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CARSON'S LAW
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- 1983-1984 - 184 x 60 minute episodes - produced
by Crawford Productions for Network Ten - |
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Contents
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Carson’s Law was a period
legal-drama designed as a vehicle for Lorraine Bayly,
former star of The Sullivans.
Created by Terry Stapleton, the show was produced by Crawford’s and was
certainly a class production, making it a somewhat strange choice of program
for Channel Ten to run. The channel, then run by Rupert Murdoch, had
generally aimed for a younger audience with its drama series, but clearly
understanding the following that Bayly retained
after her leading role in The Sullivans,
they judged this expensive and thoughtful new program to be a viable way to boost their ratings. Carson’s Law began on-air
in January 1983. The series was set in Melbourne in the 1920s and there was
great attention paid to the scripts, acting and sets, and to getting the period
detail right. MAIN
CHARACTERS
Bayly played Jennifer Carson, a modern-thinking mother of three children
and a former lawyer. Jennifer was married to William Carson (Jon Sidney), the
dashing oldest son of a wealthy family of lawyers, and had an uneasy
relationship with William’s bombastic and old-fashioned father Godfrey (Kevin
Miles). Godfrey ran his own legal practice, Carson and Carson, which employed
his sons. Godfrey had firm ideas on how women should behave, and disapproved
of Jennifer’s progressive ways. A widower who had remarried a much younger
woman, the elegant Felicity (Christine Amor),
Godfrey would emerge as the show’s primary character along-side Jennifer. Godfrey’s other
children, all adults, were the phlegmatic Robert (Ross Thompson), who was
married to snobbish social-climber Margery (Louise Pajo),
the raffish Thomas (Chris Orchard) a womanising cad
unable to concentrate properly on the legal studies he was coerced into
pursuing, and finally independent and beautiful daughter Amy (Christine
Harris), who also clashed with Godfrey over her free-spirited flapper ways. Dowdy Robert was bossed around by
both his father and his wife Margery, and was rarely able to stand up for
himself. Meanwhile the charismatic Thomas became a firm favourite
with viewers. Jennifer’s children,
who had only supporting roles in the series, were teenagers Billy (Greg
Caves) and music student Sarah (Melanie Oppenheimer), while Edward Upjohn
played Sam, her primary school aged youngest child. Gordon Glenwright played Jennifer’s jolly father Vic Brown, a
police constable nearing retirement. Apart from the legal
component there was also a heavy dash of Upstairs
Downstairs, with various servants and legal staffers given prominent
roles in the series. Godfrey’s ever-faithful but rather sinister butler
Gerard Kent was played by Noel Trevarthen while
Irene Inescort shone in the role of Jennifer’s
garrulous and rather bossy Irish housekeeper Eileen Brennan. Eileen would
eventually wind-up working in Godfrey’s household. Patrick Dickson played
Jennifer’s mild-mannered clerk Arthur Simpson, and he boarded with cheery
widow Esme Brooks (Marion Heathfield).
Mrs. Brooks also served as the loyal secretary at Carson and Carson. As the series began
the easy-going William, Godfrey’s favourite son,
was killed in a plane crash which saw Jennifer come out of retirement to complete
the “hopeless” case he was in the midst of defending. Subsequent to this she
was forced to begin practising law again to pay
back the
large sums of money that, it was claimed, William had embezzled from the
company. With a stream of hopeless
cases, cases the generous William favoured in
defiance of his father, Jennifer certainly had a lot of work, despite her
firm belief that someone else had taken the money. This construct brought
Jennifer and Godfrey into battle many times, sometimes in the courtroom. The series
frequently challenged accepted beliefs and explored social issues through the
court cases it presented. Early in the show’s run popular actress Julieanne Newbould guested as a single girl who fell pregnant. Because of
the morals of the day unwed mothers were ostracised
while abortions were illegal, forcing the girl to seek a highly dangerous
backyard abortion. Flamboyant
American-born actor and entertainer John O’May
later appeared in the prominent role of John Kendall, an up-and-coming solicitor
at Carson and Carson whose career was ruined when proof emerged that he was a
homosexual. This revelation led to his being disowned by his family,
imprisoned, and subjected to a humiliating court battle. A later case
involved the rape of a naïve young girl whose prior
sexual experiences were brought before the court, “proving” that she had invited
the advances. All these cases, while providing courtroom suspense, also
allowed a thoughtful exploration of the issues involved. Jennifer generally
remained forgiving and tolerant while Godfrey stuck steadfastly to the
old-fashioned conservative view, with the other characters falling at various
points between these two poles. While ostensibly a historical drama, the
issues explored were frequently relevant to 1980s audiences too. The producers of the
series faced an early dilemma when William’s death provoked a storm of
protest from the show’s shocked fans. The demise of the charming and
easy-going oldest Carson son was designed as the catalyst for some of the
show’s main on-going storylines such as the difficult relationship between
Godfrey and Jennifer, Jennifer’s financial woes and her struggling to clear
William’s besmirched name, and Robert being unwillingly propelled into a more
prominent position within the family and the family business. The death had
been screened very early in the show’s run and no sneaky clauses such as
missing bodies or unidentified remains had been employed; clearly William was
meant to
die. Nevertheless the character had proved so popular and the protest so
strong that the writers were tempted to concoct a way of bringing Jon Sidney
back somehow - a long-lost son perhaps. Certainly he couldn’t return as
William as he had been confirmed dead and this would have ruined the planned
future storylines of the series. Of course such
far-fetched ideas were totally foreign to the Crawford’s product and
ultimately the writers had to face the fact that viewers would probably not
have accepted the return, so William never was reincarnated. Jon Sidney, who
had played assorted roles in Australian film and television drama prior to Carson’s Law, seemingly missed his big break in showbiz
by taking the role of the character destined to die. Though he would continue
to take guest roles on TV programs such as Prisoner,
the outpourings over his premature death in Carson’s Law remained his closest brush with fame. The series was
certainly well written and somehow managed to mingle the large and disparate
cast of regular characters with the week’s guest characters and particular
storyline quite successfully. There was certainly a wide range of stories
explored by the series given that at any time we might be dealing with a
school drama of Sarah’s, a marital squabble between the childless Robert and
Margery, a big legal case with Godfrey and Jennifer opposing one another in
court, a romance with an “unsuitable” man for Amy, and tensions between
Felicity and Thomas caused the illicit attraction he had for his new
step-mother. As was Crawford’s way, the interior scenes, generally set in
sumptuous Victorian style offices and residences, were shot on videotape,
while outdoor scenes and location work was on film. Spectacular Melbourne
mansions were featured heavily, as were vintage cars, and there was
always a stream of fancy ladies’ hats, elegant dresses and authentic costumes
for viewers to admire. SERIES
FORMAT
Two one-hour
episodes aired each week. In Melbourne the show screened at 7.30 pm Tuesday
and Thursday evenings, and on both nights was followed by Prisoner
at 8.30 pm. The two episodes of any given week formed a self-contained
narrative block; new guest characters and the week’s particular storyline
were introduced in the first episode of the week, things would be brought to
a dramatic cliffhanger at the end of that episode, and the story would be
resolved in the week’s second episode. Usually the story in hand was a legal
drama or some sort, though this was not always the case, and there was also
often a particular sub-plot introduced for the two episodes as well. Alongside the
week’s self-contained stories there would be assorted on-going story threads
concerning the show’s regular characters. In this way the series could be
considered as a soap opera, and it was certainly not possible to screen the
episodes out of order due the ongoing component of the script. REVAMP
The show was a
success in Melbourne, but not in Sydney. In an attempt to attract more Sydney
viewers the writers had added a major but somewhat incongruous Sydney-based
storyline involving Robert, Margery and Amy. However this failed to change
the show’s fortunes and so, after eighteen months on air, more drastic
measures were employed. The show underwent a dramatic revamp with many subsidiary
characters abruptly written out of the series and a new range of racy new
plotlines introduced in an attempt to attract more viewers. This included an
increased emphasis on Thomas, with storylines involving his gambling and mob
connections, along with a long-running Jack the Ripper style serial killer storyline
in which he was implicated. Jennifer’s three
children, her father, and her legal clerk were dispensed with as part of this
reshuffle, while Amy Carson departed as a result of Christine Harris’s
decision to leave the series. Marion Heathfield was
also written out of the series and her secretary character was replaced by a
sexy new version played by Constance Lansberg, and
added to the Carson’s household staff was fiery Spanish servant Carlos
Sanchez, played by Tony Alvarez, who clashed frequently with Eileen. THE END
The show lasted
another six months in this new incarnation. Unfortunately the bold new
storylines failed to attract new viewers and succeeded only in alienating
many of the show’s existing fans, and in late 1984 the show was not
renewed. The show’s Melbourne ratings remained healthy enough and it remained
in its usual 7.30 pm timeslot to play out the remaining episodes. The series
ended after 184 one hour episodes, and the closing storylines, which screened
at the end of 1984, brought the story to a dramatic conclusion. While purists
who disliked the flashier revamped version of the show would have found
little joy in the explosive finale, many major plot threads, including the
true identity of the mystery embezzler, were finally resolved. |
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Page originally uploaded June 2000 Last updated 21 June 2008 |
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