Random thoughts - clique-y directors

 Reading through the cast lists of old TV plays you see the same directors using the same actors: Wyn Roberts, Michael Duffield, Patricia Kennedy, Beverly Dunn, Edward Brayshaw, etc.

On one hand I get it. Directors want to use the best actors they can. They want people they can rely on. A good actor is a good actor. Actors shouldn't be discriminated against because they are good.

But what happens if you're not in the cool group? What if you're outside the gang? Or don't have the chance to prove yourself? It can't have been that fun.

A lot of the power for early Australian TV drama seemed to rest in a just a few hands. And I get there is a degree of inevitability about that in what is going to be a small industry.

But did it have to be so cliquey?

Or am I just reading things into it?

I can mount a defence - it was going to be live. Directors needed actors who could deliver. That does breed cliques. This was something that came out of radio.

One thing I've noticed is that there seemed to be no star system. The ABC weren't that big on star roles, building shows around certain actors.... unless they were in the country briefly while touring eg Googie Withers in The First 400 Years, Michael Denison and Dulcie Grey in Village Wooing.

"Well there were no stars," you could argue.

But was that the case? You could have tried Bob Dwyer in a comedy. Jack Davey. Graeme Kennedy.

Director Alan Burke didn't mind some stunt casting. Murray Rose in My Three Angels, for instance.

But it was the exception rather than the rule.

Maybe it was the ABC not wanting to be crassly commercial.

Or maybe it was the directors not wanting to lose control.

I do feel the directors have too much power when it came to picking scripts. They'd pick scripts "they'd like to have a crack at".

For me the biggest shame of ABC drama from this period was that it lacked someone with vision at the top going "let's just tell Australian stories". There was so much for them to pick from - history, short stories, plays, novels. And it would have meant something to the viewer. But that vision was too radical.