Classic Aussie Drama for April

Crawfords DVD have released the eighteenth box set of the police drama Cop Shop for your viewing pleasure.

In these episodes, the blossoming romance between Senior Sergeant Reg Wallis (Alwyn Kurts) and Inspector Joyce Stratton (Billie Hammerberg) becomes the talk of the cop shop when they begin co-habiting, and there’s trouble in store for Detective Tony Benjamin (Gregory Ross) when his girlfriend’s violent ex-lover is released from prison. Romance could be in the air between Detective Tom Shannon (John McTernan) and aspiring actress Helen Ashford (Christine Jeston), and when a child molester begins targeting young girls in the district the locals decide to set up a vigilante group.

Pictured top: Alan Fletcher and Jackie Woodburne play husband and wife team Karl and Susan Kennedy in Neighbours, but in Cop Shop you can see them playing brother and sister Frank and Gina Rossi.

Detectives Jeff Johnson (Peter Adams) and Mike Georgiou (John Orcsik) are posted to Rome when a prominent Riverside businessman is kidnapped in Italy. Back in Australia an ex-army type has become an arsonist and is busy torching failing businesses. In the dead of night, a group of hoodlums run riot vandalising the caravan park where Constable Roy Baker (Gil Tucker) and his wife Melissa (Rosie Bailey) have taken up residence, and a paymaster is blackmailed by a crooked security firm into adding ghost workers to the payroll in order to extort money from his employers.

Left: Jeff Johnson (Peter Adams) and Mike Georgiou (John Orcsik) are posted to Rome in Cop Shop. Right: Ray Meagher plays Alf Stewart in Home & Away but in Cop Shop Volume 18 he can be seen as criminal Paul Maxwell who is out for revenge over the death of his brother.

When the law enforcers of Riverside Police Station crack down on underage drinkers, they find a 16-year-old boy drunk and as high as a kite in a notorious gay discotheque. Meanwhile a drunken doctor who is about to be de-registered is blackmailed into processing heroin for a drug syndicate after his medical negligence leads to the death of one of the gang members.

Detective Constable Julie Mitchell (Olga Tamara) becomes romantically involved when she’s assigned as the personal bodyguard to a merchant banker that has agreed to give evidence at a corporate affairs enquiry, but is a double cross on the cards. A bent copper masterminds a series of armed hold-ups and bashes up a prostitute in a public lavatory. An elderly woman commits suicide believing herself to be a financial burden on her struggling family, and the law enforcers have to investigate a series of gruesome murders when the Chainsaw Gang begin extorting stolen goods from fellow criminals and mutilate their victims in the process.

Familiar faces appearing in these episodes include Ray Meagher and Anna Hruby from Home & Away; Fiona Spence, Maggie Millar, Carol Burns, and Gerard Maguire from Prisoner: Cell Block H; Joseph Furst, Alan Cinis, Michael Ferguson, Willie Fennell, Paul Mason, Shirley Cameron and Robyn Gibbes from The Young Doctors; June Salter from The Restless Years; Mark Little, Gary Files and Ernie Bourne from Neighbours; Nick Waters from The Sullivans; Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell from Homicide; and Ilona Rodgers from Sons & Daughters.

Those of you that are based in Australasia can order Cop Shop Volume 18 from the Crawfords DVD website. Fans that are located in the UK or anywhere else in the world can place their orders with Eaton Films.

Grace Gibson Productions have released another selection of classic radio serials from their archives.

Adopted Son introduces us to Vincent Conway (John Meillon) who learns the shattering truth about his life on his 21st birthday. Vince has had a happy upbringing but is to learn that he was adopted by Bruce and Edith Conway (Max Osbiston and Babs Mayhew) following the death of his father. Vince is torn between loyalty to the family that raised him and a natural desire to get to know and understand his real mother Ruby Thorne (Neva Carr Glyn).

Despite outward appearances, Ruby is a cunning and malicious woman who despises the Conway family. She gave up her young son because he was a nuisance that got in the way of her partying lifestyle, but more than twenty years later she manages to hoodwink Vince into believing that she genuinely cares for him. Ruby is employed by an elderly invalid called Mrs Forrest (Minnie Love), she hates the old lady with a vengeance and sets about turning her against her own family in order to inherit a huge fortune.

Main Image: The past comes back to haunt Vincent Conway in Adopted Son. Inset: John Meillon stars as Vincent Conway in Adopted Son.

Following Mrs Forrest’s death Vince will find himself embroiled in a messy court case over the battle for her estate and we wonder if he’ll wake up to the truth about his scheming birthmother before she takes him down with her. Other members of the cast include Ray Barrett from Emergency-Ward 10, June Salter from The Restless Years, Don Crosby and Lola Brooks.

In volume 11 of Hunt The Man Down private investigator Dick Mallory (Frank Waters) takes on another batch of dangerous assignments in order to track down those that live in the shadows of life, and in the latest release of the political satire How Green Was My Cactus the team deal with subjects including the great flood and bogan pokies.

You can order all of these radio serials on CD, USB or as digital downloads from the Grace Gibson website.

Left: More intriguing cases are solved in Hunt The Man Down. Right: The laughs keep coming with How Green Was My Cactus.

Photographs copyright: Crawford Productions/WIN/Eaton Films. IRS Grace Gibson Productions.