Cirrus@Austlit

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.'

'In 1885, George Dean, a Sydney ferry boat Captain, was accused of attempting to poison his wife. Dean, having saved six passengers from drowning, was a local hero. The verdict of guilty outraged the public and the popular press took up cudgels. Citizens formed Dean Defence Committees. Dean's lawyer Richard Meagher, realised his hoped-for political career could benefit from the publicity. His partner, William 'Paddy' Crick, championed Dean's cause in parliament, and a Royal Commission was set up to examine fresh evidence and decide whether Dean should be released.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 21/9/2012)

A spy series set, according to Moran in his Guide to Australian TV Series, 'very much in the same locale and situation' as Contrabandits. The two spies work for FIASCO (Federal Intelligence and Security Control Organisation), run out of Canberra by the never-seen and rarely heard Dave Shannon.

Moran notes that Shannon's Mob was glossier than Contrabandits, but also mundane:

In its own eyes the company had made a fundamental mistake in not coming up with a formula that used some real point of Australian difference. Many other countries had harbours, boats, and water. For that matter the special investigation team headed by Shannon was very ordinary indeed.

In his Classic Australian Television, however, Don Storey suggests that 'The spectuacular scenery, particularly of the Harbour, is fully exploited.'

Shannon's Mob received poor treatment from the network (which persistently delayed its televisation) and was widely panned by critics when it did air, perhaps in part because the popularity of spy stories had peaked some decade earlier. Storey concludes:

It would be easy to suspect that the treatment of Shannons Mob, coinciding as it did with the cancellation of the three Crawford cop shows (Homicide, Division 4 and Matlock Police), was part of the plot to sabotage Australian production. However, there is no evidence or even speculation to suggest that anything was deliberately done against the series - although it would be safe to assume that in the prevailing climate nothing positive would have been done to help the series either.

In an early report on the series, The Australian Women's Weekly noted, 'All writers for the series will be Australian, and among them will be some of those who produced the most successful of the "Boney" scripts' (Wed. 10 October 1973, p.10).

'Industrialist Eric Cordett arranges a director's meeting at his country house 400 miles out of Sydney. It is seven years since his wife, Viola, was kidnapped from the house and Cordett hasn't been there since.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 30/1/2014)

Nineteen-year-old Robert Piper has spent all his life in the country. He now starts a new life at university in the city.

According to Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, I've Married A Bachelor was the first sit-com produced by the ABC's new Television Entertainment unit (formed out of the Light Entertainment department in 1967). The program centred on newlyweds Peter and Molly Prentiss, the latter played by June Thody, who has previously had roles in My Brother Jack and The Mavis Bramston Show. The tension in the program came from Peter's assumption that his bachelor occupations of poker, sport, and pub visits could continue unimpeded after his marriage.

The program received mixed responses from critics, but was successful with audiences and sold well overseas, including to England, Scotland, New Zealand, and Sweden. However, the ABC decided not to renew the program after its second series.

Storey concludes that 'I've Married A Bachelor was an enjoyable series. The comedy had a nice, understated feel, and it was free of the syrupy, sentimental moralising that plagues many U.S. sit-coms.'

Contrabandits was a fifty-minute procedural series following the Customs Special Branch, an elite group of law-enforcers intercepting contraband in Sydney.

Colin Free was script editor for the series (as well as scripting several episodes).

Source:

Moran's Guide to Australian TV Series

Storey, Don. Classic Australian Television http://www.classicaustraliantv.com/contrab.htm (Sighted 13/9/11)

See also:

Musgrove, Nan. 'Contrabandits'. Australian Women's Weekly 4 October 1967, p.17.

'Smuggling Theme of New Series'. Canberra Times 18 September 1967, p.15.