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Colin’s class

Colin Friels returns to TV in BlackJack, and while he’s back on the force, it’s definitely not your average cop show, writes Sacha Molitorisz.

Do we really want another cop show? What with Blue Heelers, The Bill, Boomtown and the rest, do we really want Network Ten bursting into our living rooms and aiming a whole new bunch of boys-in-blue at our faces?

In other words, do we really want BlackJack?

That’s the name of Ten’s new cop drama, which, perhaps surprisingly, is not a series. Not yet, anyway. At this stage it’s a telemovie, starring Colin Friels as a disgruntled loner hunting crims with the help of a wide-eyed newbie (Kate Beahan).

Still, it has a good chance of growing into a series, because Ten’s head of drama, Sue Masters, has already commissioned three more instalments. Her long-term goal is to develop the show into an occasional event in the mould of Cracker.

“We don’t do enough of that here,” says Peter Andrikidis, BlackJack’s director. “Halifax f.p. is the only one I can think of. It’d be great if Ten had this franchise and did a couple a year, like a Sunday night movie. It’s something Halifax proved could rate extremely well.”

Well, yes, but the question remains: has Australia reached cop show saturation point?

Predictably, BlackJack’s producers, Sally Ayre-Smith and Nick Murray, say no. They argue that BlackJack is a different type of cop show, remarkable and unique for at least four reasons. One, Andrikidis himself, a three-time AFI Award winner whose credits include Grass Roots and Heroes’ Mountain. Two, its innovative, arresting aesthetic. Three, the cast, led by Friels and Beahan, but including David Field, Russell Dykstra and Victoria Longley. And four, the fact that it was written by two men best known for their comedy work: Shaun Micallef—aka Mr Ubiquity 2003 for his work on the ABC sitcom Welcher & Welcher and his upcoming tonight show on Nine—and his regular comic accomplice, Gary McCaffrie.

Still suspicious, the Herald decided to visit the set of BlackJack to determine for itself just how original and interesting the show was shaping up to be. And so, on a sunny afternoon last October, I find myself in an old warehouse in Meadowbank, a warehouse that once belonged to a vacuum cleaner company and now belongs to a Korean church group. It is the last day of shooting, and one large section of the warehouse has been thoroughly, deliberately drenched in water; it drips from the ceiling, trickles down columns and collects on the floor.

As Friels walks back and forth, the camera follows him at ground level along tracks. Flat on his stomach, cinematographer Mark Wareham has his eye glued to the viewfinder—presumably all he can see is a back-lit silhouette. After a few atmospheric, melancholy takes, Andrikidis yells cut. “Ah,” jokes a crew member, “that’s art!” It certainly isn’t Blue Heelers.

“We’ve gone back to The Sweeney days where things are rougher and more working class, a bit more gritty,” says Andrikidis. “This is a stylised version of a cop show. A lot of police shows are so obsessed with what police stations are really like, and they’re often so f——ing boring. We designed ours to suit the story. We wanted to take it right out to the edge. Actually, it doesn’t look a lot like television. We’ve been trying to get out of the studio and onto locations.”

In short, the aim is to have BlackJack look more like a movie proper than a telemovie. In fact, on this set there seems to be an embargo on the word “telemovie”. Everyone involved prefers “film made for television”.

It’s true that the budget is not small, totalling roughly $3 million. After Ten paid for roughly $1 million, the rest was financed by Optus, the Film Finance Corporation and the NSW Film & Television Office. “The budget is always about three million for a 90-minute telemovie,” says Andrikidis, one of the few people seemingly unafraid of the t-word. “My Husband My Killer cost $2.6 million. Heroes’ Mountain cost $3.8 million.”

BlackJack, then, is more expensive than many local feature films. What’s more, the cast is stronger than you’ll find in many local features. “I think 75 per cent of my job is in the casting,” says Andrikidis. “It’s probably more like 80 per cent with something like Grass Roots. If I get the cast right, then my job becomes very easy.

“So, first we had Colin. I worked with Colin on Water Rats and he wasn’t happy there, but he loves this. He’s one of our best actors to actually stay here. He’s very Australian without being ocker Australian, and he’s also got that cheeky boy thing.

“Once you’ve got that lead you mix and match. I know how good Colin is, so you’ve got to get people right up there, people like Kate, because any weak link sticks out like a sore thumb. Kate really is special. I hope we don’t lose her [to Hollywood].”

Beahan says she’s learnt a lot from working with Andrikidis and Friels. She also says Hollywood Schmollywood: she would much rather stay here. “I really love Sydney,” she says. “I’ve never loved anywhere so much in my life—but don’t tell that to the Perth people.”

Born in Perth, Beahan moved to Sydney after studying acting and promptly landed a lead role on the ABC drama Love is a Four Letter Word. “I had such an interesting trajectory on that show,” she says. “I was having a nervous breakdown, then my sister was dead, then she was a ghost; it was quite bewildering and amusing. At times I would forget where I was because we were shooting several episodes at once. I was like, ‘OK, is this pre-breakdown? Post-breakdown? With boyfriend? Post-boyfriend?’ It was crazy.”

Now fielding work offers from home and aboard, Beahan is experiencing another sort of craziness. Says Ayre-Smith: “People are asking questions like, ‘Is she the next Cate Blanchett?’ I imagine that’s quite daunting.”

Another key cast member is David Field. “David plays the top-ranking police officer, which is funny,” says Murray. “He has never played a policeman before, and you’d be really hard-pressed to find an Australian actor who hasn’t played a policeman.

“It’s not stereotypical casting and that’s very important. The network has been very supportive with that, and that’s been part of the trick; to make the show feel different. Often police drama on television is very saccharine and nice.”

We are having this conversation in another dark, dusty corner of the Meadowbank warehouse, and it certainly isn’t saccharine and nice. Here steel shelves are overcrowded with files that look like they haven’t been touched for decades. With a few computers scattered about, it’s the sort of place where sunlight would fear to go without a chaperone.

“This is the data entry forensic section,” says Beahan. “When [Colin’s character] first comes down to the archives, [my character] takes it as a bit of a sign that her superiors don’t have much trust in her, because they’re bringing in someone else above her. Then he makes a particular request that upsets her working day a little, which is a problem, because I think she’s a real lists girl.”

In other words, the characters of Friels and Beahan comprise your standard odd couple: male/female, old/young, crazy/uptight, etc. Previous variations in police shows include Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the Lethal Weapon films, and Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt in Se7en.

The odd coupling is a fairly standard device, but Murray says the script is anything but formulaic. “Colin is the driving focus—it’s a very focussed emotional journey,” he says. “The thing is, it was written by two comedy writers and it was really fresh because they weren’t spoiled by too much television writing. It’s not too heavy-handed, which is something that can trouble us on Australian shows, and they steer away from soap.”

BlackJack certainly makes a change from Welcher & Welcher, the ABC comedy Murray co-produced with Micallef. “We’re trying to create a quintessential Australian character who is not a cliched Australian character,” says Murray. “This is a character we’re hoping will be to Australia as Morse or Rumpole is to the UK or Kojak is to the US.”

Micallef and McCaffrie first showed the script to Murray in 1995; his company, Jigsaw, finally picked up the project in 1998. Ayre-Smith came on board in 2000, when she was finishing her duties as producer of SeaChange.

Friels says he was attracted by a script that is more compelling than most feature scripts. “You look at the stories that make up the great vast majority of cinema, and they may as well be shot on radio as far as I’m concerned. They’re dreadful. I think general cinema is just like McDonald’s.”

In the story Friels plays a whistleblower, a cop who rats on a corrupt colleague. Funnily enough, I notice that Andrikidis is wearing a whistle while directing. “That’s his toy for the day,” says Beahan. “It’s always different. Sometimes he just sings. I sing quite a bit too, so we sing in concert sometimes. Especially down here, because it’s quite dark and grimy, we do a few singsongs to brighten things up a little bit.”

Now there’s an idea for a truly fresh cop show. Perhaps we could call it The Singing Detective?

BlackJack airs Sunday at 8.30pm on Ten.

The verdict

OK, here’s a word you might not have been expecting: subtle.

Whereas a lot of cop shows have all the restraint and nuance of an extended interrogation by Detective “L-Z” Whitepages, BlackJack is consistently thoughtful and restrained. Plot twists and revelations bubble to the surface; they don’t flail about trying to grab everyone’s attention like a drowning tourist.

As director Peter Andrikidis says, “There is an intelligence to the script.” He’s right, and the men to thank are co-writers Shaun Micallef and Gary McCaffrie, perhaps best known for Full Frontal and The Micallef Program. Using a real-life case of a botched Australian kidnapping as their basis, the duo have written a compelling story about a jaded cop, Jack Kempson (Colin Friels). A widower who alienates his cop mates by dobbing on a corrupt detective, Kempson is banished to work with cold computers and the even colder Julie Egan (Kate Beahan), where he unearths some interesting new evidence about the unsolved case. Meanwhile, he juggles the affections of a colleague (Victoria Longley) with the antipathy of his boss (David Field).

The performances are all excellent, with Friels giving intriguing depth to a character who, potentially, has many more interesting adventures ahead. Underplaying perfectly, Beahan is all restrained precision; and Field has just the right mix of menace and gravitas.

BlackJack is also beautiful to watch. Reminiscent of Lantana, it is gritty, dark and haunting. In other words, the aesthetic, like the plot, is not the thing to show the kiddies before bedtime.

Even if Australia needs another cop drama like Surry Hills needs more real estate agents, BlackJack is a welcome addition to an overcrowded genre. Indeed, it’s not just an excellent telemovie; it’s a very good film made for television.

By Sacha Molitorisz
March 06, 2003
Photo: Quentin Jones
The Sydney Morning Herald