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person or book cover
Script cover page (Crawford Collection at the AFI Research Collection)
form y separately published work icon The Mooball Man single work   film/TV   crime  
Issue Details: First known date: 1976... 1976 The Mooball Man
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The Assistant Commissioner assigns Bluey to investigate a possible homicide. Bluey is used to being landed with old cases - but this is ridiculous. The victim seems to have been dead for at least 500,000 years.

'Bluey is deeply suspicious of the A.C.'s motives in sending him to a remote town in the north-west of Victoria. His first problem is getting there. His second is getting there in one piece. His third is the expenses he keeps running up - but that really is the A.C.'s problem. He brought it on himself.

'The small town of Mooball is kept alive and therefore dominated by the Atlas Mining Company - which has tended to become a law unto itself. The lone police constable doesn't stand much of a chance of maintaining law and order by himself. Hence a cry for help. And the eventual arrival of a dusty, tired, thirsty Bluey - which changes everything.'

Source: Synopsis held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection (RMIT).


The script for this episode held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection contains the following character notes (excluding regular characters):

'DOC HASLER: (50'S) RETIRED GEOLOGIST, GENERALLY REGARDED AROUND MOOBALL AS A BIT OF AN ECCENTRIC.

'MIKE (MICHELLE): REAL NAME MICHELLE. RUNS THE MOOBALL HOTEL, AND TAKES A SPECIAL INTEREST IN BLUEY. LIKEABLE ATTRACTIVE, DOWN TO EARTH. (VICKI HAMMOND TYPE)

'KNUCKLES MCBRIDE: THE AC'S SYDNEY COUNTERPART, VISITING RUSSELL STREET ON SOME EXCHANGE PROGRAMME. LOOKS MORE LIKE A WRESTLER THAN A COP.

'DELLIT: MANAGER OF AMC. BIG, TOUGH, IMPOSING.

'REEGAN: MOOBALL'S GREENHORN COP. BIT OF A BARNEY FIFE CHARACTER.

'PALIARTI: ITALIAN LABOUER [sic] AT MINE.

'JANITOR (BEN): WORKS FOR MINE.

'LOCKWOOD: WORKS FOR MINE.

'BARMAN: AT MOOBALL HOTEL.

'POSTIE: MOOBALL POSTMAN. (ONE SCENE - NO DIALOGUE)

'HSV7 FILM CREW: 2 ACTORS.

'INTERVIEWER: FOR TV NEWS CREW.

'UNIDENTIFED DRIVER: STUNT.

'KID: RIDES SKATEBOARD. ONE SCENE.

'UNIFORMED COP: FEW LINES.

'WORKERS: A TOTAL OF 6 EXTRAS. BUT GENERALLY ONLY 4 USED.

'WORKER #1:

'CAR DRIVER #1:

'CAR DRIVER #2:

'TRACTOR DRIVER'.

Notes

  • This entry has been compiled from archival research in the Crawford Collection (AFI Research Collection), undertaken by Dr Catriona Mills under the auspices of the 2012 AFI Research Collection (AFIRC) Research Fellowship.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

      1976 .
      person or book cover
      Script cover page (Crawford Collection at the AFI Research Collection)
      Extent: 58p.
      (Manuscript) assertion
      Note/s:
      • The script is labelled 'Code 11522' and 'Episode No. 17', although it aired as episode sixteen. There is no indication of to whom this copy of the script was designated.
      • This is an original script, typed on thin, white paper. The script is amended throughout in liquid paper, which has then been typed over. Amendments include some minor adjustments to the dialogue (see, for example, page 37, where 'Damn right.' has been added before the sentence 'And I'm not just talking about new cars and TV sets.') However, most of the alterations are at the copy-editing level: adjusting for typos, for example.
      • The Crawford Collection includes three copies of this script, all identical. One is held in this file; the other two are filed separately.

      Holdings

      Held at: AFI Research Collection
      Local Id: SC BLU : 16
      Note:
      AFI Research Collection record
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Crawford Productions , 1977 .
      Extent: 47 min. (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: 16
VIEW PUBLICATION DETAILS FOR ALL VERSIONS ()
Last amended 29 May 2013 10:38:37
George T. Miller
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Settings:
  • North West Victoria, Victoria,
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