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ABC Weekly, 13 October 1951, p.32.
Fred Parsons Fred Parsons i(A75424 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 y separately published work icon A Man Called Mo Fred Parsons , Melbourne : Heinemann , 1973 Z1037932 1973 single work biography
2 form y separately published work icon Too Clever By Half Fred Parsons , 1971 (Manuscript version)x402523 Z1937076 1971 single work film/TV crime

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

'BARRY TEMPLE 24-25. Murderer. A salesman who has decided that his charm and sense of humour will get him anywhere. Must be attractive and likeable. Well-dressed and with an easy manner. Usually flippant but capable of more serious moments.

'VALERIE KERSTEN 21. A very pretty girl, well-dressed as befits a rich man's daughter; Public School education.

'MARTIN LESTER 24-25. Also a salesman, but of a different type to Barry Temple - more solid, (but not stolid), dependable. The athletic type - tall, good physique. Wears slightly conservative clothes.

'TOM LODER 40-45. A big man, possibly a little over-weight. Very much in love with a much younger wife, and jealous. His business life is a success, though his domestic life isn't. In all, likeable.

'KAY LODER 28-30. Very glamorous - a small-time model with a figure for bikinis. Ambitious, discontented and shallow on the surface, but capable of deeper emotions than she chooses to reveal. Always well-dressed - hot pants, rather kinky gear.

'EDWARD ST. JOHN 60-65. A rather seedy, broken down old gentleman who still retains his good manners and a certain battered charm. Clothes, once good, are frayed and shabby. Very plummy English accent.

'RAY DUNCAN 25. Good looking in a rather flashy way but shifty. Uses his looks to get girls - and money.

'RICHARD EVANS 40-45. Neat, precise, inclined to be fussy.

'MARGARET EVANS 35-40. Pleasant, attractive, submissive with an occasional spark of rebellion.

'MRS. HOVEY 50-60. A tough landlady with no illusuions [sic] and no special liking for the police.

'MAN IN PARK 18-23. Cheerful athletic type.

'ROY HARKER Forensic man.

'BYSTANDERS'.

1 9 form y separately published work icon Homicide Sonia Borg , Vince Moran , Phil Freedman , Luis Bayonas , Everett de Roche , Peter A. Kinloch , Ted Roberts , Roger Simpson , Charles E. Stamp , Margaret Kelly , Colin Eggleston , James Wulf Simmonds , Keith Hetherington , Michael Harvey , Cliff Green , Patrick Edgeworth , James East , John Drew , John Dingwall , Alan Cram , Ian Cameron , John Bragg , David William Boutland , Jock Blair , Don Battye , Fred Parsons , David Minter , Monte Miller , Ron McLean , George Mallaby , Ian Jones , Maurice Hurst , Barry Hill , Max Sims , Keith Thompson , David Stevens , Amanda Spry , Peter Schreck , Martin Robbins , Della Foss Pascoe , Bruce Wishart , ( dir. Bruce Ross-Smith et. al. )agent Melbourne : Crawford Productions , 1964-1975 Z1813076 1964 series - publisher film/TV crime detective

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'.

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