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The script for this episode held in the Crawford Collection includes neither episode synopsis nor character notes.
Notes
This entry has been compiled from archival research in the Crawford Collection (AFI Research Collection), undertaken by Dr Catriona Mills under the auspices of the 2012 AFI Research Collection (AFIRC) Research Fellowship.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
1968.
Script cover page (Crawford Collection at the AFI Research Collection)
Div4Ep5CoverScan_FW}S.jpg
Extent:69p. (Manuscript)assertion
Note/s:
The script is labelled 'Episode G.6' on the cover page. There is no indication of for whom this copy of the script was designated.
Some portions of the dialogue have ticks (in blue ink) placed against them, but there is no other sign of annotation on this script.
The script is labelled 'Police File', since the producers had not yet settled on the title Division 4.
The final page includes a list of crew credits:
Written by Terry Stapleton.
Edited by Dorothy Crawford.
Typed by Bambi Barrett, Hilary Burgess, Christine Rook, Margaret Younger.
Checked by Bambi Barrett, Christine Rook, Margaret Younger.
Roneod by Ian Dewhurst, Tim Shanasy, Geoff Gallent.
Below this is a space for 'Producer's Comments', but it has been left blank.
According to the Crawford Productions tribute website (crawfordproductions.tv), Dewhurst worked as a best boy/gaffer and Shanasy as a negative matcher/assistant film editor. They list Gallent as an employee but have no information on his role.
Division 4, which Don Storey notes in Classic Australian Television was 'the only drama series on Australian television to rival the popularity of Homicide', was created as a vehicle for Gerard Kennedy, who had risen to popularity playing the complicated enemy agent Kragg in spy-show Hunter, after Tony Ward's departure left Hunter's future in doubt.
The series differed from Homicide in being more oriented to the situation and milieu of a suburban police station staffed by a mixture of plainclothes detectives and uniformed policemen. This kind of situation allowed Division 4 to concentrate on a range of crimes, from major ones such as murder to minor ones such as larceny.
Though set in the fictional Melbourne suburb of Yarra Central, 'Sets were constructed that were replicas of the actual St Kilda police station charge counter and CIB room, with an attention to detail that extended to having the same picture hanging on the wall', according to Storey.
Division 4 ended in 1976. Storey adds:
Division 4's axing was a dark day for Australian television, as within months the other two Crawford cop shows on rival networks, Matlock Police and Homicide, were also axed. It was widely believed, and still is, that the cancellation of the three programs was an attempt by the three commercial networks--acting in collusion--to wipe out Crawford Productions, and consequently cripple the local production industry.