Australian TV Plays: Otherwise Engaged (2 June 1965)

An Australian play. From a script by John Cameron, who did Outpost.

Plot

As a result of pressures of running a large business, Henry Williamson finds he has been neglecting his duties to his family, providing unlimited funds instead of a husband and father's guiding hand. His son is lazy and fails his uni exams, his daughter Pamela is spoilt and is about to be married to a troublesome man called Bevin, and his wife Dorothy spends time making metal sculptures.

In an attempt to have a better family relationship, he takes them - and an employee, Tom - up in a plane to look at a country property he is thinking of buying and winds up on a Pacific island. Williamson insists his family stay there.

Pamela tries to seduce Tom to secure his help in getting off the island. It works, however in the course of doing so Pamela genuinely falls for Tom.

Cast

Michael Duffield as Henry Williamson
Mary Ward as Dorothy
Anne Charleston as his daughter Pamela
Dennis Miller as Tom
Jeffrey Hodgson as Buck
Lloyd Cunnington as the pilot

Production

The play was written exclusively for television. It was the third TV play by John Cameron, who had also written Outpost and The Teeth of Wind. It was described as "a play without a message" and was shot in Melbourne.

Cameron said in writing the play "I set out purely to entertain a television audience. This is a play written for television - it's not an adaptation of a stage play so the plot develops visually. It's one of those plays where you sit back and, I hope, enjoy it."

My thoughts. It's quite a fun play. Sort of The Admirable Crichton like with rich people struggling to make do on an island. It's a little yuck that the father forced them to stay there, essentially kidnaps them, and it's all for their own good.

Reception

The TV critic from the Sydney Morning Herald said "the play might have seemed more attractive in its corrective escapism if some of its palm-fringed, moon-visited settings had not been stirred so obviously by a studio breeze; and Oscar Whitbread's direction would have released more of the author's latent humour if his cast had been able to supply more than conventionally stiff realisations of conventional characters.