Mitch McTaggart has a tv show streaming called The Backside Of Television. It's all about Australian Television. He usually presents a year end round up of The Last Year Of Television but this is more of a broader look at Australian television production over the decades. Occasionally it was bold and imaginative, he reckons. A couple of episodes are specifically about Australian tv Police shows. Crime shows. Cop shows. Border Security shows. And he delves into how embedded the actual police forces were in the writing, editing and production. Specifically about some shows which weren't shepherded through to the eyes and ears of the public by the gentle hands of the Police. He's brave!
The Backside Of Television at BINGE .
A trailer for the show.
A show Mitch references in episode one is THE EVIL TOUCH, from 1973. An Australian television show featuring overseas performers, narrated and introduced by Anthony Quayle. A sci-fi / mystery show.
Story in a scifi page about THE EVIL TOUCH.
Mitchs review of the Year in Television 2023.
The Scales Of Justice was a 1983 Australian television show mentioned by Mitch in episode two. It was not done with Police involvement and portrayed corruption in the force. Politicians and police attacked the ABC for both making and broadcasting the series.
Homicide was a very popular and long running Australian television show made with police co operation. A Crawford production. All Crawfords content is only available on DVD. Great theme music.
Division Four was the follow up to Homicide. Again, great music. For non Australians - specifically British people - Jason Donovans father Terence Donovan was one of the detectives. One of the other actors, Gerard Kennedy, passed away recently. He had that Australian experience of saturation television exposure for a few years and then very little other work. He was a taxi driver in Melbourne for many years.
An earlier show with Gerard Kennedy. I think he was more of a villain in HUNTER.
He put out an album of poetry, which I have.
The Box, a racy soapie from the 70s with adult themes and characters. Set in a fictitious television station.
SKYWAYS, a soap opera set in an airport. Peak macho characters with moustaches yelling at each other with their chins tucked back in the necks.
I’m much older than Mitch so I remember watching ground breaking shows like You Cant See Around Corners which had a storyline involving the character played by Ken Shorter being called up in the draft for the Vietnam war, while it was all actually happening.
Even older! I loved The Magic Boomerang. A charming show for children. A young boy is gifted with a magic boomerang which stops time.
Another show from this mid 60s period is very hard to access. WANDJINA. I have a VHS copy I sourced from the Mumeson Archive. The first appearance of actor Jackie Weaver, it has another young actor in blackface which probably puts it in an area of forbidden, poor taste. A fantastic story of indigenous dreaming and visitors from another planet. An old man tells stories of his friend disappearing in the bush when they were young, then the man appears decades later, still in his twenties. Unbelievably good art folk music with didgereedoos, indigeneous singing and scraping metallic noises. A few clips of the show are available here.
The same production people made another scifi show called THE STRANGER.
There was a time in the 90s when BLUE MURDER could be seen on television in every state except NSW, where there were still trials going on with some of the subjects portrayed in the series.
Melbourne had JANUS which was based on the alleged family crime gang responsible for the Walsh St police shootings which led to a rampage of cops and villains shooting each other for a decade. The show ran on tv and you could read about the real characters in the newspaper headlines as well.
If you haven’t seen Mr Inbetween, you should.
A playlist of great tv themes.
When we were young and hoodlums we used to do something we called a 'Frank Banner' which involved running over the top of a car and drop kicking the hood ornament off. I think we were inspired by something Sgt Frank Banner did in Div 4.