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person or book cover
Script cover page (Crawford Collection at the AFI Research Collection)
form y separately published work icon Lonely Ordeal single work   film/TV   crime  
Issue Details: First known date: 1976... 1976 Lonely Ordeal
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All Publication Details

      1976 .
      person or book cover
      Script cover page (Crawford Collection at the AFI Research Collection)
      Extent: 77p.
      (Manuscript) assertion
      Note/s:
      • The script is typed on thin white paper, and labelled 'Code 11537' and 'Episode No. 35' on the cover page, although it aired as episode 34.
      • The script is amended throughout in liquid paper, which has then been typed over. As with previous examples, these are amendments that have been made before the script editor sends over her amendments: see ancillary materials below. The amendments are minor: copy-editing level alterations to typing mistakes, largely. Amendments have also introduced some errors: see, for example, page 13, where [Monica] 'Rourke' has been crossed out and replaced with 'O'Rourke'. Some errors still stand in the text: see, for example, page 22, where the stage directions include 'SMASHED CORCKERY'.
      • The file includes the following ancillary material, access to some of which is restricted:

        1. Twelve-page document titled 'Bluey Location Times and Schedules', labelled 'Denise Morgan' in blue ink on the top of the front page.

        2. Thirteen-page document titled 'Bluey Episode 11537 "Lonely Ordeal" One Liner', labelled 'Denise Morgan' in lead pencil in the top right-hand corner of the front page.

        3. Cast list.

        4. Casting call sheets: one one-page casting call sheet filled out in lead pencil, and one five-page casting call sheet filled out in lead pencil, blue ink, and red ink. For differences between the sheets, see note regarding the directors below.

        5. Three pages of script amendments, in the form of three different memos from Denise Morgan.

        The first memo, dated 16th November 1976, lists a number of occasions on which the name 'Rourke' has been given as 'O'Rourke' in the script.

        The second memo, dated 15th December 1976, notes that the characters Jack Stevens and Roger Stevens have been changed to Jack Wilson and Roger Wilson.

        The third memo, dated 28th January 1977, covers more extensive amendments: introducing new characters to a scene, adding new stage directions, and removing speeches.

      Holdings

      Held at: AFI Research Collection
      Local Id: SC BLU : 34
Note: Both the script's cover page and the five-page casting call list for this episode held in the Crawford Collection originally listed George T. Miller as the director, but his name has been crossed out on the latter and replaced by Stevens' name. This document gives the 1st assistant director as Stewart Wright; the one-page casting call sheet also held in the file gives the 1st assistant director as Mike Mills.
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Crawford Productions , 1977 .
      Extent: 47 min. 30 secs (according to the script)p.
      Series: form y separately published work icon Bluey Robert Caswell , Vince Moran , Everett de Roche , James Wulf Simmonds , Tom Hegarty , Gwenda Marsh , Colin Eggleston , David Stevens , Peter A. Kinloch , Keith Thompson , Gregory Scott , Peter Schreck , Denise Morgan , Monte Miller , Ian Jones , John Drew , David William Boutland , Jock Blair , Melbourne : Crawford Productions Seven Network , 1976 Z1815063 1976 series - publisher film/TV crime detective

      According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian Television Series, Bluey (and its Sydney-based rival, King's Men) 'constituted an attempt to revive the police genre after the cancellations of Homicide, Division 4 and Matlock Police'.

      Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, summarises the program as follows:

      Bluey is a maverick cop who breaks every stereotype image. He drinks, smokes and eats to excess, and therefore is rather large, but it is his unusual investigative methods that set him apart. He has bent or broken every rule in the book at some stage, to the point where no-one else wants to work with him. But he gets results, and is therefore too valuable to lose, so the powers-that-be banish him to the basement of Russell Street Police Headquarters where he is set up in his own department, a strategem that keeps him out of the way of other cops.

      Moran adds that 'Grills, Diedrich and Nicholson turned in solid performances in the series and the different episodes were generally well paced, providing engaging and satisfying entertainment.'

      The program sold well overseas, especially in the United Kingdom. But though it rated well domestically, it was not the success that the Seven Network had hoped for, and was cancelled after 39 episodes.

      Bluey had an unexpected revival in the early 1990s when selections from the video footage (over-dubbed with a new vocal track) were presented during the second series of the ABC comedy The Late Show as the fictional police procedural Bargearse. (The Late Show had given ABC gold-rush drama Rush the same treatment in series one.)

      Number in series: 34
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