Australian TV Plays: His Excellency (3 Dec 1958)

Adaptation of a British play. Shot in Sydney. Aired in Melbourne on 28 December.

Why did we make this?

Premise

An ex-docker is appointed governor of a British island colony.

Cast

Stewart Ginn as the Governor
Harvey Adams
Lola Brooks
Ric Hutton
John Juson
Eric Reiman
John Tate
Owen Weingott

Play

It was based on a 1950 play by Dorothy and Campbell Christie, a husband and wife writing team who also wrote Carrington VC. Eric Portman and Donald Wolfit played the role on stage.

Other adaptations

The play was turned into a 1952 feature film from Ealing, directed by Robert Hamer and starring Eric Portman. Hamer has a cult as a director but Charles Barr, an admirer of the filmmaker, said the film of His Excellency could be "written off".

The play was presented in Australia in 1954.

The play was adapted for British TV on the BBC in 1957. It was done on BBC radio in 1952.

Production

It was Stewart Ginn's first appearance in a TV play. It was directed by Alan Burke who had just done Rose without a Thorn for the ABC and directed Look Back in Anger on stage for the Elizabethan Theatre Trust. Burke went on to become one of the ABC"s leading directors.

Burke later told Graham Shirley in a 2004 interview:

An English stage play, oh standard realistic West End stuff, nothing notable about it, it was just up there and I did it and it was alright...

GS Now you mentioned that television had a predisposition for documentary realism. How did this fit with your preference for fantasy musical productions and comedy?
AB Well I tried to select plays that used those elements and avoided the straight melodrama or whatever you care to call it, the drawing room drama, the boulevard plays as I usually call them. But this was much to do with being able to choose and I didn’t choose His Excellency for instance but I think it went very well and I was happy to do it.
GS Can we just stay with His Excellency for a moment. You say it was quite a mindless sort of play, it was not important.
AB No, it was not important in my history, it was just a nice straight play from the West End about a Labour Politician who was appointed Governor of an outpost which might be Malta, it might be anywhere and it involves a strike of some sort, I couldn’t tell you much about the plot now except that the end is you know, even if he was Labour he was a good man sort of attitude.

Philip Hickie did the design.