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Sons and Daughters (Australian TV series)
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Sons and Daughters was a Logie Award winning Australian soap opera created by Reg Watson and produced by the Reg Grundy Organisation. It screened on the Seven Network in an early evening timeslot, running from December 1981 until 1987. The series commenced in Melbourne with the first three episodes screened in a 90 minute format on Monday, 18 January, 1982 at 7pm. A repeat run on the Seven Network in Australia ran in October 2006 but ended in March 2007; however beginning from July 2008 it has started up again, picking up where it left off every Thursday night at around midnight.
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Encyclopedia
Sons and Daughters was a Logie Award winning Australian soap opera created by Reg Watson and produced by the Reg Grundy Organisation. It screened on the Seven Network in an early evening timeslot, running from December 1981 until 1987. The series commenced in Melbourne with the first three episodes screened in a 90 minute format on Monday, 18 January, 1982 at 7pm. A repeat run on the Seven Network in Australia ran in October 2006 but ended in March 2007; however beginning from July 2008 it has started up again, picking up where it left off every Thursday night at around midnight. A DVD marking the 25th Anniversary of Sons and Daughters was released in October 2006.
Love and laughter
The initial premise introduced handsome working-class John Palmer (Peter Phelps) from Melbourne who, while on the run for murder, moved to Sydney and fell in love with defiant rich girl Angela Hamilton (Ally Fowler). It was soon learned that John and Angela were in fact brother and sister, twins who were separated at birth and raised separately. John had initially been raised by the wise former prostitute Fiona Thompson (Pat McDonald) before returning to his father, and Angela raised by her mother who had married into money.
The parents of the twins had each married other people and raised families which at the time the series started had other adult children. In Melbourne the Palmer family comprised John's father David (Tom Richards), a truck driver; David's wife Beryl (Leila Hayes), a warm-hearted, down-to-earth housewife. Their children together were Susan (Ann Henderson-Stiers) and Kevin (Stephen Comey), who were both engaged. Susan to Bill Todd (Andrew McKaige) and Kevin to Lynn Hardy (Antonia Murphy). Bill had committed the murder for which John was accused. John was soon cleared and Bill convicted.
In Sydney Angela had grown up with her mother Patricia (Rowena Wallace), Patricia's husband Gordon (Brian Blain) who was a successful businessman, and Gordon's son from an earlier marriage, the spiteful Wayne (Ian Rawlings). Other original characters were Jill Taylor (Kim Lewis), a young former prostitute who lived with Fiona and Rosie Andrews (Anne Haddy), the Hamiltons' housekeeper.
Subsequent new characters who would emerge as major players in the series included Barbara Armstrong (Cornelia Frances) who married Gordon after his divorce from Patricia, and Barbara's niece Amanda Morrell (Alyce Platt). Patricia's best friend, the dizzy socialite Charlie Bartlett (Sarah Kemp), was introduced as a minor figure during the show's early months as someone Patricia could recite expository dialogue about her latest scheme to, but soon emerged as a key character. Andy Green (Danny Roberts), the long-lost son of Barbara's former husband Roland (Tony Ward), also became a key character in the series, and Charlie and Andy would continue through to the final episode. Other notable characters to arrive during the show's middle period were Rob Keegan (Noel Hodda), who married Angela, Dr. Irene Fisher (Judy Nunn) who became a close friend of Fiona Thompson, Patricia's estranged sister Margaret Dunne (Ilona Rodgers) and Terry Hansen (Andrew Clarke), a drifter who turned out to be Fiona's long-lost son and who, in a highly controversial storyline, raped Jill but was still treated in the scripts as a sympathetic character after a spell in prison.
Storylines explored the romantic entanglements of the various characters, various instances of family instability linked to the breakdowns of both David and Patricia's marriages after they renewed their love affair, and the big-business intrigue surrounding Gordon's company. The series also widened its focus by introducing two more families such as the rest of Barbara Hamilton's clan including her brother and Amanda's father Stephen Morrell (Michael Long), who married Patricia, and their elderly but formidable mother Dee (Mary Ward) and the working-class O'Briens - Mike (Ken James), Heather (Rona Coleman), Katie (Jane Seaborn) and Jeff (Craig Morrison) - written into the show as next door neighbours to the Palmers. Sons and Daughters was highly successful for several years and many of the cast became major television stars through their roles in the show.
Pat The Rat
The show's most famous character was the neurotic antagonist Patricia, played by Rowena Wallace. Dubbed "Pat the Rat", the character became a major cult figure through her bitchiness and scheming. Wallace decided to leave the series after a little over three years in the part, and in 1985 she won a Gold Logie for the role just as her final episodes were being transmitted. Patricia fled to Rio de Janeiro to escape a murder charge after tangling with shady businessman Roger Carlyle (Leslie Dayman) and his son Luke (Peter Cousens).
Attempts to mitigate against the loss of Patricia saw the introduction of new strong female characters including Karen Fox (Lyndel Rowe), David Palmer's duplicitous but troubled niece Leigh (Lisa Crittenden), and Caroline Morrell (Abigail), the ex-wife of Stephen and Amanda's mother. All were conceived as abrasive replacements for Patricia, but Karen was soon killed off (thrown off a small bridge at the end of the Hamilton's driveway at Dural) and Caroline's character was softened.
Such was the popularity of Patricia, the producers of the show took the unusual step of recasting the role, with former The Box star Belinda Giblin stepping into the part. The writers explained the new facial features as being the result of extensive plastic surgery, and even made it a focal point of Patricia's return: calling herself Alison Carr, Patricia returned to Sydney after several months in South America to exact revenge on all her enemies, who would not know who they were dealing with. Milking the story for all it was worth, simultaneous with Patricia's return, David travelled to Rio de Janeiro to search for her. He brought back a timid woman, Sarah Hunt (Christine James), who had recently had plastic surgery and who was suffering from amnesia, believing that she was Patricia. She tried to come to terms with her "villainous" past, but soon vanished once it was learned she was not actually Patricia.
Tears and sadness and happiness
The later years of Sons and Daughters saw regular cast reshuffles occur, with the departures of long-running characters like Barbara Hamilton, Jill Taylor, Irene Fisher and Amanda Morrell and the demise of unsuccessful cast additions such as the O'Brien family. New characters were brought into the show, such as Amanda's younger sister Samantha (Sally Tayler), Charlie Bartlett's long-lost son Adam Tate (Adam Briscomb), elderly rascal Arthur "Spider" Webb (Willie Fennell), Jenny Turner (Joanna Lockwood), a new love interest for Stephen Morrell after he had divorced Patricia, Gordon's wayward brother James Hamilton (Nick Tate) and Mary Reynolds (Tessa Humphries), a vulnerable young woman claiming to be the long-lost daughter of Patricia.
They in turn were written out to make way for handsome hunk Glen Young (Mark Conroy), teenager Craig Maxwell (Jared Robinson) and his girlfriend Debbie Halliday (Shannon Kenny), Fiona's puritanical niece Janice Reid (Rima Te Wiata), May Walters (Georgie Sterling), an old friend of Fiona's from her days as a brothel madam, Ginny Doyle (Angela Kennedy), a vivacious young fashion designer, and businessman Doug Fletcher (Normie Rowe), who became a love interest for Caroline Morrell. After a long absence the character of Susan Palmer was written back into the series, now played by Oriana Panozzo, and she played a key role in many of the later storylines, marrying the increasingly evil Wayne but carrying a torch for Glen.
As the series progressed, increasingly melodramatic and bizarre storylines were explored, and the cliffhanger situations became more and more ostentatious. Storylines made repeated use of such elements as long-lost children and siblings, lookalike impostors, blindness, mistaken paternity, amnesia, murder plots and suicides. End of episode cliffhanger situations included a bomb-in-a-wheelchair, a character falling down a well, a character falling down a cliff, and a plane crash.
As ratings went into decline Rowena Wallace was lured back to the series for a ten week return, and there was much press speculation as to how the writers would pull this off. It transpired that Patricia was in fact an identical twin, and the returning Rowena would play the new character of Patricia's long-lost twin sister Pamela Hudson. Pamela was introduced into the series as having been released from prison and in true convoluted Sons and Daughters style, turned out to have some long-lost children of her own - Greg (Tom Jennings) and Sarah (Melissa Docker). Unfortunately this return appearance did little to halt the show's dwindling popularity and the series was cancelled while Rowena was taping her scenes.
When the series finished in 1987 the characters of Fiona, Wayne, Beryl, Gordon, Andy, Charlie, Caroline and Alison remained. David Palmer who had departed after five years in the show returned for the final episode. The various characters get their deserved happy endings or comeuppances and the series ends as it began with a young couple arriving at Fiona’s house asking for help, with the pregnant girl giving birth to twins.
Cliffhangers
During the original Australian transmission run of Sons and Daughters, the series left the air each year with a suitably suspenseful cliffhanger that rivalled even the excesses of Dallas and Dynasty. They are, in order:
- 1982 season: David stops Patricia from going to John and Angela's joint 21st birthday party at the Palmers' house, and Patricia taunts him with the bombshell that he isn't the twins' father after all. (Episode 174).
- 1983 season: David and Beryl are held at gunpoint at Woombai (the Hamiltons' country estate) by escaped criminal Joe Parker (Danny Adcock). The other cliffhangers are Patricia and Margaret coming face to face for the first time since Margaret was released from prison, Patricia telling Barbara that her best Friend Helen Green is Andy's mother and Fiona rushing to a clinic to stop Jill having an abortion (Episode 352)
- 1984 season: A sedated, helpless Patricia lies on a hospital operating table, about to be operated on by murderous surgeon Dr. Ross Newman (Robin Stewart). The other cliffhangers is Fiona about to give an answer to Barney Adam's marriage proposal and Mitch faking his own death following a confrontation with both Karen and Wayne. (Episode 528)
- 1985 season: David and Beryl look on in horror when Doris Hudson (Carole Skinner), the emotionally unbalanced and jealous housekeeper of her boyfriend Rod Campbell (David Bradshaw), locks Beryl out of the Palmer house and advances menacingly towards her baby son Robert with a pillow to smother him, whilst Alison and James are involved in a plane crash as they rush to stop Wayne from getting (incestuously) married to Mary. Meanwhile Caroline is locked in the cupboard by Duncan Phipps after a bungled robbery at Dural and Irene (Judy Nunn) tells Fiona that she has cancer. (Episode 696)
- 1986 season: Alison is locked in the study at Dural with a venomous snake when she breaks into the safe , while a sailing trip on a yacht ends in danger when both Glen and “Tick” McCarthy (Haydon Samuels), a young boy being fostered by Wayne, are wounded, and Wayne, swimming for help, is pursued by a shark. Meanwhile Craig is knocked out by a horse and Caroline finds out that Doug is already "married" (Episode 868).
Credits sequence
The opening and end credits sequences of the series were distinctive. The credits at start of each episode featured sepia-toned portraits of the main characters. The end credits sequence was also in sepia tone; as each episode reached the end-of-episode cliffhanger the screen image went into a freeze-frame and faded to sepia tone as the popular theme song played and the credits rolled.
The theme tune was eventually released in the UK as a single.
Sons and Daughters : Cast album
In the early-'80s, when Australia's Seven Network was broadcasting both Sons and Daughters and A Country Practice, it decided to cash in on the shows' success - and provide the shows with some publicity - by producing and releasing a cast album.
The album was called 'All My Friends', and featured the cast of Sons and Daughters on the A-side and the cast of A Country Practice on the B-side.
A-Side:
1. Sons and Daughters Theme
2. Some Kind of Friend (Ian Rawlings)
3. Bosom Buddies (Pat McDonald and Rowena Wallace)
4. The More I See You (Peter Phelps and Kim Lewis)
5. Behind Closed Doors (Tom Richards and Leila Hayes)
6. Sometimes When We Touch (Stephen Comey)
7. Help Me Make It Through the Night (Leila Hayes)
8. Friends (Rowena Wallace)
International and cult success
Starting in the early 1980s the series was broadcast in various regions of the UK, usually in daytime slots. The series had debuted on different dates in different regions and was broadcast at varying rates, meaning that its storylines were not concurrent between different UK ITV companies, with as much as over 6 years' difference between different regions of the UK.
Through the 1990s the programme was also repeated in various regions of Australia, usually in early morning and daytime slots. A rerun of the series up to the 1985 season ran until December 2000 on Australian television. The full series was also shown by pay-TV operator Foxtel on the UK.TV Channel in the late 1990s.
Between 1992 and 1996, the programme was repeated on the UK satellite channel UK Gold. It screened from its launch on November 1st 1992, and completed its run on July 15th 1996. It was shown at 8am and 12midday for the entire repeat screening.
Between 1998 and 2005 a repeat run of the series ran in the UK on Channel Five initially at 1:30 in th afternoon. It didn't prove popular in that timeslot - not surprising, as Home And Away was on ITV at 1 pm and Neighbours was on BBC 1 at 1:30 - they axed it and said it would not continue - but it did - at 5 am for an hour on weekend mornings with the final episode screened in November 2005. This last showing led to a resurgence of the series' cult popularity in the UK.
In October 2006 the series started another re-run on the Seven Network in Australia, weekdays at 10.00am. This was discontinued in early 2007, then resumed 10 July 2008 for a few months in a midnight slot. On 2 November 2008 the Seven Network resumed screening episodes, currently from from the end of season one, at the regular time of 12:30 Thursday nights.
ITV Regional Scheduling
Remakes
The series has inspired five remakes produced under license from the original producers and based, initially, on original story and character outlines. These are Verbotene Liebe (Germany, 1995- ); Skilda världar (Sweden, 1996-2002); Apagorevmeni agapi (Greece, 1998); Cuori Rubati (Italy, 2002-2003) Zabranjena ljubav (Croatia, 2004-2008).
DVD
Sons and Daughters - The Best of Pat The Rat - 2 Disc Set - Released 9th October 2006
- Episodes 001, 002, 003, 018, 027, 055, 124, 501, 536, 545, 631, 663, 693, 905, 912, 944
Sons and Daughters - The Classic Cliffhangers Collection - 2 Disc Set - Released 4th February 2008
- Episodes 174, 352, 353, 528, 529, 540, 696, 697, 868, 869, 971, 972
Umbrella Entertainment have confirmed that they are in planning stage to release the complete series
Long standing cast member Tom Richards, who played David Palmer, also released a DVD with interviews of fellow cast members in August 2007.
Success
Sons and Daughters won the 1983 Logie Award for Logie Award for Most Popular Australian Drama.
Rowena Wallace was the most nominated actress of the soap and was nominated for a Gold Logie Award for Most Popular Personality on Australian Television at the 26th Annual TV Week Logie Awards in 1984 and went on to win the award the following year in 1985. and hosts but not actors. She was the first woman to win the award since it was opened up to Most Popular Australian Personality.
Wallace also received Silver Logies for:
Most Popular Lead Actress (1983);
Most Popular Actress (1984);
Best Actress in a Series (1984) and
Best Lead Actress in a Series (1985).
External links
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