AustLit

A sit-com that follows the misadventures of two sisters who unexpectedly inherit, from an uncle, a rundown garage in the small town of Frog's Hollow, Barley Charlie shows Joan and Shirley Muggleton's attempts to make the garage saleable, a plan foiled by the presence of lazy mechanic Charlie Appleby.

According to Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, 'GTV went to great lengths to ensure Barley Charlie would be successful. An enormous set covering 900 square feet was constructed - it comprised a full-scale garage, mechanic's store room, cafe and kitchen, and was complete with electricity, gas and water.' They also went to the expense of importing British script-writers Ronald Chesney and Ronald Wolfe, hoping the two could replicate their success with British sit-coms such as The Rag Game.

Barley Charlie was successful both in terms of ratings and with the critics, but a second series was never made, largely due to the unavailability of key actors Eddie Hepple and Sheila Bradley. Of the program's significance to early Australian television, Storey notes that 'Most contemporary reports (and all of the GTV-9 publicity) credited Barley Charlie as being the first Australian produced situation comedy. This was not strictly correct, as Crawford Productions made a weekly 15-minute comedy series, Take That, for HSV-7 in 1957, although admittedly it was a live-to-air programme and was only screened in Melbourne.'

Archie Andrews, ventriloquist's dummy, and his 'mentor', Peter Brough, had been behind BBC radio series Educating Archie since 1950. In 1957, they made a visit to Australia, including live performances at the Tivoli, and the ABC radio serial Archie in Australia.

British sources describe Archie in Australia as a single work, and it does appear to have been broadcast in the UK as a single radio play, broadcast first on the Light Programme on 18 September 1957 at 7:30pm (Radio Times, 13 September 1957, p.45) and then repeated, again on the Light Programme, on 22 September 1957, at 2:30pm (Radio Times, 20 September 1957, p.29). There is no indication in either The Times or the Radio Times that the program ever ran as a series in the UK.

Australian newspapers, on the other hand, clearly identify the program as a series. The Australian Women's Weekly, for example, describes the program as 'the A.B.C. series "Archie in Australia"', and the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

The A.B.C. so far plans to use ventriloquist Peter Brough and his doll, Archie, on radio only, beginning its "Archie in Australia sessions early in May. Harmonica-player Robert [Ronald] Chesney and script-writer Ronald Wolfe are accompanying the pair to Australia. They plan to use a cast of Australians in this series, which may be sent back to Britain for transmission over the B.B.C.

Radio listings show that Archie in Australia was broadcast at 7:15am every Tuesday morning between 28 May 1957 and 10 September 1957.

See:

'Just a Living Doll', Australian Women's Weekly, 5 June 1957, p.29.

'Television News', Sydney Morning Herald, 27 May 1957, p.5.