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person or book cover
Script cover page (Crawford Collection at the AFI Research Collection)
form y separately published work icon You Wouldn't Believe Me single work   film/TV   crime  
Issue Details: First known date: 1977... 1977 You Wouldn't Believe Me
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'When Detective Sergeant Ralph Blakely returns to Russell Street, he finds the red carpet is laid out by everyone except his old adversary, Bluey Hills. Monica and Gary are not alone in believing Bluey's condemnation of the man totally unfounded and bordering on petty, professional jealousy. Bluey finds himself without support in his vendetta against Blakely.

'Blakely is assigned to the Vice Squad at his own request and starts an incredible clean-up campaign on the massage parlours until Bluey interferes - preventing an arrest and getting into serious trouble with the Assistant Commissioner.

'In order to win Bluey's respect, Blakely helps Department B catch an escapee. Bluey returns the favour by transferring Gary to Blakely's department as it seems that Gary is much more interested in the Vice Squad's activities than those of Department B.

'Bluey continues his investigations into Blakely and discovers there is an organization which has Blakely in a stranglehold. In his attempts to foil the organization's plans, Bluey's own life is at risk.'

Source: Synopsis held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection (RMIT).


The script held in the Crawford Collection in the AFI Research Collection contains the following character notes (excluding regular characters):

'DETECTIVE SERGEANT RALPH WINSTON BLAKELY: 35 years old. Handsome, charming. Should have been a film star, not a policeman. But he can turn this charm on and off like a tap. If you looked a little deeper behind this facade, you would find the sparkling overbright personality of a junkie. He should be a love/hate personality with us feeling genuinely sorry for him in the end. Must drive.

'JAMES R. RANKIN: 45 years old. Looks a respectable businessman, perhaps a little hard but that's business. He is a user of people and will go to any length to achieve the power he wants.

'ALICE COLLINS: 40. A friendly "Madam", been through the mill but it hasn't hardened her heart. She likes Bluey a lot and realises that police have their job to do.

'LESLEY ARNOLD GREEN: 30. An escaped convict, perhaps ten cents short in the dollar. A born loser.

'SANDY, JENNY, PAMELA: Young, sexy, massage parlour girls.

'TRUCKIE: Typical rough diamond.

'ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER'S DRIVER: Stiff upper lip type.

'THREE POLICEMAN EXTRAS:'.

Notes

  • This entry has been compiled from archival research in the Crawford Collection (AFI Research Collection), undertaken by Dr Catriona Mills under the auspices of the 2012 AFI Research Collection (AFIRC) Research Fellowship.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

      1977 .
      person or book cover
      Script cover page (Crawford Collection at the AFI Research Collection)
      Extent: 71p.
      (Manuscript) assertion
      Note/s:
      • The script is labelled 'Code 11526' and 'Episode No. Nineteen' on the cover page, though it aired as episode twenty.
      • Unlike most of the Bluey scripts held in the Crawford Collection, this is not an original script; it is a copy made on yellow paper.
      • The script shows no signs of annotation.

      • The file includes the following ancillary material, access to which is restricted:

        1. Cast list.

      Holdings

      Held at: AFI Research Collection
      Local Id: SC BLU : 20
      Note:
      AFI Research Collection record
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Crawford Productions , 1977 .
      Extent: 47 min. 49 secs (according to the script)p.
      Series: form y separately published work icon Bluey Robert Caswell , Vince Moran , Everett de Roche , James Wulf Simmonds , Tom Hegarty , Gwenda Marsh , Colin Eggleston , David Stevens , Peter A. Kinloch , Keith Thompson , Gregory Scott , Peter Schreck , Denise Morgan , Monte Miller , Ian Jones , John Drew , David William Boutland , Jock Blair , Melbourne : Crawford Productions Seven Network , 1976 Z1815063 1976 series - publisher film/TV crime detective

      According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian Television Series, Bluey (and its Sydney-based rival, King's Men) 'constituted an attempt to revive the police genre after the cancellations of Homicide, Division 4 and Matlock Police'.

      Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, summarises the program as follows:

      Bluey is a maverick cop who breaks every stereotype image. He drinks, smokes and eats to excess, and therefore is rather large, but it is his unusual investigative methods that set him apart. He has bent or broken every rule in the book at some stage, to the point where no-one else wants to work with him. But he gets results, and is therefore too valuable to lose, so the powers-that-be banish him to the basement of Russell Street Police Headquarters where he is set up in his own department, a strategem that keeps him out of the way of other cops.

      Moran adds that 'Grills, Diedrich and Nicholson turned in solid performances in the series and the different episodes were generally well paced, providing engaging and satisfying entertainment.'

      The program sold well overseas, especially in the United Kingdom. But though it rated well domestically, it was not the success that the Seven Network had hoped for, and was cancelled after 39 episodes.

      Bluey had an unexpected revival in the early 1990s when selections from the video footage (over-dubbed with a new vocal track) were presented during the second series of the ABC comedy The Late Show as the fictional police procedural Bargearse. (The Late Show had given ABC gold-rush drama Rush the same treatment in series one.)

             Number in series: 20
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Last amended 29 May 2013 11:09:56
Graeme Arthur
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