Aussie TV and radio classics for all

Sons & Daughters fans will be thrilled to learn that Via Vision Entertainment will be releasing the complete second season of the serial on DVD on the 3rd March.

Pictured above: Left: The complete second season of Sons & Daughters is coming to DVD. Right: The first 148 episodes of A Country Practice are being re-released.

In these thrilling episodes, David Palmer (Tom Richards) will find himself banged up in prison after being wrongly accused of murder.

Scheming Patricia Hamilton (Rowena Wallace) is heading for a full-blown nervous breakdown, and divorce could be on the cards for young lovers Kevin (Stephen Comey) and Lynn (Antonia Murphy). Elsewhere Barbara Armstrong (Cornelia Frances) needs lifesaving brain surgery after being kicked in the head by a horse, and former prostitute Jill Taylor (Kim Lewis) is raped by mechanic Terry Hansen (Andrew Clarke). Fiona Thompson (Pat McDonald) is left reeling when she learns that the rapist could be her ‘dead’ son, and ruthless Dee Morrell (Mary Ward) has decided that playboy Wayne Hamilton (Ian Rawlings) will father her grandchild.

You can pre-order Sons & Daughters season 2 from the Via Vision website.

Patricia (Rowena Wallace) plots her next move in Sons & Daughters

Via Vision will also be re-issuing the first 148 episodes of A Country Practice on the 17th of March. In these episodes, Dr Terence Elliott (Shane Porteous) turns to the grog in order to escape from the painful memories of his son’s tragic death, and he will end up as a patient in his own hospital after suffering a heart attack.

Confusion reigns when clueless plumber Bob ‘Boxhead’ Hatfield (Gordon Piper) is asked to install a bidet, and wedding bells toll for Shirley Dean (Lorrae Desmond) and local copper Frank Gilroy (Brian Wenzel). Male nurse Brendan Jones (Shane Withington) is thrilled when his free-spirited wife Molly (Anne Tenney) gives birth to a baby girl, and Miss Bird (Colleen Clifford) finds herself at the mercy of the sadistic staff of a nursing home.

The medics at the Bush Nursing Hospital have to deal with an endless stream of patients including the victims of a major bus crash, and an agoraphobic woman who attempts to self-induce an abortion for fear that she’ll give birth to another Down’s Syndrome child.

Guest artists appearing in these episodes include Ros Wood, Rebecca Gilling, Louise Howitt and Ric Herbert from The Young Doctors; Tom Richards, Pat McDonald, Belinda Giblin, Peter Phelps and Leila Hayes from Sons & Daughters; Maggie Dence, Moya O’Sullivan, Tom Oliver, Jackie Woodburne and Terence Donovan from Neighbours; Judy Nunn, Ray Meagher, Roger Oakley, Debra Lawrence and Norman Coburn from Home & Away; Les Dayman from E Street; Michael Caton, Norman Yemm and Gerry Duggan from The Sullivans; and Vincent Ball from Crossroads. Other well-known faces cropping up in the action include Aileen Britton, Willie Fennell, Joseph Furst, Baz Luhrmann, John Ewart, Quennie Ashton, Joy Hruby, Margo Lee, Mary Ward, Lois Ramsey, Wallas Eaton, Georgie Sterling, and Slim De Grey.

You can pre-order A Country Practice Collection One from Via Vision Entertainment.

Left: Learn of classic swindles in You Can’t Win. Middle: Legal matters come to the fore in Famous Jury Trials. Right: There are laughs galore in How Green Was My Cactus.

Grace Gibson Productions have released another batch of Australian radio classics on CD, USB, and as digital downloads. In the latest volume of the political satire How Green Was My Cactus we encounter bogan staples, the new united nut, and savour the delights of airline food.

You Can’t Win, narrated by Howard Craven, introduces us to some of the fantastic swindles that have taken place around the world. We hear the true stories of men and women who have been done down by wideboys, meet cunning fraudsters and smooth tricksters. Those featured include the Baron of Budapest, the convict who became a count, Pretty Boy Floyd, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, and Perth-born Gerald Hope whose ambition in life was to make good the bad way.

Famous Jury Trials is due for release later this month. This classic serial dramatises actual court files from around the world and explores an array of fascinating cases including those involving high treason, murder, robbery, and a situation where a jury must decide whether a person can be convicted on circumstantial evidence.

You can order all of these radio serials and a wealth of others from the Grace Gibson website.

Photo’s copyright Via Vision Entertainment/Grundy Organization/Fremantle Australia; Via Vision Entertainment/JNP; IRS Grace Gibson Productions.