TV TIMES November 6, 1976

Nine consults Young Doctors for a TV tonic

While viewers are still convalescing from the medi-muddle, the Nine network is wheeling in what it considers to be the ultimate "medical benefit" - a home-grown doctor series.

Titled The Young Doctors, the new five-nights-a-week, half hour serial has its premiere on Monday, November 8, at 7.30pm in Sydney (TCN-9); Melbourne (GTV-9); and Brisbane (QTQ-9); and at 8.30pm on Tuesday, November 9, in Adelaide (NWS-9). In Adelaide the show will move to 8pm as the regular timeslot from Tuesday, November 16.

There have been - and still are - several overseas series using hospitals as a "backdrop" for drama, but The Young Doctors is the first Australian effort to get to air. About 18 months ago the Seven network looked as though they would achieve that distinction with their project, Casualty Ward. A pilot was made, but the action stopped there.

The Young Doctors moves straight in, forgoing the luxury of a pilot. Nine maintains that after discussions on the basic concept with the packagers of the show, Reg Grundy Productions, they had sufficient confidence in the venture to do just that.

"After all," said a Nine spokesman, "a serial is unlike any other program in that it takes time to establish characters and storyline. We've made a 13 week commitment, which would take us through January.

The serial centres on the lives of five young doctors who have joined the staff of a city hospital, the mythical Albert Memorial Hospital. Grundys, who have built a special set for The Young Doctors and have been turning out episodes behind closed doors for the past two months, describe the plot this way: "We follow their romances, conflicts and heartbreaks from the tension of the operating theatre to the relaxed atmosphere of the nearby disco/restaurant."

Playing the five interns are John Dommett, John Walton, Tim Page, Mark Holden and Peita Toppano. Their characters are different, one is ambitious; another over-confident and destined to make a tragic mistake; there is the playboy and the "naïve young female doctor who finds herself involved in emotional situations she cannot control."

Veteran actor Alfred Sandor is the high-society surgeon living above his means, and Michael Beecher is the hospital head. All are backed up by the nursing staff played by Cornelia Frances, Delvene Delaney, Margaret Nelson and Joanne Samuel. Also in the cast are Dave Gray, Gwen Plumb, Lyn James, Joanna Moore-Smith, Vivienne Benson-Young, Chris King and Iain Finlay.

On the surface the line-up appears to be a rather odd assortment of talent - apart from the obvious, half-dozen or so experienced actors, we have glamour girl Delvene Delaney, singer Mark Holden, comedian Dave Gray and former TV journalist Iain Finlay.

Former weather girl Delvene has spent the past 18 months featuring in comedy sketches on the Paul Hogan Show, but she has yet to prove her acting worth. However, executive producer Reg Watson said that she had won the part of Nurse Jo-Jo Adams - a "20 year old who works and plays hard", in competition with many others. "She was the best actress to audition for the role, she brings the character to life", Watson said.

Mark Holden will be familiar to the followers of the pop scene. He has been on programs such as Countdown and Bandstand singing his hits. Watson said Holden plays a bright young character Dr Greg Mason in The Young Doctors. Grundys also used him in one of their episodes of Case for the Defence, a courtroom drama series yet to go to air.

For Dave Gray and Iain Finlay, it's their first attempt at drama. Gray, a comedian who travels the club circuit and was a member of Nine's panel game show Celebrity Squares, has never had an ambition to be a straight actor. "If I was asked to do it full-time," he said, "the answer would be an enormous NO. I couldn't be serious all day, it would drive me round the bend."

Gray plays Bunny Howard, proprietor of the discotheque where doctors and friends let their hair down. He's a widower and father of one of the "terrible five", Dr Jim Howard (John Dommett). On the day after the demise of Celebrity Squares Gray got a call inviting him to audition. Within hours he was offered the part. Gray, from Manchester, UK, is finding the area of drama "a little more reserved" than he's used to - "There's me, all loud and boisterous. I think they've grown to live with me by now!"

Iain Finlay, former anchorman for the ABC-TV program This Day Tonight, makes an even greater transition. Finlay is Frank Curtis, the "nasty" of the piece. In the storyline he comes down from the country with his wife Edna (Vivienne Benson-Young), appears charming on the outside, but has, says Finlay, a pathological streak. Their marriage is stretched to the limit after a hit and run accident, with Edna becoming suicidal. Finlay, wearing a beard after his return from travelling round Africa by bus and train with wife Trish and their two young children, believes "everybody has got some acting in them."

It's doubtful if he'll be in The Young Doctors for long - Curtis ends up in jail - as he is currently working on ideas for current affairs programs with a couple of commercial networks. Obviously, Finlay is not overly concerned about an acting future - "If they say 'Isn't he dreadful', I won't dissolve into a rumpled heap somewhere. It doesn't worry me."

The Young Doctors is a first, too, for award winning writer Tony Morphett, one of the three writers employed on the show. The others are Michael Laurence and Ron McLean. Morphett, creator of ABC-TV's Certain Women and Dynasty, and who was also involved in Ben Hall and Luke's Kingdom, has never been associated with what he calls "strip material." Strip, in that sense, doesn't mean taking clothes off, he's quick to point out. Morphett said: "It's technically interesting to write for a serial running five nights a week. I've done numerous half hour drama series, one hour specials and serials, but this is a different ball game. This is a very commercial, well-laid format. If you look at the shows that have succeeded, they're doctors and cops show - simplifying good and evil."

Hospitals were the setting for exaggerated human emotion, said Morphett - "Whenever I'm there stories are popping around all over the place of people who can, or can't, cope in life and death situations. All good drama. "And with hospitals the normal turnover of patients is a good reason to have characters coming and going…a natural flow…bit like a hotel."

Reg Watson, who worked out the original concept and also helped with some of the writing, said The Young Doctors is based on one isolated incident which starts off a chain of events. Apart from following the inter-relationships of the five interns, this is the peg upon which the serial is hung. Watson was reluctant to reveal the all-important event, but a good guess may be the breakdown in the marriage of the general superintendent of the hospital Brian Denham (Michael Beecher) and Laura Denham (Joanne Moore-Smith).

Mark Holden, as Dr Greg Mason, is destined to make a play for women, his first target being Jo-Jo (Delvene Delaney). No-one will be surprised to hear there will be an element of sex to help The Young Doctors ticking over. "But", says Watson, "we won't be flashing boobs round just for the sake of it!" However, one critic speculated that the new show would make Number 96 look like Noddy and that it was putting sex under the stethoscope.

If there is a sex symbol in the wards of the Albert Memorial it would have to be in the shape of Delvene Delaney. But she assured TV Times a few weeks ago she would not be getting her clothes off. She would be exuding sensuality through her eyes and expressions. That should keep the temperatures rising - for doctors, patients and viewers.

Executive producer Watson is a veteran of soap operas. One of his first associations in the area - which should make him feel right at home with The Young Doctors - was with the British series Emergency Ward 10. He wrote for the show. In Australia, Watson produced Class of '74 and '75 for the Grundy organisation.

"The Young Doctors," said Watson, "moves at a tremendous pace. We have a complete operating theatre and casualty wards, and sitting in to check authenticity we have on call a young doctor and an experienced theatre sister." One of the cast, who once worked as a hospital wardsman, said the set was "bloody marvellous." Michael Hohensee

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