Cirrus@Austlit

A highly successful soap opera, Number 96's permissive and adult tone emerged, in Moran's terms, from 'the atmosphere of censorship liberalisation that had occurred in Australia in the early 1970s, and the intention to screen the serial in a late evening timeslot'. As such, the programme interspersed the domestic and romantic storylines that usually drive soap operas with plots exploring rape, drug abuse, and homosexuality. For example, the long-running character Don Finlayson (played by Joe Hasham) was an openly gay character whose relationships attracted neither censure nor any unusual degree of attention from his neighbours, showing him as unusually (for the time) integrated into a mainstream community.

According to Moran, 'Number 96 moved the Australian television soap opera completely away from its radio predecessor by organising a series of simultaneous storylines with various characters moving in and out of these, the storylines lasting only two to six weeks on air.' Long-running storylines included the 'Knicker Snipper' (a msyterious figure stealing the residents' underwear) and the Pantyhose Murderer (a serial killer).

As the show's ratings began dropping in 1975, various attempts were made to revitalise interest in the series, including killing (or otherwise writing out) long-running characters, increasing the amount of location shooting, and publicising the increased amount of nudity in the show (including both female and--briefly--male full-frontal nudity). Despite this, ratings continued to drop to the point where the show was cancelled in July 1977.

Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, describes The Unloved as 'a kind of follow-up to Divorce Court'; like the latter program, it was based on an American format. In The Unloved, however, the focus was on children who (for various reasons) had been brought before a social worker. According to Moran, 'The emphasis was on verbal exposition and voice-over, with movement and scene changes kept to a minimum. Robert Peach served as on-screen anchor for the series, which maintained a strong documentary/realist tone'.

The idea that this was based on an American series is not upheld in contemporary newspaper, which instead describe it as a fictional account of cases heard by A.E. Debenham, a Sydney magistrate who had retired in 1963. According to contemporary reports, 'Marien Dreyer (Mrs. Rodney Cooper in private life) originally sold the idea of "The Unloved" to NUT, who are producing it for TCN9.' (Nan Musgrove, 'Like a Bird in a Golden Cage', Australian Women's Weekly, 24 January 1968, p.17). Dreyer had been involved in preparing Debenham's memoirs for publication, 'was struck with the potential of the material in Mr. Debenham's files and successfully sold the idea to NLT and TCN9' (Nan Musgrove, 'TCN9 Seeks Young Talent', Australian Women's Weekly, 10 January 1968, p.17).

Divorce Court was based on a long-running American documentary series, which, though it marketed itself as presenting real-life divorce cases to audiences, actually presented re-enactments of real-life divorces using actors. Though Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, doesn't specify and information on the program is scarce, the Australian version presumably followed the same model.

According to Moran,

Each episode was hosted by a narrator and fully scripted, with speed and efficiency vital to producers working to network deadlines. Shot in sequence at TCN-9 studios, Divorce Court was tightly scripted in order to avoid reshoots and video editing. This was due in part to the lack of video sophistication at the time. The series was produced on average at a rate of around five episodes per week, which were usually shot in one day. At one stage producers even managed to come up with twenty fully scripted episodes in eight working days.

'Because the Selways have been the chief characters in the story since it began in 1873, Miss Foster felt obliged, on parting from them in 1958, to tell us something about all the surviving members, as well as to remind us of figures in the family's past. All this seemed to be a routine matter. Her preoccupation with the Selways generally made it impossible here to give the necessary space to what promised to be the main incident, the overcoming of prejudice entertained by some "old" Australians against the "new".'

Source:

'Full Circle in New South Wales', The Times, 16 February 1959, p.12.

'The third section of the cycle, The Lost Years, saw Selways of three and ultimately four generations dealing with changing conditions during the depression and the immediately pre-war period. By now the family history is so intricate that anyone coming fresh to the series must have been sadly mystified last night by frequent veiled references to events that have gone before, while those who saw the earlier sections had to spend the first half hour sorting out who had grown up into whom.

'On the other hand, there has been a sufficient proliferation of Selways in the intervening years to permit of more variety than was possible before. They now move quite freely between Sydney and the old homestead at Billabilla. There are errant aunts and their offsprings to be reclaimed, a politician uncle to be heard on the radio, and some suggestion, now that they have largely abandoned their vocation as Archers of the Outback, ever ready with useful hints about the intricacies of sheep-rearing, that there is life beyond the confines of a sheep-farm.'

Source:

'The Lost Years', The Times, 9 February 1959, p.12.

'The Long Summer [...] succeeded to some extent in avoiding the anxiety to impart information on all conceivable subjects connected with Australian life which marred the first episode, though some sizable chunks of constitutional history were conveyed during the beginning in rather awkward exchanges designed, ostensibly, to put the son newly returned from Cambridge in touch with local affairs or explain to the farmers what was going on in the centres of government. On the whole, however, education had given place to the exploration of personal tensions between members of the Selwood [sic] family: two brothers in love with the same girl, who happens to be the wife of one of them; a sister taking up with the local bad lot out of boredom, and so on.'

Source:

'The Long Summer', The Times, 2 February 1959, p.12.

'The Selways were introduced [...] neither as prospectors who struck lucky nor as ambitious farmers. Arriving in the country in the 1870s their one aim was to amass capital and get back to the old country leaving an unfriendly climate and alien society behind for ever. But it is never quite possible for them to leave; and as their plans for return are pushed further and further into the future, the sound of a mocking bird drives home the title's meaning.

'The episode is solidly constructed to convey information about the management of land. Jack Selway arrives in Sydney and promptly falls into the hands of a group of profiteers who dispatch him into the bush to take charge of a smallholding. His belief that they have treated him generously is soon exploded; he learns that he has been made a "dummy" in a campaign against a "squatter".'

Source:

'Clarity in Saga of Australia', The Times, 26 January 1959, p.6.

A cycle of four television plays, which were broadcast on BBC Television early in 1959.

Described in contemporary newspapers as 'the story of a Digger killed in New Guinea returning in spirit to trace his life through world conditions after the 1914-1918 war to the present day'.

Source:

'Light-Shade at Minerva', Truth, 1 February 1948, p.30.

Focused on a poor rural community, with long-running arcs including the building of a community centre and a campaign for diptheria immunisation among the community's children, interspersed with emotional dramas among the characters.

According to an article in the Launceston Examiner, this was a 'war loan play', later adapted by Foster for the stage play And the Moon Will Shine. (Source: 'Visitor from Sydney – Writes and Produces Plays for Radio', Examiner, 7 January 1947, p.5.)

According to contemporary newspaper reports:

The name of her long stage drama analysed, works down to the fact that there is no armour strong enough to fight destiny. In this case it applies to persons of roving nature being compelled to "stay put," on a New South Wales station property through love, or legacy.

Source:

E.C. 'They Like Comedies', Telegraph, 15 July 1939, p.20.

A dramatisation of accounts of a pirate radio station operating within Germany in the lead up to the outbreak of World War II: one Australian newspaper identifies it as 'the secret radio station of the German People's Freedom Front ('Radio That Hitler Fears, 1939), but a number of Feindsenders ('enemy-radio-stations') operated within the boundaries of Nazi Germany. In the series, the station was called Liberty Station ('3SR News').

The radio series, which was originally broadcast in eight episodes in 1940, 'describes the adventures of the plucky propagandists who run Germany's secret broadcast station, and their continual pursuit by and hares-breadth escapes from the Gestapo' ('Radio That Hitler Fears', 1940).

When series two began airing in 1941, it introduced the character of 'Ivan the Terrible', 'the very real voice of Russian who interrupts German broadcasts' ('3SR News').

Reports in December 1939 indicated that New Zealand national broadcasters had bought Dominion Rights and planned to broadcast the serial, but this broadcast has not been traced.

Sources:

'2UE Calling', Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 13 December 1939, p.15.

'3SR News', Benalla Ensign, 10 October 1941, p.3.

'The Radio That Hitler Fears', Courier-Mail, 21 September 1939, p.4.

'The Radio That Hitler Fears', Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 17 January 1940, p.8.

Described as a 'sparkling topical comedy'. The radio play was influenced (or, as the 'Walrus and the Housepainter' advertisement says, 'suggested') by a successful BBC radio parody of the same name (see 'Adolf in Blunderland' for a detailed description of the original), which had been broadcast in early October and reported enthusiastically in international newspapers.

Rights to the original were secured by the ABC in December (they broadcast it nationally on 19 December 1939), but 2UE, presumably keen to capitalise on the flurry of excitement, broadcast their own version, written by house scriptwriter Lynn Foster, nearly two months before the rights to the BBC version were secured.

By order of the censor, Lynn Foster's version could not be broadcast in New Zealand, 'so the people of New Zealand are forced to miss out the comical antics of Hitler and his gangsters' ('Success of Radio Play').

Source:

'Adolf in Blunderland Is B.B.C. Skit', Newcastle Sun, 9 October 1939, p.8.

'Nazi Parody : "Adolf in Blunderland"', Daily Examiner, 18 December 1939, p.6.

'Success of Radio Play', Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 29 November 1939, p.10.

'The Walrus and the Housepainter' [advertisement], Sun, 29 October 1939, p.17.