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Hunter (Australian Crawfords TV series)

 

 
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Hunter (Australian Crawfords TV series)
 
 
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Hunter was an Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
n espionage
Espionage

Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secrecy or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information....
 adventure television series
Television program

A television program , television programme , or television show is something that people watch on television. It may be a one-off broadcast or, more usually, part of a periodically recurring television series....
 screened by the Nine Network
Nine Network

The Nine Network, or Channel Nine, is an Australian Television broadcasting in Australia based in Willoughby, New South Wales, a suburb on the North Shore of Sydney....
 from 5 July 1967 to 1969. The series was created by Ian Jones
Ian Jones (author)

Ian Jones is an author specialising in the history of Australia's notorious outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang. Jones and his wife Bronwyn Binns created a portrayal of Ned Kelly and his associates when they produced the mini-series, The Last Outlaw, which was shown in 1980....
 and produced by Crawford Productions
Crawford Productions

Crawford Productions is an Australian television production company founded by Hector Crawford, and now owned by the WIN Corporation.The company generally had a reputation for higher quality productions than its nearest rival, the Reg Grundy Organisation....
 .

The title character, a dashing spy, was played by Tony Ward
Tony Ward (Australian actor)

Tony Ward was an Australian television actor and current affairs reporter. He is regarded as Australian television's original action star, on Hunter , and was an inaugural reporter on two national current affairs programs, Seven Days and A Current Affair....
. However he was quickly overshadowed by the show's main antagonist
Antagonist

An antagonist is a character or group of characters, or, always an institution of a happening who represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend....
, Kragg, played by Gerard Kennedy
Gerard Kennedy (actor)

Gerard Kennedy is an Australian actor and two-time Gold Logie winner. He is known for starring in classic Australian television shows Hunter , Division 4 and Against the Wind in the 1960s and 70s....
, the show's breakout character
Breakout character

A breakout character is a fictional character in different episodes, books or other media that evolves from a minor role to a major role, sometimes but not always becoming the main character of the show....
. Kennedy won a TV Week Logie Award
Logie Award

The TV Week Logie Awards are the Television in Australia industry awards, which have been presented annually since 1959. Renamed by Graham Kennedy in 1960 after he won the first 'Star Of The Year' award , the name 'Logie' awards honors John Logie Baird a Scotland who invented the television as a practical medium....
 for Best New Talent for his portrayal of the character .

Scripts were written by Ian Jones and Terry Stapleton .






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Hunter was an Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
n espionage
Espionage

Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secrecy or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information....
 adventure television series
Television program

A television program , television programme , or television show is something that people watch on television. It may be a one-off broadcast or, more usually, part of a periodically recurring television series....
 screened by the Nine Network
Nine Network

The Nine Network, or Channel Nine, is an Australian Television broadcasting in Australia based in Willoughby, New South Wales, a suburb on the North Shore of Sydney....
 from 5 July 1967 to 1969. The series was created by Ian Jones
Ian Jones (author)

Ian Jones is an author specialising in the history of Australia's notorious outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang. Jones and his wife Bronwyn Binns created a portrayal of Ned Kelly and his associates when they produced the mini-series, The Last Outlaw, which was shown in 1980....
 and produced by Crawford Productions
Crawford Productions

Crawford Productions is an Australian television production company founded by Hector Crawford, and now owned by the WIN Corporation.The company generally had a reputation for higher quality productions than its nearest rival, the Reg Grundy Organisation....
 .

The title character, a dashing spy, was played by Tony Ward
Tony Ward (Australian actor)

Tony Ward was an Australian television actor and current affairs reporter. He is regarded as Australian television's original action star, on Hunter , and was an inaugural reporter on two national current affairs programs, Seven Days and A Current Affair....
. However he was quickly overshadowed by the show's main antagonist
Antagonist

An antagonist is a character or group of characters, or, always an institution of a happening who represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend....
, Kragg, played by Gerard Kennedy
Gerard Kennedy (actor)

Gerard Kennedy is an Australian actor and two-time Gold Logie winner. He is known for starring in classic Australian television shows Hunter , Division 4 and Against the Wind in the 1960s and 70s....
, the show's breakout character
Breakout character

A breakout character is a fictional character in different episodes, books or other media that evolves from a minor role to a major role, sometimes but not always becoming the main character of the show....
. Kennedy won a TV Week Logie Award
Logie Award

The TV Week Logie Awards are the Television in Australia industry awards, which have been presented annually since 1959. Renamed by Graham Kennedy in 1960 after he won the first 'Star Of The Year' award , the name 'Logie' awards honors John Logie Baird a Scotland who invented the television as a practical medium....
 for Best New Talent for his portrayal of the character .

Scripts were written by Ian Jones and Terry Stapleton . The series became extremely popular rating in the top-ten most popular programs in Australia for 1967, and had a run of 65 one hour episodes; it also achieved a limited number of international sales . It was shot in black and white, with interior scenes shot on videotape
Videotape

Videotape is a means of recording images and sound onto magnetic tape as opposed to film stock.In most cases, a helical scan video head rotates against the moving tape to record the data in two dimensions, because video signals have a very high bandwidth, and static heads would require extremely high tape speeds....
 in the GTV-9
GTV-9

GTV is a television station in Melbourne, Australia owned by the Nine Network. It was the primary commercial television stations in Melbourne, and amongst the first to begin transmission in Australia....
 Richmond studio and outdoor scenes shot on location on 16 mm film
16 mm film

16 mm film refers to a popular, economical film gauge of film used for motion pictures and non-theatrical film making. 16 mm refers to the width of the film....
 . Compared to Australian drama series of the day, the series featured an above-average quota of location-shot action footage and a sophisticated jazz score by Frank Smith. The Melbourne-based show filmed some episodes in Sydney
Sydney

Sydney is the List of cities in Australia by population in Australia, with a metropolitan area population of approximately 4.34 million . It is the List of Australian capital cities of New South Wales, and was the site of the first British Empire colony in Australia....
 and the Snowy Mountains
Snowy Mountains

The Snowy Mountains, known informally as "The Snowies", are the highest Australia mountain range and contain the Australian mainland's highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko, which reaches 2,228 metres Australian Height Datum....
 in New South Wales
New South Wales

New South Wales is Australia's oldest and most populous States and territories of Australia, located in the south-east of the country, north of Victoria and south of Queensland....
, on the Gold Coast, Queensland
Gold Coast, Queensland

The Gold Coast is a city and Local Government Areas of Australia in the South East Queensland corner of Queensland, Australia. It is the second most populous city in the state and the List of cities in Australia by population in the country....
, in South Australia
South Australia

South Australia is a States and territories of Australia of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories....
, and in Singapore
Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country microstate located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. It lies 137 kilometres north of the equator, south of the Malaysian state of Johor and north of Indonesia's Riau Islands....
 .

Initially the stories were serialised over three and four-episode story arcs. Soon the decision was made to switch to stand-alone episodes, and after episode 15, episodes largely featured a self-contained story, apart from two subsequent two-part stories .

As the series progressed the immense popularity of the villain Kragg presented several problems. Apart from apparently being more popular amongst viewers than the show's title character, in the stories the villain invariably had to defeat the ostensible hero in order to still be around for the next episode . In a concession to the character's popularity, Kragg ultimately defected to the side of good. Series star Tony Ward had been somewhat dissatisfied with the direction his character was taking and the increased emphasis on Kragg, and late in the show's run suggested that the high output of episodes by this stage had outstripped the ability of the writers .

Late in the show's run and after some disagreements with the show's producers, Ward left the series to pursue movie options and a new lead spy portrayed by Rod Mullinar
Rod Mullinar

Rod Mullinar is an actor, noted for his roles on Australian television.He took a regular leading role in Hunter late in the show's run in 1968, however he appeared in just eight episodes due to the cancellation of the series....
 was introduced. Mullinar completed just eight episodes of the series before it was cancelled. Keen to retain the services of Kennedy, Crawford's decided that new police series Division 4
Division 4

Division 4 was an Australian police procedural television series made by Crawford Productions for the Nine Network between 1969 and 1975 for 301 episodes....
 was a better vehicle for his talents; they convinced the Nine Network to cancel Hunter and proceed with Division 4, which indeed emerged as a popular success . Mullinar subsequently took the lead role in another Crawford's adventure series Ryan
Ryan (TV series)

Ryan was an Australian adventure television program screened by the Seven Network from 27 May 1973. The series was produced by Crawford Productions and had a run of 39 one hour episodes ....
 (1973).

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