australian television information archive

Alterations

Year: 1987
Produced by Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Producer: Julian Pringle
Writer: Cory Taylor
Director: Julian Pringle

Richard and Anne's marriage has become a victim of his career ambitions and her degree studies, leaving the children to sense something is wrong. A look at a failed marriage from both perspectives, within the same timeframe.

Cast: Richard Moir, Angela Punch McGregor, Peter Kowitz, Linden Wilkenson

Captain James Cook

Year: 1987
Executive Producer: Geoffrey Daniels
Producer: Ray Alchin
Director: Lawrence Gordon Clark
Writer: Peter Yeldham

In 1768 King George III of England orders an ambitious expedition to the Pacific Ocean to observe an eclipse of the sun and to see the mythical Southern Continent. James Cook, an unknown petty officer, is controversially appointed as commander, choosing an unlikely collier to carry him and his men into dangerous and unknown waters. After sailing to Tahiti, where the eclipse proves disappointing, Cook proceeds to chart the coasts of New Zealand and Australia beginning a glorious adventure spanning the oceans of the world. (8 x 50 mins)

Cast: Keith Michell, John Gregg, Peter Carroll, Matthew Crosby, John Doyle, Carol Drinkwater, Xabier Elorriaga, Les Foxcroft, Steven Grives, Erich Hallhuber

The Edge of Power

Year: 1987
Produced by Somerset Films
Executive Producers: Robert Sanders, Grahame Jennings and Peter Ramster
Producers: Jan Tyrell, James Michael Vernon
Director: Henri Safran
Writer: Richard Cassidy

Political thriller set in the near future. "One act of revenge unleashed a deadly enemy"

Cast: Ivar Kants, Sheree Da Costa, Henri Szeps, Anna Maria Monticelli, Warwick Moss, Ric Hutton, Vic Rooney, John Orcsik

Fields of Fire

Aired: June 14 & 15, 1987 (Nine)
Produced by Palm Beach Pictures and the Nine Network
Producers: David Elfick, Steve Knapman
Writers: Miranda Downes, Robert Marchand
Director: Robert Marchand

Bluey has left 1939 England because of the war and its economic ravages and settled looking for hope in the abundance of Australia. He finds employment as a sugar cane cutter, and finds that both the work and being accepted by the hard-drinking locals is going to be way more difficult than he imagined. Bluey also finds as time goes on that his new life is full of as many rewards as unexpected challenges. Based on the novel Cane by Robert Donaldson and Michael Joseph. (2 x 120min)

Cast: Todd Boyce, Melissa Docker, Ollie Hall, Anna Hruby

The Harp In The South

Aired: May 1987
Produced by: Anthony Buckley Productions
Producer: Anthony Buckley
Director: George Whaley

Welcome to Twelve-and-a-half Plymouth Street, in Sydney's Surry Hills. This is the home of the Aussie Irish Catholic family The Darcys as lovingly told by Award winning author Ruth Park. In The Harp in the South, Park tells of the trials and tribulations of growing up in a Sydney slum in the years immediately following the Second World War.

In The Harp In The South we first meet the Darcys a poor, working class family of tough Irish stock — Mumma, dad Hughie, Roie, Grandma Kilker and younger daughter Dolour, through whose eyes we hear their story. A story that centres on the bittersweet first and last loves of Roie, who becomes a woman too quickly living among the tenement houses, razor gangs, brothels and sly grog shops of inner city Surry Hills. (281 minutes)

Cast: Anne Phelan, Martyn Sanderson, Kaarin Fairfax, Anna Hruby, Gwen Plumb, Shane Connor, Charles 'Bud' Tingwell, Melissa Jaffer

In Between

March 08, 15, 22, 29, 1987
Writers: Shane Brennan, Maureen McCarthy
Directors: Chris Warner, Mandy Smith

A group of four adolescents from different ethnic backgrounds growing up in a multicultural society. It shows the pressures on them, the conflicts and difficulties they have to face, and the decisions they have to make as they are pushed into adulthood. (4 x 55min)

Cast: Fatima Uygun, Vichea Ten, Sheryl Munks, Jim Petrovski, Ly Lackhena Mak, Lupco Talevski, Craig Elliott, Mark Hennessy, Julian Branagan, Annie Wylie, Tony Garrity, Ibrahim Ozhan, Ferida Sari, Zeliha Ozhan, Husseyin Bicer, Peter Hosking, Peter Lane, Graham Stanley

Letters From Home

September 09 – 30, 1987 (SBS)
Producers: Bronwyn Sanders, Giancarlo Manara
Writer: Giancarlo Manara
Directors: Giancarlo Manara, Branko Lentic

This four-part film develops through an imaginary exchange of letters between people in Australia and relatives in their country of origin — Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Vietnam and Italy. They narrate the making of a new nation with a new culture. A story of split families, split moral values, the battle to maintain traditional cultures, hard work, vision and success.

1. Czechoslovakia

The story of a successful Czechoslovakian film editor who escaped from his country to Australia (i.e. freedom) 12 years ago. His father remained in Prague. As their stories unfold we see the meeting and fusion of two cultures, so distant and different from each other and yet often so compatible.

2. Turkey

We witness through an exchange of letters between an intelligent and articulate social worker of Turkish origin and her brother in Istanbul, the often painful migration and settlement of people to a country they will never understand but which will give their children a future filled with hope.

3. Vietnam

This episode reflects on the struggle and the agony of the newest and most tragic of immigrants to Australia — the boat people, Vietnamese refugees. This is a story of families torn apart, of split moral values and the the battle and hope of reunion and the continuance of a traditional culture. But at its heart is a story of hope.

4. Italy

Through personal recollections and fascinating flashbacks from Manara himself, this program follows the fortunes of the Puglisi family, who migrated from Sicily after the First World War, and established a thriving fishing industry which today is the main economic resource of Ulladulla. It is a story of hard work, of vision, of love, of success. Just like the story of a seed which the wind brings from a distant land, and here, in Australia, nurtured by the land develops into a vigorous tree.

Cast: John Bell, John Stanton, Susan Lyons; Judy Morris, Simon Ioannou; Phillip Hinton, Dina Volaric, Katerina Skoumbas

Nancy Wake

Year: 1987
Executive Producers: Alan Bateman, John Sturzaker
Producers: Roger Simpson, Roger Le Mesurier
Writer: Roger Simpson
Director: Pino Amenta

True story of an Australian woman who became a hero of the French Resistance. As Hitler plunges the world into war, Nancy finds herself in Paris — and in love. Nancy is involved initially in setting up escape routes for Allied airmen trapped in the south. (4 x 60min)

Cast: Noni Hazlehurst, John Waters

Olive

Year: 1987
Produced by Smiley Films Pty Ltd, ABC
Executive Producer: Sandra Levy
Producer: Julie Monton, Richard Brennan
Writer: Anthony Wheeler
Director: Stephen Wallace

Based on the true story of fiery, tempestuous actress, Olive Bodill. Soon after Olive and her actor/writer husband, Tony, celebrate their 16th wedding anniversary Olive discovers that she has a malignant breast cancer. Once so strong and independent, Olive now becomes dependent on Tony who himself relies so much on her energy and decisiveness. But with his help Olive confronts her death, and in what has been a marriage of opposites, with all the attendant difficulties, the partners are fused finally in a bond of love.

Cast: Kerry McGuire, Nick Tate, Peter McGloughlin, Cathy Richardson, Michael Turkish, Murray Wilson

Poor Man's Orange

Aired: September 1987 (Ten)
Executive Producer: Robert Mercieca
Producer: Anthony Buckley
Writer: George Whaley
Director: George Whaley

The continuing story of the Darcy family in Ruth Park's poignant sequel to 'The Harp in the South'. Twelve-and-a-half Plymouth Street, Surry Hills, Sydney: in this cramped, dirty, old house live the Darcys. Hughie, his wife and teenaged daughter, live downstairs, while an upstairs room is occupied by their cheery elder daughter, her alcoholic husband and their little one. Two generations out of Ireland, the family still feels the deep melancholy of their homeland running through their veins. (269min)

They have no illusions about their life in the hardscrabble town of Surry Hills — the post-war boom will never reach their door — but their pride is a source of strength. Strength will be needed as fate hands them one challenge after another, from infidelity to illness to an unforeseen tragedy that nearly derails the clan altogether. (269min)

Cast: Anne Phelan, Martyn Sanderson, Kaarin Fairfax, Anna Hruby, Shane Connor, Syd Conabere, Lois Ramsey, Ron Shand, Emily Nicol, Cecil Parkee, Carole Skinner, Charles 'Bud' Tingwell, Kerry Walker, Brandon Burke, Susan Leith