More Aussie drama out now

Crawfords DVD have just released the final box set of Cop Shop.

In these concluding episodes of the long running police drama Inspector Ian Timms (John Lee) is accused of corruption but is he really a bent copper or has he been framed? Constable Roy Baker (Gil Tucker) is elected as the local district delegate for the Police Association, and immediately takes action to get an extension to the overcrowded cell block at Riverside. Detective Amanda King (Lynda Stoner) decides to join the newly created Community Policing Squad and is shocked when a lesbian friend falls in love with her.

Detective Tom Shannon (John McTernan) is accidentally gunned down by a girl out for revenge, this brush with death prompts him to re-assess his life and he considers re-joining the Fraud Squad.  Detective Mike Georgiou (John Orcsik) is thrilled when his wife Danni (Paula Duncan) gives birth to a baby girl. Meanwhile Detective Jeff Johnson (Peter Adams) decides to tie the knot with Kate Ryan (Lyn Semmler) but he struggles to cope with the relentless pressures of police work and resigns from the force to take up an executive position running security for a large hotel chain.

Left: Detective Jeff Johnson (Peter Adams) quits the police force in Cop Shop. Right: Senior Sergeant Eric O’Reilly (Terry Norris) checks in his last drunken derelict at the Riverside cop shop.

A teenage shoplifter flees the scene of her crime in a stranger’s car but the next day she turns up in an alleyway having been drugged and molested as part of a pornography racket.  A hard drinking ex-journalist is framed for the murder of a drug dealer, and two young punks looking for a good time end up in serious trouble when they decide to extort money from a bank. A headless and handless corpse washes up down at the docks, and a shopkeeper decides to put a stop to a violent stand-over merchant who is running a nasty protection racket.

An undercover cop tragically becomes a victim of a ruthless drug pushing operation, and a retarded boy finds himself holding up a building society under the instruction of an armed bandit. A babysitter is kidnapped with the offenders demanding a ransom from her wealthy employer, and an SP bookie is suspected of laundering dirty money from armed robberies. Across town an elderly woman with gambling debts and a struggling metalworking sculptor join forces to rob the bookmaker she owes money to.

Two well-heeled young men with powerful connections rape a female motorist who has broken down, but claim that she was a willing participant when she reports the molestation to the police. Matters are complicated when one of the rapists is found clubbed to death in his spa bath.

Inspector Ian Timms (John Lee) and Constable Frank Rossi (Alan Fletcher) have a wideboy in their sights in Cop Shop.

Familiar faces appearing in these episodes include Michael Beecher from The Young Doctors; Martin Sacks from Blue Heelers; Maurie Fields from The Flying Doctors; Vic Gordon from Matlock Police; Nick Waters from The Sullivans; Marianne Howard from E Street; Noel Hodda and Oriana Panozzo from Sons & Daughters; Ray Meagher, Roger Oakley and Debra Lawrance from Home & Away; Julia Blake, Barry Quinn and Wendy Playfair from Prisoner: Cell Block H; Anne Charleston, Tom Oliver, Stefan Dennis, Francis Bell, Linda Hartley, David Clencie, and Shane Connor from Neighbours; and Ron Shand from Number 96.

Fans that are based in Australasia can order Cop Shop Volume 22 from Crawfords DVD.  Those of you that live in the UK or anywhere else in the world can place your orders with Eaton Films.

Grace Gibson Productions have released another batch of vintage Australian radio serials from the archives. The Case of the Purple Cow from Donovan Joyce Productions takes a satirical look at the classic detective genre. Penned by Warren Glasser, we are transported to Hollywood during the 1950s where Dan Steel runs the I Find ‘Em Detective Agency. We follow Dan as he is approached by a society dame who is searching for her missing dog which she’s named after her late husband, and things go from the sublime to the ridiculous when Dan spots his own obituary in a daily newspaper!

Out of the Dawn, adapted for radio by Robert Stewart from the best-selling novel by F.J. Thwaites, is an absorbing story woven around the lives of the Hargraves family and their friends in rural New South Wales who lived in a world where, twice in a generation, war raised its ugly head. In this heart-stirring tale we meet John Hargraves (Stewart Ginn), who was left hopelessly crippled due to injuries sustained during the First World War. John is constantly in pain and has been forced to spend most of his adult life confined to a wheelchair, only able to drag himself around on crutches on his good days.

John is forced to sit back with an anguished heart when his son Robert (Keith Buckley) volunteers for the air force when war clouds gather for the second time in 21 years. We follow Robert as he’s shot down over Singapore, unless he undergoes immediate surgery aboard a hospital ship, he could end up like his father by being forced to face life as a permanent invalid on crutches. When Japanese raiders bomb the ship leaving it as a raging inferno and then proceed to mow down the survivors with machine gun fire we wonder if our incapacitated hero has any chance of survival. If he does make it back to Australia will his fiancé Jan Hudson still be waiting for him or will a second chance at happiness come courtesy of a young lady from London?

Top Left: Fans of police drama will enjoy the satirical radio serial The Case of the Purple Cow. Top Right: War raises its ugly head in Out of the Dawn. Bottom Right: Stewart Ginn stars as John Hargraves in Out of the Dawn. Bottom Middle: The atomic arms race is on in Oasis of Shalimar. Bottom Left: James Condon plays Kent Richards in Oasis of Shalimar.

Out of the Dawn is narrated by Bruce Menzies and the cast includes Rosemary Webster, Gordon Glenwright from The Young Doctors, Tom Farley, Nellie Lamport from Blue Hills, Diana Davidson, and Moya O’Sullivan from Neighbours.

Oasis of Shalimar, adapted for radio by Allan Trevor from another novel by F.J. Thwaites, is a thrilling saga about a man who found love in two worlds. Kent Richards (James Condon) is a brilliant young doctor of science who is invited to undertake a vital research project by Professor Anson (Moray Powell) of the New Zealand Council of Scientific Research. Kent will be required to head to the desert near Bundi in India to study rock formations in search of a mysterious element known as KR4. This fabled element is urgently needed by the Western Allies so that they can stay ahead of the Russians in the atomic arms race meaning that they can guarantee their plan of world peace.

Unable to knock back this career defining assignment Kent will put his marriage on the line because his wife has held a deep-seated hatred of India since her twin brother was killed in a native uprising in Calcutta some years previously. When he travels to India alone will a lonely Kent become embroiled in a strange romance when he encounters a notoriously cold-hearted Frenchwoman called Marie De Mettre (Sheila Sewell) who ignores her own kind and despises all whites due to her hideous treatment in a German concentration camp during the Second World War. Will months of back breaking toil in the desert heat in search of KR4 prove successful, and will Kent’s mission be cut short when he’s savagely attacked by a tiger.

Other performers appearing in Oasis of Shalimar include Lola Brooks, Vivienne Lincoln and Ngaire Thompson.

You can order The Case of the Purple Cow, Out of the Dawn, and Oasis of Shalimar on CD, USB or as digital downloads from the Grace Gibson website.

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