Category Archives: Australian television history

Pulp Friday: Number 96 paperback tie-ins

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

Bev & BruceLike the television show they were based on, today’s Pulp Friday offering, Number 96 paperback tie-ins, contain nudity, sex, free love, devil worship, infidelity and murder.

The Australian TV soap opera Number 96 depicted the lives of the residents of a fictitious block of inner Sydney flats. These days it comes across as a cultural curio and a sleazy late night commercial TV reminder of early, pre-feminist, seventies. It was indeed those things, but also much more.

Number 96 debuted on March 13 1972, “The night Australian television lost its virginity”. There was moral outrage about the explicit nature of the show and protestors picketed Channel 0 (now the Ten Network) with placards demanding the station “ban this filth”.

It was a huge success with audiences, however, who were keen to dive head first into the warm water of the increasingly sexually liberated early seventies. The show resulted in a feature film and even had its own passenger train that transported the cast and crew from Sydney to Melbourne for the annual Logie awards (Australia’s equivalent of the Emmys). The train made stops at country towns along the way at which thousands turned out to see it.

The end titles always featured a shot of the exterior of the apartment block.… Read more

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Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Australian television history, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday

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Policing Melbourne’s TV mean streets: Homicide at 50

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

HomicideIt’s been a day for nostalgia. Foremost I’ve been thinking about the passing of Australia’s great reforming Labor Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, who died this morning at the age of 98.

But I’ve also been giving a lot of consideration lately to another Australian icon, probably the most influential Australian television show ever made, the crime drama, Homicide.

At 7.30pm on Tuesday 20 1964, Channel 7 showed the first episode of Homicide and what Australians would see on their TV screens would never be the same. Homicide’s influence was truly revolutionary. It was introduced at a time when an estimated 97 per cent of drama content came from the US and Great Britain. It was the first locally produced show to hit number one. It spawned several similar programs, including Matlock Police and Division 4 and established many of the key conventions of Australian true crime television: the team of dedicated police solving a crime per episode and a commitment to realism.

Homicide ran until 1975. The individual Homicide episodes have aged remarkably well in my opinion as self contained hour-long pieces of hard hitting TV crime drama. They are also a fascinating glimpse into the class, gender and social relations of Melbourne society in the sixties and seventies. If you want proof, check out this clip for episode 475, which aired in 1975, towards the end of Homicide’s run.… Read more

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Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian television history, Crawford Productions, True crime

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Pulp Friday: Contrabandits – Shark Bait

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Contrabandits

This week’s Pulp Friday offering is the 1968 paperback tie in to the then popular Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV series, Contrabandits.

While Crawford Productions understandably gets most of the credit for kick starting Australia’s modern television industry in the mid-sixties with the long running police drama show, Homicide, it was not the only local organisation producing gritty crime TV.

Around the same time changes were also afoot at the ABC. New staff were bought on board and a department of television drama was created that produced a number of one-off and on-gong TV series. Among these was Contrabandits, the first episode of which screened on September 22 1967.

Contrabandits focused on the activities of Customs Special Branch, an elite law enforcement squad tasked with intercepting contraband in Sydney. The four mainstays of the squad were Chief Inspector Ted Hallan (played by British actor Denis Quilley), office girl Mardi Shiel (Janet Kingsbury) a university graduate, determined to succeed in a male dominated area, Bob Piper (John Bonney), a young wise cracking spiv, and tough guy, Jim Shurley (Ben Grabiel).

CBTwenty-nine episodes of Contradbandits were made. All of them are listed on the on-line archive of the former magazine, TV Eye. Themes included tackling drug runners and smugglers of various kinds, raiding opium dens in Kings Cross and dealing with illegal immigrants.… Read more

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Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Australian television history, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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