuned in, a figure that was big enough to give the show a win in its timeslot but nowhere near big enough to pay the sort of tribute that this writer believes Heelers deserved after more than 500 episodes. It is unlikely there will be anything like it again. At almost $500,000 an hour, shows such as Blue Heelers are quickly becoming the dinosaurs of Australian TV.'

1998 winner Logie Awards Most Popular Series
1997 winner Logie Awards Most Popular Series
1999 nominated Logie Awards Most Outstanding Drama Series
form y separately published work icon Cop Shop ( dir. Marie Trevor et. al. )agent Melbourne : Crawford Productions , 1977 Z1815191 1977 series - publisher film/TV crime detective

Set in the fictional Riverside Police Station, Cop Shop combined self-contained stories focusing on specific police investigations with the type of open-ended serial storylines familiar from soap operas. This allowed Crawford Productions to make use of the expertise gained from their highly successful police procedurals (all recently cancelled) and serials such as The Sullivans (then still airing).

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian Television Series,

Although the format may sound predictable and routine, in fact it was pioneering. In putting women police on the screen, Crawford's were moving Australian crime drama away from being an all-male domain. In addition, by choosing a suburban police station populated both by uniformed police and plainclothes detectives, Cop Shop introduced an upstairs and a downstairs world. The latter, in particular, began to exert its own attractions with handsome young men and women in the roles of the new constables.

1978 won Logie Awards Best New Drama
Last amended 17 Apr 2018 16:28:19
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