A Country Practice

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A Country Practice
Format Drama, Soap Opera
Created by James Davern
Starring Shane Porteous
Helen Scott
Brian Wenzel
Joyce Jacobs
Gordon Piper
Syd Heylen
Lorrae Desmond
Joan Sydney
Penny Cook
Grant Dodwell
Shane Withington
Anne Tenney
Wendy Strehlow
Josephine Mitchell
Maureen Edwards
Kym Wilson
Claudia Black
Judith McGrath
Georgie Parker
Country of origin Australia
No. of episodes 1058
Production
Running time 48 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel Seven Network
Original run 1981 – 1993
External links
IMDb profile

A Country Practice was one of the longest-running Australian television drama series. It ran on the Seven Network for 1,058 episodes from November 18, 1981 to November 22, 1993. It was produced in ATN-7's production facility at Epping, Sydney. It also ran from April to November 1994 for 30 episodes on Network Ten.

Though sometimes considered a soap opera, the storylines of the show's two one-hour episodes screened over any one week formed a self-contained narrative block, so it did not have the open ended narrative of a traditional soap opera and so was technically a series [1]. Nevertheless many storylines were developed as sub plots for several episodes before becoming the focus of a particular week's narrative block. Overall, the programme "so emphasised the ongoing storylines of its major characters as to make the distinction between series and serial more or less meaningless" [2].

In addition to being broadcast in Australia, it also ran on ITV in the United Kingdom, as well as in many European countries and Hong Kong. It was also carried on a variety of Canadian stations, both during the show's lifetime and after. It was estimated that at its height, the show received a worldwide audience of five to six million each week.

The show followed a medical practice in the small fictional New South Wales country town of Wandin Valley. The show's stories focused on the staff of the practice and the hospital and their families, and through weekly guest characters - frequently patients served by the practice - various social and medical problems were explored. The series examined such topical issues as youth unemployment, suicide, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, and terminal illness as well as Aborigines and their place in modern Australian society.

Contents

[edit] Cast list

[edit] Seven Network series

[edit] Network Ten series

  • Dr. Harry Morrison - Andrew Blackman
  • Matron Maggie Sloan - Joan Sydney
  • Esme Watson - Joyce Jacobs
  • Ian McIntyre - Paul Gleeson
  • Claire Bonacci - Claudia Black
  • Danny Sabatini - Vince Colosimo
  • Jess Morrison - Jane Hall
  • Georgie Wilks - Laura Armstrong
  • Sarah Wilks - Alyce Platt
  • Fred Bates - Katherine Murray
  • Miles Ferdenbach - Chris Lyons

[edit] DVD release

A Country Practice is available on DVD (Region 4, Australia). Two box sets, entitled "Series One" (containing all 14 1981 episodes) and "Series Two" (containing only the first 30 1982 episodes) were released on 3 April 2006 by MRA Entertainment. Two 12-disc box sets featuring the remainder of the 1982 episodes and the first part of the 1983 episodes were released 11 April 2007. Later, the second part of Series Three was released in a 12 disc set featuring the remeainder episodes 149-190. Series 4 was released in November 2007 in a 2 part set each containing 12 discs for all 1984 episodes 191 - 280. Series 5 is due to be released in April 2008 and will comprise of two 12 disc sets containing 1985 episodes.

[edit] UK and Ireland transmissions

A Country Practice was shown regionally on the ITV Network with some regions (Thames, Anglia, Border, Granada, TVS and Yorkshire) starting to screen the series weekly from 22 October 1982 on Wednesdays at 2.45pm in the original hour-long format. Central Television did not start the show until 1988. Yorkshire Television chose to break away from the main Network transmission in 1984 and were the first television station in the world to break the programme into two half-hour episodes screening on Mondays and Tuesday at 3.30pm. This would lead them into difficulties with the screening of the series as whenever a public holiday occurred (usually on Mondays), the 3.30pm slot would be unavailable for A Country Practice. This led to Part one of an episode starting on a Tuesday with viewers having to wait until the following Monday to conclude it. Yorkshire also transmitted the incorrect episode on one occasion due a fire alarm and evacuation in their building meaning that their feed from Thames Television for the preceding programme over-ran into Yorkshire's local programming meaning that the Yorkshire viewers saw a Thames episode which was considerably ahead (1991) of where Yorkshire were up to.[citation needed]

Over time all 14 of the ITV regions screened the show at their own pace after breaking from the Network Thames Television pattern. All regions Expect Scottish TV, eventually adopted the Yorkshire Television method of splitting the episodes into two. Carlton Television, who superseded Thames Television, became the first to conclude the series followed by Anglia Television in their daily 1.50pm half-hour slot. Anglia Television then commenced a short repeat of the first 40 or so episodes shortly after reaching the end.

Due to the content of the episodes, a substantial amount of episodes were withdrawn from transmission by certain regions as the content was considered unsuitable for daytime viewing. This led to various regions skipping considerable chunks of the story.

In the mid-1980s, A Country Practice also became a prime-time series on Sky Channel, airing twice a week at 21.00 from at least 1985. During August 1985 the series was screened at 19.20 - 20.10 on Tuesday and Thursday evenings in hour long episodes. The channel also screened The Sullivans and The Young Doctors. When the Sky Channel was launched on the Astra satellite in January 1989, it became Sky One and A Country Practice was dropped from the schedule, although The Sullivans and The Young Doctors were retained, presumably as they were now out of production and cheaper to air, whilst ACP was still an extremely popular series around the world and still being made. For a brief period, later episodes were shown in 1997 on the cable channel Carlton Select.

The show was also aired in the Republic of Ireland on RTE One Television, Monday to Friday at 17:30, from the start of series to the end, it was only a few weeks behind the Australian transmission. RTE re-ran the series in 1998 commencing with season 8 (1988) in a morning slot.

[edit] North American Broadcasts

[edit] CBET

The entire series was broadcast, from start to finish, by the CBC Television affiliate in Windsor, Ontario, CBET, Channel 9, which serves the Metropolitan Detroit-Windsor-Toledo area. Two episodes were broadcast daily, Monday through Friday, starting in the late 1980s, until they were caught up to contemporary episodes in the early 1990s.

Detroit, Michigan in the United States and Windsor, Ontario in Canada are twin cities on the north and south banks of the strait called the Detroit River. Because they are part of the same advertising market, they are subject to the North American Border Protection Rule, under which Detroit television stations cannot carry programming licensed for broadcast in Windsor, and Windsor stations cannot carry programming licensed for broadcast in Detroit. Historically, 40% of Canadian network programming has been American content, none of which could be broadcast in Windsor. Only so much programming can be repeated, and only so many times - and no network produces programming to air on only one station - so, most of the American programming that cannot be broadcast in Windsor is replaced by programming imported from Britain and Australia. Many Australian soap operas, A Country Practice among them, have thus found loyal audiences in the Metro Detroit area, while they otherwise remain unknown in North America. [1]

[edit] ASN

From 1991 to 1994, the show also aired on ASN in the Canadian Atlantic provinces. Four hour-long episodes aired each week, from Monday to Thursday with Monday's and Tuesday's episodes repeated on Saturday and Wednesday's and Thursday's episodes on Sunday. The station aired the show from episode 1 to somewhere in the early 700s, stopping when Showcase Television launched on January 1, 1995, and started airing the show from the start again.

[edit] Showcase

Showcase Television began airing the show from episode 1 starting in January of 1995. It broadcast one episode daily, from Monday to Friday, and completed the entire series run (including the 30-episode Network Ten series) in June 1999. It began rebroadcasting the entire series on June 28, 1999, with promises that the entire series would be broadcast for those who missed the first airing. However, a single line of text scrolling across the bottom of the screen during the August 21, 2000, episode announced that the show would be removed from the Showcase lineup as of Monday, August 28, 2000. According to the station's email autoresponse at the time, the decision was based on "declining viewership and a demand by viewers for more current programming". Sometime after that, Showcase changed their format to favour a less family-oriented and more adult-oriented viewership.

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Bowles, Kate. Soap opera: 'No end of story, ever' in The Australian TV Book, (Eds. Graeme Turner and Stuart Cunningham), Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 2000. ISBN 1-86508-014-4 p 127
  2. ^ Bowles, Kate. Soap opera: 'No end of story, ever' in The Australian TV Book, (Eds. Graeme Turner and Stuart Cunningham), Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 2000. ISBN 1-86508-014-4 p 127
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