The Big Day (film)

"The Big Day"
Shell Presents episode
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 5
Directed by Rod Kinnear
Teleplay by John Ford
Original air date 11 July 1959 (Melbourne, live)
25 July 1959 (Sydney, taped)
Running time 60 mins

The Big Day is an Australian television film, or rather a live television play, which aired in 1959. The fifth episode of the Shell Presents presentations of standalone television dramas, it originally aired 11 July 1959 on Melbourne station GTV-9, a video-tape was made of the broadcast and shown on Sydney station ATN-7 on 25 July 1959 (this was prior to the formation of the Nine Network and Seven Network).[1]

Shell Presents was a monthly series presenting locally produced television dramas and comedies. Most of these were adaptations of overseas dramas such as Johnny Belinda and One Bright Day, but a few were locally-written.

Archival status of the program is unknown.

Plot

The last day at work of Hector Skeats, a costing clerk in a city office, who is rewiting after many years. He is a father of two, a girl in her early twenties and a boy in his late teens. When his retirement is officially recognised by his boss, his son is arrested.[2]

Cast

Production

The play was written by John Ford, a Sydney journalist.[3]

It was the second original Australian episode of Shell Presents, following They Were Big, They Were Blue, They Were Beautiful. That play had come third in a Shell-sponsored competition for new Australian TV plays. Ford wrote The Big Day for this competition but was unable to submit it in time. However it was picked up for production. His writing style was compared with Paddy Chayefsky but Ford said, "I wasn't conscious of writing in any particular style when I started the play. All I have tried to do is portray a day in the life of an extremely ordinary little bloke, the kind of person who lives a dull existence from one week to the next."[4]

Reception

The TV critic for the Woman's Weekly called it "beautifully done, well acted and produced... an hour of very real and moving entertainment. All the Australians in it were just ordinary people, not the usual well-known theatrical Australian types but the kind of people you'd find any- where in the world."[5]

The critic for the Sydney Morning Herald thought the play demonstrated "television 's ability to make dramatic entertainment of undramatic people and events... except for about 45 seconds of gross overstatement in the middle of the play, and a sentimental twist at the end which weakens its main argument" the main conflict was "cleverly conducted and neatly contrived". He thought Kinnear's "direction was generally efficient, and, in one or two scenes and the opening documentary titles, more imaginative than in some previous unlively live productions."[6]

Valda Marshall of the same paper liked it so much that two years later she said the play "has remained pretty much par for the course for Australian TV drama ever since".[7]

Ford later sold the play to Italian and British TV.[8]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "TV Guide". The Age. 9 July 1959. p. 15.
  2. ↑ "Local plays capture big audiences". Sydney Morning Herald. 20 July 1959. p. 19.
  3. ↑ Scully, Gary (12 January 2007). "Whitlam adviser and high-flyer John Ford, 1926-2006". Sydney Morning Herald.
  4. ↑ Marshall, Val (14 June 1959). "TV Merry Go Round". Sydney Morning Herald. p. 70.
  5. ↑ "Good telecasts make TV real magic box". The Australian Women's Weekly. 27, (10). Australia, Australia. 12 August 1959. p. 58. Retrieved 1 March 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  6. ↑ "Aust. Play On ATN". Sydney Morning Herald. 27 July 1959. p. 5.
  7. ↑ Marshall, Valda (23 April 1961). "TV Merry Go Round". p. 84.
  8. ↑ Marshall, Valda (10 December 1961). "TV Merry Go Round". Sydney Morning Herald. p. 86.
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