Richmond Hill (TV series)

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Richmond Hill is an Australian television soap opera made in 1988 by the Reg Grundy Organisation for the Ten Network. It was devised by Reg Watson who also created Neighbours. It first aired as a two hour episode on Network 10 at 7.30pm Wednesday 27th January 1988.

The series was set in a small Australian country town and most of the scenes revolved around the local police station and the pub. The cast was made up of experienced soap actors such as Maggie Kirkpatrick, Amanda Muggleton, Paula Duncan and Gwen Plumb and young beginners like Ashley Paske and Emily Symons. Former comedy star Ross Higgins played the central role of the local police officer and family man Dan Costello.

Richmond Hill, which was broadcast in an early evening timeslot as two one-hour episodes each week, was only a lukewarm success in the Australian ratings, and was cancelled after only one year. Coincidentally, the series was axed during the very same week that it debuted on British television, having been sold to the ITV network.

The UK's ITV networked the show in the Wednesday and Thursday 2.00pm slot from autumn 1988. Soon after its debut Central Television and Granada Television chose to break away from the network screenings. Central fell behind the rest of the network while Granada chose to screen A Country Practice in the Thursday slot instead. The series was dropped by Granada just after other regions had ended it. Granada eventually resumed the series on Sundays at 2.00pm in mid 1991 playing it out to the end. Yorkshire Television broke away from the network for the final episode in summer 1989 and screened it on a Friday whereas all other 11 regions screened it on the following Wednesday. The majority of regions resumed A Country Practice as it's replacement.