1990: July 28-August 3

‘There’s no point in denying it any longer.’
TV Week Gold Logie winner Craig McLachlan has announced his engagement to former Neighbours colleague Rachel Friend. “We are very, very happy.  It’s obvious we are in love. There’s no point in denying it any longer,” he told TV Week. The marriage will be the first for Friend but the second for McLachlan, whose marriage to first wife Karen Williams ended amicably over a year ago. The newly-engaged couple (pictured) first met as cast members on Neighbours and when McLachlan left the show to join rival series Home And Away, Friend soon followed him to Sydney.

Steve sued over newsreader role
Jennifer Keyte might be enjoying success as the newsreader on Seven’s Tonight Live With Steve Vizard, but it seems she was not their first choice for the part. Virginia Haussegger, a reporter and producer for the Melbourne edition of The 7.30 Report, was approached several months before the show was to launch and performed the newsreading role in the show’s pilot episodes. Haussegger quit The 7.30 Report but was informed just prior to Tonight Live’s debut in January that she would not be required for the show. Consequently, Haussegger sued the Seven Network and Steve Vizard’s production company and has since settled out of court with the network for an undisclosed sum, while returning to The 7.30 Report. “Seven, Vizard and I have had our differences but fortunately it’s all over. This has been a lesson in the politics of commercial television,” she told TV Week.

Ta-ta to tartar!
After fifteen years of “tuff teef” and dunking chalk into glasses of blue water, the character of “Mrs Marsh” is to be phased out of Colgate-Palmolives’ ad campaign for toothpaste. But while the role of Mrs Marsh has been very good for actress Barbara Farrell (pictured), it was also limiting her ability to find work. “It was inhibiting, because the face was so firmly identified with the product,” she told TV Week. And while the Mrs Marsh character was initially formed as a carbon copy of a US concept, as the campaign continued she was allowed to develop her own persona and had softened a little after research showed that mothers thought she was a little too authoritarian. But one person who was not always thrilled with the fame of Mrs Marsh’s was Farrell’s husband. “He objects to being called Mr Marsh. He’s not pleased with that at all!”

Briefly…
Cameron Daddo has joined the cast of ABC’s GP as doctor who makes a fatal error in prescribing drugs to a patient without knowledge of the side-effects, and the results are tragic. The 25-year-old, who recently completed work on the Seven Network telemovie Bony, is also about to start work on the mini-series Golden Fiddles for the Nine Network.

Also starring in Golden Fiddles is Wheel Of Fortune hostess Adriana Xenides (pictured) in her first major role away from the popular game show. The $5.1 million mini-series, a Canadian-Australian co-production being made by the South Australian Film Corporation, also stars Rachel Friend, David Reyne and John Bach.

The Seven Network this week debuts its two-part mini-series, Flair, tracing the lives of two sisters involved in the ruthless world of high fashion. The $4.5 million mini-series stars Andrew Clarke, Gary Day, Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, Rowena Wallace, Elaine Smith, David Reyne, Imogen Annesley and US actress Heather Thomas. Also starring in the series is Irish-born actor James Healey who grew up in Australia before working in London and the US, where he starred as Joan Collins’ lover in Dynasty.  Healey is now back in the US, starring in the daytime soap Santa Barbara.

John Laws says…
”Is it really possibly that a combination such I am going to describe can actually win enough ratings to maintain a slot in prime time? Here’s that combination: A veteran actor who sleepwalks through his leading role, scripts so lacking in credibility you could drive an express train through the holes, and a cast of support actors so wooden you could hammer a nail into them and not draw blood. This is Nine’s (American) Matlock series.”

Program Highlights (July 28-August 3):
Sunday:  ABC presents The Party’s Over, a 90-minute documentary in the Hindsight series presented by Geraldine Doogue (pictured), looking at the story of the Communist Party of Australia, an organisation that had as many as 100,000 members over its 70-year lifespan before it was quietly wound up after the fall of Eastern Europe. Sunday night movies are Invasion USA (HSV7), Nuts (GTV9) and Emerald City (ATV10).

Monday: Neighbours stars Kristian Schmid and Amelia Frid (pictured) battle the blue slime in a celebrity edition of children’s game show Double Dare (ATV10).

Tuesday:  Cameron Daddo joins the cast of GP (ABC) in tonight’s episode, Playing It By The Book.

Wednesday/Thursday:  HSV7 screens the two-part mini-series, Flair, where Tessa Clarke (Heather Thomas) returns to Australia intent on establishing her own design empire. However her plans are crushed when a former employer wins a court claim on her designs and she flees to the Gold Coast where she falls for a handsome nightclub owner who drags her into a seedy world.

Friday:  With Graham Kennedy’s Funniest Home Videos clocking up ratings for GTV9, HSV7 tonight digs out an episode of Graham Kennedy’s World Of Comedy.  ATV10 screens the 1985 Australian movie Cool Change, starring Jon Blake, Lisa Armytage and David Bradshaw.

Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide.
28 July 1990. Southdown Press.