Australian TV Plays: AP#1.15 - The Final Factor (25 July 1966)

An Australian Playhouse episode. Led to a sequel Cobwebs in Concrete.

Premise

Many lives are at stake while giants of the engineering world struggle for supremacy. A company is building a bridge and there are doubts about the bridge's safety during the final factor of building. The building is completed on time and the builder becomes a millionaire.

Cast

Peter O'Shaughnessy as Kruger
Richard Meikle as Fenner
Noel Brophy as Parker
Walter Sullivan as Fisher
Bob Haddow as Lucas

Production

It was written by John Warwick and directed by Ken Hannam.

It was filmed on 22 May 1966 according to ABC records.

Was this a forerunner for Warwick's Cobwebs in Concrete?

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald wrote "If Australian Playhouse is to be worthy of its name, it needs to find more interesting one-act plays than "The Final Factor,"... Perhaps there was a beginning, a middle and an end but the sequence was unbalanced. The end did not justify the means. Action lacking Lacking any dramatic action visible on the screen —unless one counts telephone conversations—the whole piece consisted of a jumble of dialogue embracing engineering, big business and possible human disaster, and centring around the possible collapse of a bridge in the final stage of its construction. The deciding factor was apparently not so much human agency as the arrival of "cool southern change" some minutes before it was due. It was owing only to the acting of Peter O'Shaughnessy and, to a lesser degree, that of Richard Meikle, that a feeling of tension was built-up—to reach a complete anticlimax which no actor's skill could mitigate."

The Age said "there was plenty of suspense... the dialogue was good and the clash of characters was well drawn."