Classic TV Guides: Cop Shop

The cast of *Cop Shop* celebrating 100 episodes in 1979. Source: TV Week

After Crawford Productions suffered the indignity of having its three police dramas — Homicide, Division 4 and Matlock Police — axed within a year of each other in 1975, Cop Shop in 1977 represented a successful return to the genre.

Unlike the earlier dramas, Cop Shop also incorporated the increasingly popular soap opera element. Storylines relating to the personal lives of the police station staff were ongoing while the traditional police procedural stories changed from week to week.

Cop Shop‘s original cast were mostly familiar faces: George Mallaby (Homicide, The Box), Tony Bonner (Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, Power Without Glory). Peter Adams, Rowena Wallace and Joanna Lockwood from Number 96, Paula Duncan (Number 96, The Young Doctors), Patrick Ward (Class Of ’75, The Unisexers), Peter Sumner (Spyforce), and Terry Norris and Gregory Ross (Bellbird). Teenager Joanna Moore had previously starred in the movie The Getting Of Wisdom.

Other cast members over the show’s 582-episode run included Gil Tucker, John Orcsik, Lynda Stoner, Louise Philip, Terence Donovan, Liz Burch, Olga Tamara, Alan Fletcher, Nicholas Eadie, Alwyn Kurts, John Lee, Christine Jeston, Bill Stalker and John McTernan.

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