Contents
The Characters
Evaluation
Storylines
The Cast
The End and the Aftermath
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Many of Australia’s
big soap opera successes have struck out on their own and had their daring
and originality repaid with notoriety and conspicuous commercial success. Number 96 busted out in 1972 with naughty neighbours, bed-hopping marrieds
and nude glimpses while the just-as-naughty The Box was a cheeky satire set in a “fictional”
television station. Prisoner had crime, drama, pathos and old lags
inhabiting a women’s prison while Sons and Daughters featured melodrama, devious schemes and heart-rending
tragedy, and a neurotic heroine Patricia “Pat the Rat” Hamilton, played by
Rowena Wallace.
On the
other hand thoughtful and conscientious dramas such as A Country Practice have dished out social commentary in a
rustic, rural setting and generated critical and ratings success, while Australia has always had a cop show of some
sort, somewhere.
With this
wealth of tried-and-true formulas Richmond Hill was not hard-up for ideas. The
Grundy’s produced series was created by Reg “Prisoner”
Watson for Channel Ten and had its much-hyped premiere in January 1988.
Clearly
intended for an early-evening timeslot this is the show that tried to be
nice. Certainly it did not manage to be very original. Set in a quaint rural
community somewhere outside Sydney the basically lightweight serial threw in
a bit of everything: high drama and bedroom farce involving the scheming
real-estate agent Alderman Frank Hackett (Robert Alexander) and a tarty barmaid Connie Ryan (Amanda Muggleton),
an all-powerful female figure in the form of Ivy Hackett (Maggie
Kirkpatrick), lots devious schemes thought up by the bitchy Anne Costello
(Emily Symons), lashings of social commentary in the storylines of the crusty
Mum Foote (Gwen Plumb) - an opinionated oldster in overalls whose farm
provided a home for young runaways and assorted strays. And there was of course several bubbling romances amongst the twenty-something crowd that resided in
the area.
However
the most obvious borrowing was from Cop Shop. Though Richmond Hill may not have been, strictly
speaking, a police drama, the local police station was the scene of much of
the action, and the assorted cops took pride of place amongst the show’s cast
of characters. Former comedy star Ross Higgins was Dan Costello who took
charge of the police station and was the show’s main authority figure. Dan
was kept busy dealing with local crime waves, the wayward younger cops, and
his own wicked daughter Anne. He originally had a wife played by Rona
Coleman, though she died shortly after the show began. Dan later embarked on
a romance with a snippy police inspector played by Jan Kingsbury.
As the series
began authoritarian policeman Warren Bryant (Tim Elston)
moved in bringing with him earnest wife Janet (Paula Duncan) who suffered
depression stemming from an earlier rape. Despite the presence of a hunky
teenage son Marty (Ashley Paske) the Bryants and their endless family problems were Dull Dull Dull! Meanwhile Tim
Shannon (Robert Sampson) and Susan Miller (Felicity Soper)
were younger cops in the show who fought crime with aplomb and shared a flat where domestic squabbles and kitchen disasters
provided endless merriment. Finally Jill Warner (Dina Panozzo)
was an assertive young woman who had recently arrived to begin work as a real-estate agent. Jill
enjoyed a romantic affair with Tim.
In
evaluating Richmond Hill it must be remembered that it was
coined as a companion piece to Neighbours during that show’s early years
when it was a massive ratings success in Australia. Though initially a
flop on Channel Seven, Neighbours had been revamped when it was
picked-up by Channel
Ten. Several handsome youngsters were added to the cast, and by 1987 a series
of major publicity drives had turned the show into a ratings winner. The only
thing that amazed Australian television critics more than Neighbours’
high ratings in Australia
was the show’s incredible success in the UK. Clearly targeting this
lucrative market the makers of Richmond Hill were apparently trying to expand
on the successful Neighbours formula by taking bland and
inoffensive comedy subplots and mixing these elements with slightly gritty police-drama
and social-conscience style storylines reminiscent of the earlier Cop Shop and the then still-successful A Country Practice.
The most
interesting on-going storyline of Richmond Hill involved tarty
barmaid Connie Ryan, so well played by Amanda Muggleton,
who was remembered for her portrayal of Chrissie Latham in Prisoner.
Connie was a single woman who struggled to raise her teenage son Andrew (Marc
Gray). Always on the lookout for a generous sugar-daddy, Connie attempted to
enhance her sexy image by wearing short skirts and subtracting several years
from her age while insisting that Andrew was in fact her younger brother. No
one was very surprised when the facts of Andrew’s true parentage came out
after his first brush with the law. As anyone familiar with Amanda’s Prisoner
character would recognise, Connie could well have
been taken as a continuation of that show’s lascivious tart Chrissie Latham.
Both characters emerged as struggling single-mothers willing to use their
feminine wiles to secure a better life for herself and child, sometimes
employing underhanded methods. These methods might have attracted scorn from
some quarters, but ultimately the motivations were sincere.
Connie’s
early assignation with Frank Hackett ended in disaster when the police comically burst in on one
of their bedroom romps. She soon got over this embarrassment thanks to the
support of Mum Foote and friend Janet Bryant, though the relationship with
Andrew remained rocky.
Frank
Hackett died of poisoning 13 weeks into the show’s run. Widow Ivy, played by
Maggie Kirkpatrick, previously a huge star as the hated and corrupt prison
officer Joan Ferguson in Prisoner, gleefully crowned herself queen
of her mansion and took the reigns of Frank’s real-estate business with
relish. Though neighbourhood gossips whispered that Ivy may well have been the poisoner,
nothing was ever proved and she emerged as the show’s main heavy, though here
her overbearing manner was played more for comedy than terror.
Though
Australian soaps are notorious for the high rate of actor reuse amongst them,
most begin life with a cast largely made-up of unknowns - it is after the
show becomes a hit that the cast become stars who go on to make guest
appearances in subsequent soaps. This was not the case with Richmond Hill. This new show clearly tried to
secure success by casting several familiar actors in major roles. Gwen Plumb
had played the long-running role of kiosk-lady Ada
Simmons in The Young Doctors. Ross Higgins was well-known for comedies The Naked Vicar Show and Kingswood Country. Tim Elston
had appeared in Prisoner as Dr Scott Collins, in Neighbours
as ill-fated racing driver Jeremy Lord, and had taken a leading role as a
policeman in failed 1981 drama Bellamy. Amanda Muggleton
and Maggie Kirkpatrick were undoubtedly huge stars through their long-running
Prisoner roles. Paula Duncan was known for several leading soap roles
including Carol Finlayson in Number 96, Lisa Brooks in The Young Doctors and Lorelei Wilkinson in Prisoner,
while her portrayal of policewoman Danni Francis in Cop Shop had resulted in six acting awards and a taste of soap-superstardom for the pert and
pretty young actress.
Clearly
the casting directors wanted a host of familiar faces in this new show, along with a few major
soap opera stars. The move might not have drawn in the viewers as planned but
the actors involved, who may well have feared that typecasting would prevent
them from ever getting another acting job, remained eternally grateful.
With the
possible exception of placing the one-time Ted Bulpitt,
actor Ross Higgins, in a straight role as the show’s authority figure, Richmond Hill’s
major failing was that it was just too bland. It rated well enough to last
out the year in its early-evening timeslot, but when it came to the crunch
the network failed to renew the show for a second year. The show continued
unabated into the summer non-ratings period where the stockpiled episodes
were played out, and there the show quietly died. At the start of 1989
Network Ten launched E Street, a new, urban
based serial focusing on a new, funkier, batch of policemen, lawyers and
doctors, dealing with a more rugged (and more vibrant and colourful)
community of wayward youngsters.
Newcomer
Ashley Paske had a regular role in Neighbours
after Richmond Hill’s
demise but did not enjoy lasting fame. Another youngster, Emily Symons, went
straight into the long-running role of bouncy Marilyn in Home and Away. Symons would ultimately end up as a regular in another rural soap,
taking a long running role the UK’s Emmerdale. Dina Panozzo, who was one of the more
interesting cast members of Richmond Hill, made sporadic appearances in
television guest roles and acted in supporting roles in some Australian
feature films. Paula Duncan continued to play nice middle-class soap
heroines, while the show’s biggest talent, the versatile Amanda Muggleton, went on to become one of the biggest, and busiest, stars of
the Australian stage.
Though
never a big success in Australia
Richmond Hill was successfully sold to the UK,
a sale presumably helped by the presence of several former stars of Prisoner
plus Neighbours’ continued success there. As had been the
case in Australia, the
show’s UK
ratings matched the level of drama seen in the series and remained only lukewarm.
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