Born: Established: 1950 Melbourne, Victoria, ;
Playwright, screenwriter, musician, and songwriter.
Tim Gooding studied architecture at the University of Sydney during the early to mid-1970s. At the same time, he became associated with several other students involved in theatre, which led to him writing material for the groundbreaking ABC comedy series The Aunty Jack Show (1973). He later worked with other members of that series on such series as Norman Gunston Show and Wollongong the Brave. Gooding's theatrical works from the 1970s include A Bent Repose (1974), The Astounding Optimissimo Show (1977), and three plays staged in 1978: The Great Australian Play, Rock-ola, the Last Post: Hiroshima Romance (Nimrod Theatre), and A Tentshow Pagliacci. That same year, Gooding and former University of Sydney architecture student Joanna Pigott co-founded the indie-punk band XL Capris, best known for its cover version of Tommy Leonetti's 'My City of Sydney' (1979). The group released two albums (Where's Hank? and Weeds) in 1981, before disbanding in 1982.
The 1980s saw Gooding working mostly as a television scriptwriter and creator. In 1984, he devised and co-wrote with Joanna Pigott the popular ABC-TV series Sweet and Sour (about a fictional rock band called The Takeaways). Other credits during the 1980s include Ratbags (1981), The Flying Doctors (1986), Rafferty's Rules (1987), and screenplays for two feature films: Heatwave (1982), a thriller co-written with Phillip Noyce, Marc Rosenberg, and Mark Styles (qq.v), and On the Loose (1984), co-written with Ken Cameron (q.v.), Mark Stiles, and Jane Oehr (q.v.).
During the 1990s, Gooding was engaged to write episodes for a number of high-profile television series, including Blue Heelers (1994) and Heartbreak High (1994-98). His much-acclaimed musical, King of Country, was staged for the first time in 1992. Since 2000, he has contributed scripts for Above the Law (2000), Water Rats (2001), Young Lions (2002), Stingers (2001-02), All Saints (2005-06), and children's television series Mortified (2006-07), Time Tracker (2008) and Penelope K. By the Way (2010). One of Gooding's episodes for Mortified ('The Talk,' 2006) won First Prize at the 2007 Chicago International Children's Film Festival and the Theme Prize at 2008 Prix Jeunesse in Munich. He has also been the recipient of a Distinctly Australian Writers Fellowship from the Australian Film Commission.
Gooding's musical career since 2000 has involved the band Daddy-O, which he describes as playing 'all-original Country and Martian music.' He also continues to write for the theatre. His adaptation of Moliere's The Miser was completed in 2004.
Australian Writing and Rock Music affiliation: songwriter, guitar, keyboards, vocals.
Mortified follows the trevails of eleven-year-old Taylor Fry, as she copes with the general embarrassment of having parents, as well as being annoyed by her sister, jealous of her neighbour, and completely oblivious to her best friend's crush on her. The program inserts some fantasy elements into the otherwise straight comedy-drama by having Taylor speak directly to the camera, using elaborate fantasy sequences to explore her daydreams, and showing her over-active imagination as bringing seemingly inanimate objects to life.
Mortified was the last major work of television producer and screenwriter Angela Webber before her early death in 2007.
'Inspired by true events, Stingers reveals the shadowy and ambiguous world of undercover cops — people with covert lives and constantly changing identities. They are police who defeat crime from within the criminal world — always without a badge and frequently without protection. The series follows the lives of the operatives as they befriend and betray those on the other side of the law. For these select few, it is a deadly way of life.The undercover cops of Stingers are a unique breed. They must juggle their own lives — love, laughter, family and humanity — with the tension of the criminal personas they adopt in their passion for justice.'
Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 7/6/2013)
One of Australia's highest rating dramas, All Saints is a Logie Award-winning Australian medical drama set in the fictional All Saints Western General Hospital in suburban Sydney. The stories originally focused on the nursing staff of Ward 17 run by Nursing Unit Manager Terri Sullivan. It was sometimes referred to as the 'garbage ward' because it took the overflow of patients.
In 2004 Network Seven producers overhauled the series in an effort to increase the show's gradually dwindling audience. They achieved this by closing down Ward 17 and transferring some of the staff to the Emergency Department managed by Frank Campion. Several other new lead characters were also introduced. The changes also saw the storylines begin to focus more on the lives of the doctors and nurses.
Another significant change to the series came in early 2009 when the producers introduced the Medical Response Unit. Central to this development was the helicopter which took doctors to rescue situations outside the hopsital and which in turn brought patients to the All Saints Emergency Department. The show's name was also changed at this time to All Saints: Medical Response Unit. The increased production costs created by having scenes shot on location played a part, however, in the series being cancelled mid-year. The series ended with the Emergency Department and Medical Response Unit teams having a dinner to farewell the last remaining original character, Von Ryan on her final day at All Saints.
All Saints was popular in many countries including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium and Iran.