Bye-bye baby!
The announcement of the pregnancy of Carly (Sharyn Hodgson) in Home And Away is set to lead to the departure of her and husband Ben (Julian McMahon) from the popular series. But news of the pregnancy is not plain sailing for the young married couple. Ben wants to go back to the army, but Carly is concerned that moving from base to base is not her idea of a secure lifestyle for a child. Hodgson, one of Home And Away’s foundation cast members, is now planning an overseas trip following the taping of her final scenes with the program, while McMahon is heading overseas to look out for film and television opportunities.
Reverend Bob behind bars
In a stunning turn of events, E Street’s Reverend Bob Brown (Tony Martin) ends up behind bars this week. The trouble starts with his involvement with a young Dylan (Adam Lloyd) – a boy he discovered chained up under a house like a dog – and sympathetic media coverage given to his father Gus (Rob Steele) leads to a murder in Westside, and viewers then see the reverend locked up in a police cell. But while Network Ten is giving nothing away about the outcome about Reverend Bob, the character’s fiancee Elly Fielding (Penny Cook) is about to exit the series – so the outcome may not be hard to guess?
Farnham TV bid!
John Farnham is set to make an entrance into prime-time television, with the backing of Steve Vizard and Andrew Knight’s Artists Services, the company that produces Tonight Live With Steve Vizard and Fast Forward. Negotiations are still taking place, but Farnham is expected to host a new variety show for the Seven Network in the Sunday 7.30pm timeslot. “John can sing, he can tell a joke, he’s funny and he genuinely likes talking to people… what more could you want in a host?” Vizard told TV Week. And Farnham is certainly no stranger to working in television – having appeared in variety, comedy and drama programs in the 1970s and ‘80s. But even if the new show gets the go ahead, it may not appear for some time as Seven has just launched its new Sunday night game show The Main Event.
Briefly…
The producers of Nine’s Chances are about to kill off one of the show’s main characters. The murder leads to seven suspects but the identity of the killer is being kept under wraps as they hope to create their own “Who shot JR?”-type cliff-hanger. To keep even the actors and backstage crew guessing, producers have filmed six different endings for the mystery.
Former 60 Minutes reporter and Today host George Negus is expected to make a return to TV one way or another. Negus has teamed up with former The Big Gig host Wendy Harmer for an arts-related program commissioned by the Australia Council. The program has yet to be sold to any network – but Negus may be appearing soon on the Seven Network on a new program, tentatively titled Contacts, which is set to reunite families. No decision on the new program has been made, but Negus says he is also in discussions with Seven over other program ideas.
Former Prisoner and Richmond Hill star Maggie Kirkpatrick is about to make a three-week guest appearance in Home And Away, reuniting with former Richmond Hill co-star Emily Symons. Kirkpatrick is set to play the role of Aunt Jean to the character of Marilyn, played by Symons. “To walk into a studio again… it was like putting on an old pair of slippers. It felt so good,” Kirkpatrick told TV Week.
John Laws says…
”Occasionally in the quirky TV world there are ‘sleeper’ hits – programs that bomb on their first run and then boom when re-run, often on another network. The American series thirtysomething was so much of a sleeper for Ten last year that it was virtually comatose. It had arrived amid a fanfare of publicity, and riding high on its enormous American success. But Australians cold-shouldered it. And so thirtysomething laboured away for Ten, picking up low ratings, and then eventually disappeared, for good it seemed. But this year Seven has taken over the rights to the more recent episodes and thirtysomething is, finally, gaining the audience it couldn’t attract the first time around. It’s out of the coma and looking bright-eyed. So much so that Ten is now running its thirtysomething episodes again! Annoyingly, this means that you can watch the early episodes on Ten and then much later ones on Seven, all within days of each other.”
Program Highlights (April 20-26):
Saturday: A team of swimmers taken on the Manpower boys in Celebrity Family Feud (Seven).
Sunday: Seven’s afternoon of AFL includes West Coast Eagles versus Adelaide Crows, followed by highlights of Geelong versus Carlton. To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Anzac campaign, Ten screens a one-hour documentary Gallipoli: The Anzac Legend, narrated by Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell. Sunday night movies are Return From The River Kwai (Seven), Clara’s Heart (Nine) and The Return Of The Musketeers (Ten).
Monday: It’s the beginning of a new era as Glenn Ridge and Jo Bailey (pictured) take over on Nine’s Sale Of The Century.
Tuesday: In Chances (Nine), Dan Taylor (John Sheerin) rescues daughter Nikki (Cathy Godbold) from a group of oversexed teenage boys. In comedy All Together Now, everyone is under suspicion when Bobby (Jon English) finds marijuana in the house. Brett Climo and singer Doug Parkinson are guest stars in this week’s GP (ABC).
Wednesday: ABC’s Melbourne newsreader Mary Delahunty presents a one-hour special, Love’s Labor Lost, a report into what went wrong with the State of Victoria. Delahunty questions what type of companies were being supported by government funds, the feasibility of their operations and how they were supervised.
Thursday (Anzac Day): ABC presents live coverage of the annual Anzac Day March from the Melbourne CBD. Frankie J Holden guest stars in The Flying Doctors (Nine).
Friday: Seven presents a special Friday night edition of The Main Event, hosted by Larry Emdur. The special screening is due to the show’s normal Sunday timeslot next week being occupied by a football telecast.
Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide. 20 April 1991. Southdown Press
