AustLit

Consider Your Verdict was a television adaptation of Crawford Productions' radio programme of the same name, which (according to Storey at Classic Australian Television) ran from 18 August 1958 to 1960, for a total of 312 episodes. Soon after the radio program ceased, Crawfords began developing Consider Your Verdict as a television program.

As they had with the radio version, Crawfords made a number of production decisions aimed at increasing the apparent authenticity of the program. According to Storey, these included consulting legal professionals (including the Crown Law Department, Victoria Police, and Melbourne University's Department of Law), limiting the actors playing witnesses to a brief overview of the script and requiring them to ad-lib their lines (resulting in an authentically hesitant delivery style), and occasionally casting actual legal professionals in roles (notably homicide detective Gordon Timmins and Eugene Gorman QC). The intention was to suggest that audiences were watching a broadcast of an actual trial; in keeping with this illusion, as Moran notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series, the program carried no production credits.

The majority of the cases were criminal cases (primarily murder), though the program did present some civil cases. Inexpensive to produce, the program occasionally suffered from the suggestion that it adhered rather too closely to legal process, rendering episodes slower and less dramatic than they might otherwise have been.

A 52-episode radio series, The Crime Club was produced by Dorothy Crawford for Hector Crawford Productions in 1953.

The program profile with which Crawford Productions promoted the program (held in the Crawford Collection at the AFI Research Collection) sums up the program as follows: 'Each episode will be the true story of a world-famous detective and his most important case'.

In promoting The Crime Club, Crawford Productions consciously positions it in close relation to the highly successful radio serial D.24 (a fore-runner to its television program Homicide), emphasising that D.24's 'extraordinary success' boded well for The Crime Club:

'When first broadcast twelve months ago, "D.24" immediately attracted a large audience. The most recent Survey shows that it has completely out-stripped every other programme on the air. It has more listeners than even the highly-priced Variety and Quiz programmes, and we believe the audience figures are still rising.

While we could not guarantee that "The Crime Club" would achieve the unique position of "D.24", it has many features similar in entertainment value. It has not the advantage of home locale, but it will draw from a much wider choice of material and have a greater degree of contrast in background and types.'

'"D.24" has had quite dramatic results for the Victoria Police Force in the fields of public relations and recruiting. Hence the fact that the Police Department has twice renewed its contract and has discontinued all other forms of publicity and advertising.

'Having attracted a wide and loyal audience, "The Crime Club" must certainly become an equally successful vehicle for its Sponsor's message.'

'Our recent close assoication with the Victoria Police Force leaves us in no doubt that they are diligent, enthusiastic, well-trained and organized, and badly in need of all the public support possible. "D.24" is doing much towards achieving such support.

'"The Crime Club", which will present the detective in his true light, must certainly make a contribution to this most worthwhile objective.'

The program outline emphasises that in order to ensure that 'All "Crime Club" stories ... will be authentic', they have established a research network between Melbourne, France, and England.

In Melbourne, 'The complete facilities of the Victoria Police Force are, of course, at our service.' In addition, 'We are also in close touch with Dr. Norval R. Morris, Ph.D. (Lond.), LL.M., Secretary of the Department of Criminology and Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Melbourne. His advice and guidance on the "Crime does not pay" angle will be most valuable.'

For France, 'we have appointed a "Crime Club" reporter in Paris. He will work in close collaboration with Detective-Inspector Jacques Delarue of the Surete, and will provide stories from France and Europe generally.'

The French Crime Club reporter is not named in the program profile, but their equivalent in England (who 'will cover the detectives of the British Isles') was English detective novelist John Creasey, whose work had already been produced for radio by Dorothy Crawford in the long-running Inspector West serial.

According to the program profile, the detectives covered in the program included:

• Detective Inspector Frank Froest (Metropolitan Police CID/Scotland Yard)

• Gustave Mace (Sûreté)

• Chief Detective-Inspector Elias Bower (Scotland Yard)

• Chief Detective-Inspector Frank Fox (Scotland Yard)

• Professor Archibald Reiss (University of Lausanne)

• Inspector William Melville (Special Branch, CID)

• Detective-Inspector John Wilson Murray (Canadian Detective Service)

• Divisional Detective-Inspector Edward Drew (Metropolitan Police CID)

• Inspector Trevor Fitch (Special Branch, CID)

• Detective-Inspector Richard Tanner (Scotland Yard)

• Inspector Nathanial Druscovich (Scotland Yard)

• M.F. Goron (Paris Detective Service)

• Chief Detective-Inspector Gough (Scotland Yard)

• Chief Detective-Inspector Berrot (Scotland Yard)

• Senior Chief Detective John Tunbridge (Scotland Yard)

• Rene Cassellari (Sûreté)

• Chief Detective Inspector Leach (Scotland Yard)

• Detective-Inspector Maurice Moser (Metropolitan Police CID)

• Monsieur Canler (Sûreté)

• Chief Detective-Inspector Jervis (Scotland Yard)

• Chief Detective-Inspector Henry Marshall (Scotland Yard)