Australian TV Plays: AP#1.1 - Dynasty (29 Oct 1969)

The first in the 12-part Australian Plays series. The first season went for six episodes.

Australian Plays

It was the first Australian anthology series since Australian Playhouse and was described by the ABC as "representative of contemporary Australian writers and the development of Australian television drama today." It was produced by Eric Taylor. It was meant to be followed by a series Company of Eight which will have a regular repertory company of eight actors. (Instead they just called it a second series of Australian Plays).

Premise of Dynasty

Inventor Jim Richards (Terry Norris) seeks financial backing from the Mason Corporation for his new machine. He finds himself in the middle of a power struggle for control of the corporation, including a family dispute. David Mason uses his affair with his sister-in-law Kathy to his advantage.

Cast

Terry Norris as Jim Richards
Brian James as Jack Mason, head of family
Mark McManus as Peter Mason, a brother
Ron Graham as John Mason, a brother
Kevin Miles as David Mason
Alan Hopgood

Original novel

It was based on a novel by Tony Morphett which was published in 1967. He later said he wrote the novel because another one had to be put aside due to the threat of a defamation suit. This was Fitzgerald - it was pulped before being sold.

Morphett told Susan Lever:

And I also wrote three novels in my spare time. The first was an entertainment called Nair’s Nest; the second was about an Australian painter whom I called Fitzgerald - and there was a real Australian painter called Fitzgerald and the book got pulped - but later reissued as Thorskald. And the third one was called Dynasty, and it was about a family who owned newspapers and a television station.
People all thought it was about the Packers because I had worked for the Packers. I have worked for three generations of Packers; Frank was running The Telegraph - Sir Frank was running The Telegraph when I was a boy there; and then there was Kerry and then there was James.
It wasn’t about the Packers. I had researched very heavily - having lost one book to an accidental libel I certainly wasn’t going to perpetrate an intentional one. So I researched the *05:43, and the Fairfaxes, and the Symes and the Murdochs, etc. etc. And so the characters in Dynasty were a composite of all of those families.

Production

It was shot in Melbourne. Oscar Whitbread directed.

According to the Classic Australian TV website , the novel was different from the play. The play was envisioned to be an episode of a TV series. Morphett envisioned it as a pilot.

He told Susan Lever:

I had gone to an Adelaide festival, probably in ’68, where I had pitched the idea of doing Dynasty as a television series to David Goddard, an Englishman who was then head of TV Drama at the ABC. And I had picked up some work on a show called Delta, which was sort of like CSRI Scientists on the move around Australia. And David got interested in the Dynasty idea.
   We did a pilot show in Melbourne with some of the cast who ended up in the show in Sydney when we did a series. And Glyn was aware of all this - he got me in to work on The Link Men. And then he pitched Dynasty. He went to the ABC and he said, “You’ve got this pilot; you know, it’s a terrific idea and… bla-bla-bla…” - as one does in a pitch.
   And John Cameron, who had succeeded David Goddard as Head of TV Drama, commissioned ten hours of it. And we did another thirteen. We ended up doing about twenty-four hours of it. And that did well. ..

I originally wanted to do it as a mini-series. I just wanted to do the book. And John Cameron was an inspirational Head of Television Drama; he had extraordinary influence. And he wanted it to be done as an episodic series; a classic episodic series where you have a different story each week. And so that is the way we did it.
   And as I say, it was a success. It won some awards, and won some Writers’ Guild Awards for me, and da-da-da-da…

A copy of the script is at the NAA and is on line. See here.

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald called the play "the best thing the ABC has done in a long, long time."

Morphett earned a Penguin Award for his script.

The Stage said "With far too many characters it became rather confusing and the plot far from exciting or gripping. Its main merits were some excellent performances from leading actors such as Brian James, Alan Hopgood, Kevin Miles and Mark McManus (the latter, now in England, has a leading role in the film "Ned Kelly Many changes in scene and location not always necessary added to the confusion, but direction and photography were good through out. It must have been a costly 50 minute production to mount. "

TV Series

Following the success of the TV play, a regular TV series was produced with a largely different cast.

Premiering in July 1970, the first series consisted of 10 episodes, and the second and final series consisted of 13 episodes. Tony Morphett wrote most of the episodes.

An excellent website on Australian television has a page on the show. See here. It led to a spin off Catwalk.