A Country Practice Half Man Half Biscuit. Album Four Lads Who Shook the Wirral. A Country Practice Lyrics. I feel like a beggar accepting alms Then being pelted with figs. A Country Practice was the longest running Australian drama upon its demise, At its height the show attracted 8–10 million viewers weekly, when the population of the time was a mere 15 million, and was eventually sold to 48 countries. Half Man Half Biscuit - A Country Practice Lyrics. I feel like a beggar accepting alms Then being pelted with figs I study my steadily declining chart placings They greet me with freezing col. Popular Song Lyrics. Billboard Hot 100.
What exactly do you have to do to be taken seriously these days? Take yourself so seriously that light cannot escape you?
For insight, wit and imagination, Half Man Half Biscuit are currently peerless. Sharp as The Fall, cackling through fag-smoke at earnest 80s positivity; jarring as The Kinks' sardonic kitchen-sink palaver in the middle of a Swinging London youth-and-beauty cult. Over the past 20 years they've written fifty or sixty songs as smart, as clear-sighted and articulate as pretty much any pop music, ever ('Tommy Walsh's Eco House', a rumbling squib from the new LP 90 Bisodol (Crimond), is a panic of fast-cut imagery which can hold its own with 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' for wordplay, and for paranoia at the pitch of farce). These songs may not be profound - as though more than a fistful of songs ever were - but the best of them say so much about what Britain has become, about frustrations and disappointments, and about life on the losing side of the endless war against intelligence, they're as close to 'important' as pop music gets, now it too has been subsumed into the mulch of modern living.
Half Man Half Biscuit - Tommy Walsh’s Eco House by barrygruff(6 Music session version)
Sep 15, 2011 Mix - Half Man Half Biscuit - A Country Practice YouTube. Johnny Counterfit Impersonates Country Music Legends - Duration: 3:46. Silas Clifton Gatewood JR 1,757,759 views. Lyrics and videos for the Half Man Half Biscuit song A Country Practice, from Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral. The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project Busking this at Embankment Tube tomorrow.
Thing is, though, these songs are funny - often very funny indeed – and humour in music is, for the most part, absolutely excruciating. So, they suffer by association. Even now, there's still this perception of Half Man Half Biscuit as a comedy band: a post-punk Grumbleweeds, the indie Stilgoe. No group in history can have been so woefully misunderstood - Half Man Half Biscuit are, in fact, an antidote to wackiness, a bulwark against zaniness. Fiercely principled, highly literate, sometimes very close to angry, these are songs of open defiance; their real targets, more often than not, are stupidity as a leisure option, the hollowing-out of British culture, the slow death of the post-war settlement. Half Man Half Biscuit tickle with the left hand, with the right hand they draw blood. This, though, is rock and roll, a world so up itself (and thus, so blissfully free of self-awareness), all manner of straight-faced foolishness gets waved through, no questions asked; any amount of brilliance, meanwhile, can be cast to the hinterlands, for the great faux pas of being funny. It's enough to make you weep.
Part of the problem, maybe, is that Half Man Half Biscuit are still discussed in terms of Back In The DHSS, their scurvy debut from 1985 (when they were, briefly, flavour of the month). Much of the praise and blame they now receive - when not being roundly ignored - is stuck in an unrecognisable past, as though they still wrote spindly rants about Len Ganley and Nerys Hughes. Twenty-six years on, that album, fondly as it's thought of by the hardcore fans, has become something of a millstone (and I'd say the same thing goes for 'Joy Division Oven Gloves', a cute little song which sounds good live, but not remotely representative of all that's tucked away in here). Their last nine albums have barely registered, save for the odd appreciative notice in the small print of the music monthlies, as though they were a kind of sideshow.. as though Nigel Blackwell didn't write the best lyrics in the world.
Which he very definitely does. 2003's 'For What Is Chatteris..' is beautifully low-key tragedy, a modern 'leaving town' ballad with a lyric of stunning economy and grace. 'National Shite Day', from the last LP, is a whirlpool of urban despair, a first verse peppered with laughs of recognition and a second which chills to the bone. 'We Built This Village On A Trad. Arr. Tune', an unsettling hybrid of Ever Decreasing Circles and The Wicker Man, could be, in its way, the best song ever written about life outside the city. Even a very minor song like the loping 'Little In The Way Of Sunshine' is a portrait of the local eccentric as deep and heartfelt as any I've heard: 'I know the drivers by their first names, it's said they've got my photo in the staff canteen.. my happy-go-lucky affectation conceals extraordinary fires, but it still kind of feels there's little in the way of sunshine heading our way.. when the vehicle's in motion, the driver's got nothing to say.'
Half Man Half Biscuit a long time ago
The further in you go, the more you find (which is rare enough, these days). A whole list of recurring themes, a set of relentlessly un-rock obsessions as humanly mismatched as yours or mine: cultural detritus, British beauty spots, archaic language, American folk songs, the affectations of the middle classes, cycling, hill-walking, Thomas Hardy, bad manners, bad rock and roll. These songs are a miscellany, lovingly dissected by fans every bit as obsessive as Dylanologists, only with a sense of humour. On this lyrics site, one can learn that 'Girlfriend's Finished With Him' borrows lines from Gaslight And Daylight by Victorian journalist George Augustus Sala, or that 'Malayan Jelutong' quotes from an 1891 essay by Edward W Cox in the Transactions Of The Historic Society Of Lancashire and Cheshire. The idea of Half Man Half Biscuit peddling some kind of beery vaudeville is – 99 per cent of the time – unimaginably far off the mark. What, then, to make of a band whose song about childhood holidays and their forgotten boredom comes complete with a brusque, non-sequiturial 'Neil Morrissey's a knobhead'?
Maybe pop's so weighed-down now, with broadsheet preconceptions and the tyranny of bourgeois angst, it can't handle irreverence, particularly the irreverence of the post-industrial north (which has been drained from popular culture so comprehensively over the last 20 years, it must seem slightly odd to those who didn't grow up drenched in it). Hard for some to grasp, it seems, that pop songs which don't try to be solemn might, in fact, have something to say; that laughter doesn't preclude depth, or worth, or serious intent.
'A Country Practice'
90 Bisodol (Crimond) – the (Crimond) being a reference to hymn book convention, another of those arcane in-jokes – is probably their best, certainly their most consistent album. There are fewer obvious laugh-points now, because they're not really needed, the whole thing being soaked in a kind of queasy, mesmerising wit. 'Excavating Rita' is – despite its wince-inducing title – a beautifully complex song about a grief-crazed Betterware salesman whose devotion extends to necrophilia. Poignant, tragic, grimly explicit, sympathetic and horribly funny, it's hard to imagine anyone else attempting a song like this, although until now it would have been hard to imagine Nigel attempting it, either. 'Descent Of The Stiperstones' is a long and beautifully-written monologue, about a chance encounter with an ex-soap star in a chandler's in Shropshire, and a disquieting glimpse of the aftermath of fame - the action takes place between 'a Ben Sayers four iron, a brushed doormat bearing the slogan Cofiwch Dryweryn and an oil painting by Mercy Rimell entitled 'The Raging Ostler'.' In pretty much all these cram-full songs, every detail is tooled to perfection.
The music, too, is more ambitious and imaginative this time around. Considering how rarely anyone bothers to mention their actual music, you'd be forgiven for thinking Half Man Half Biscuit don't give it that much thought. Yet more bullshit, obviously - in fact, they've always been wildly eclectic (jangle-pop, rockabilly, folk ballad, hypno-beat, country-blues, synth-pop and.. much much more). Their default, though, is a post-punk thrash, and while there are still a few of these lopsided stompers on 90 Bisodol, they're outnumbered. 'Excavating Rita' winds through umpteen chords with Beatlish ease, 'Fix It So She Dreams Of Me' is a bit like a chilly Love. Having splashed out, most uncharacteristically, on Liverpool's poshest studio, they still don't sound remotely slick, but the gloss is obvious, and it suits them. Songs which hammer a single riff sound infinitely richer now: 'Descent Of The Stiperstones' is buffed with Hammond organ and twinkling harmonics, 'RSVP' has a trad-folk arrangement full of keening double-tracked fiddles, 'Fun Day In The Park' is flecked with delicate acoustic picking by the enigmatic Ken Hancock (whose great uncle, so we're told, was the first man in Whitehaven to have a Pot Noodle). Bass player Neil Crossley is still the midfield general, breaking off from his endless homage to Steve Hanley circa 1983 for a great Paul McCartney job on 'Excavating Rita'. Even the old-fashioned rockers have a sureness that wasn't always there before - 'Something's Rotten In The Back Of Iceland' lurches madly round blind corners, into the triumphantly-earthbound certainty of its heroine's refrain: 'There ain't no stink like the stink you're gonna get from the age-old eel in your decommissioned fridge..'
Half Man Half Biscuit - RSVP by barrygruff(6 Music session version)
Pop music is prone to denialism. Most songwriters try to 'transcend' (that is, ignore) the shit we have to live in, since rock and roll romanticism is a fragile conceit, and the slightest contact with reality (that is, Vernon Kay, Bluewater shopping centre and people who say 'simples') will debag that fantasy in a fraction of a second. Half Man Half Biscuit, meanwhile, face it down to the point of obsession – every detail, every surface. 'M6-ster', from 1993, is Half Man Half Biscuit's travelling song. Some would hymn the open road or the grandeur of the scrolling landscape - down in the fumes, two feet off the tarmac, Nigel only sees passing vehicles: 'Christian Salvesen, Ryder / Curries Of Dumfries / Norbert Dentressangle / North Staffs Police'.
![Half Man Half Biscuit A Country Practice Cast Half Man Half Biscuit A Country Practice Cast](https://www.bing.com/th?id=OGC.73c0801a9ba136a2e4d6498b7b297840&pid=1.7&rurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.e-monsite.com%2fphotos%2flogo_belghiti20071447392495.gif&ehk=%2blgJ%2f1SEHv2dwHRrf8fUrg)
The corollary of this kind of honesty is a darkness of the soul - as Bernie Slaven, I think, once said. Insisting on seeing things as they are, when it seems to be doing you no good at all, is a sign of a depressive nature, and something too-often missed by critics is Half Man Half Biscuit's deep-down darkness. The real mood of most of these songs is captured in the cover shot of 1993's This Leaden Pall:
That overcast gloom has underpinned their whole career, rising to the surface in stuff like 'Floreat Inertia', an unmistakably bleak little song about drift and defeat, and the impenetrable introversion of men who've spent so long on the dole, now they can't work at all:
I could be tugging on the beard of science, like a cheeky schoolboy
But I couldn't be bothered, that's why I'm still in the box room
Face down in the last ditch, my natural home
I can do that.. but I don't really want to.
But I couldn't be bothered, that's why I'm still in the box room
Face down in the last ditch, my natural home
I can do that.. but I don't really want to.
Half Man Half Biscuit's 'darkness' is peculiarly English, pinched and stoical, tempered with a sworn refusal to get too carried away with itself. 'Depressed Beyond Tablets', from 2005, is probably the key song here: over what sounds like a kids' TV theme, Nigel deadpans a lyric which sounds at first like a pisstake, then a baring of the soul. The truth lies inbetween, perhaps, but it nails the reality of handling depression the English way with unnerving accuracy. I'd say it's a better example of what this group are 'really' about than any number of junk-culture jibes - Leonard Cohen, one imagines, would crack a smile at its keynote line: 'your optimism strikes me like junk mail addressed to the dead.'
Half Man Half Biscuit A Country Practice Cast Members
'Depressed Beyond Tablets'
The gloom's not lifted on the new LP – it's more morbid than ever - but the balance is struck a bit differently. 90 Bisodol (Crimond) is absurdly dark, literally. Necrophilia, bereavement, poisonings, inconsiderate suicides, madness, issues arising from corpse-disposal ('She knows, I know she knows about the bothy on the Knoydart / I should have listened to Pop Tart Mark and had the head dissolved in acid by a Belgian clean-up team') - its humour's inky, and it barely lets up. The tone's familiar from earlier songs like 'Dead Men Don't Need Season Tickets' (an especially uncomfortable Curb Your Enthusiasm digested into three and a half minutes), or the horrible, hand-over-mouth hilarity of 'Tending The Wrong Grave For 23 Years.' Extended over the best part of an album, it could get wearing.. it doesn't, though.
Then there's 'Joy In Leeuwarden', a jolly faux-Dutch singalong to celebrate the 2010 European Korfball Championships – in case anyone thought they had this band pinned down. At first glance, the sleeve notes (which claim it's a cover of a song by Henny Wassenaar and Corien Steenstra, and feature an unlikely quote from the mayor of Leeuwarden, Ferd Crone) look like another impish hoax from the man who once convinced The Guardian there was a Half Man Half Biscuit tribute band from Sunderland called It Ain't Half Man, Mum. In fact, they exist – the Dutchmen, not the Mackems – although efforts to track down an ode to korfball in their back-cat have thus far borne no fruit (and even if he's telling the truth, it's safe to assume that Nigel's translation could fairly be described as.. loose). It's good to know, when all's said and done, there's still a level at which Half Man Half Biscuit really don't give a flying toss.
Ferd Crone
Probably the defining obsession of Nigel Blackwell's songs so far is his ongoing problems with the middle class. Suburban cosiness, of course, is the great Aunt Sally of popular music, and most of the brickbats lobbed its way are hackneyed and painfully naïve. Here, it pretty much goes without saying, there are no strangely-archaic swipes at businessmen in bowler hats, no chiding of Mr Clean for not being a junkie who spits at things. Nigel's beef with the urban professional seems to be rooted not so much in resentment of privilege, more in a horror that people whose upbringing gives them the freedom to make so many choices end up making choices like this, creating (and then imposing on everyone) a culture where crass affectation rules. The other sticking point, of course, is that quite a lot of them are pricks.
On the last few albums, the baiting has been wonderfully relentless. 'Paintball's Coming Home' is an extended (and regularly updated) sneer at gauche well-to-do complacency; in the jeering 'CORGI Registered Friends', middle-aged defeat is conveyed perfectly in four words: 'For sale, gym equipment.' 'Song Of Encouragement For The Orme Ascent' has Nigel crashing a dinner party just for the thrill of causing mayhem, like Monty Python's Mr Equator:'Burst all the bean bags, smoked all the French fags - Hey Mr Gauloises, ou est les hubcaps?'. All this peaked on 2008's CSI: Ambleside, with the apocalyptic visions of 'Evening Of Swing (Has Been Cancelled)', and arguably their best-ever lyric, 'Took Problem Chimp To Ideal Home Show'.
Now, eyebrows may be raised at something called 'Took Problem Chimp To Ideal Home Show' being the sharpest and angriest song of the century so far, but you know, that's the way it works round here. It's a unique howl of primal/primate rage at the smugly middlebrow: unable to call on help from above, its hero summons vengeance from below, sneaking his jittery ape into Earls Court and standing back as the swatch-flipping multitude face what lies beneath. Easier to make this point with a vomiting forth of salty oaths, and numerous uses of the word 'id' - only the visionary frame their rage as a chimp hurling occasional tables at a cowering Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
'Took Problem Chimp To Ideal Home Show'
There's a shortage of class rants on 90 Bisodol, but Nigel's other unshakeable bugbear - the oafishness of the modern pop group - is present and absolutely correct. Just as the best parodies of television are done on television, pop groups are uniquely placed to comment on the vapidity of late-period rock and roll – but most are simply thrilled to be a part of it, and seal their lips. No band has spent longer picking at the scabs of rock & roll's self-inflicted wounds: the sense of entitlement, the spurious mysticism, all those no-marks carrying on like they were the bloody Rolling Stones, bands who boast of buying on to a stadium support slot, or a 96-track studio that was haunted by a Red Indian. The warning shot is a pell-mell throwaway, 'Left Lyrics In The Practice Room':
'Demon feet, leave your tomb / Seek out the virgin womb'
Hey Chris from Future Doom,
You left your lyrics in the practice room.'
Hey Chris from Future Doom,
You left your lyrics in the practice room.'
Half Man Half Biscuit - Left Lyrics in the Practice Room by barrygruff(6 Music session version)
The killer blow is saved for later. As early as McIntyre, Treadmore & Davitt, their 'comeback' album from 1991, Half Man Half Biscuit had written the definitive takedown of indie self-regard in the eye-poking 'Girlfriend's Finished With Him'. Eleven years later, on Cammell Laird Social Club, mockery had curdled into outright disgust: 'Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not' may be the most appalled song ever written about the music business, and anyone who ever ventured into the media netherworld (and emerged with at least a shred of self-respect) will feel it, in the sternum.
Another decade has gone by, and the grievance is festering. 90 Bisodol's closing track, 'Rock And Roll Is Full Of Bad Wools', is Nigel's most direct attack on a world he still can't believe he's a part of: posers writhing on Soccer AM, pub bands slogging through their tatty pantomime, trustafarian whines hothoused in the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. A feverish five-minute nightmare, this is scorched-earth stuff, undoubtedly the nastiest Half Man Half Biscuit have ever sounded (what's more, it proves that Nigel may just be the world's number one white rapper).
'Bad Wools' isn't a jibe from afar, more a response to a personal insult. Tempting to suggest this band exist outside of rock & roll, with their decidedly non-Dionysian concerns, and the distance that they keep. Street legal racing redline mods. I'd say, though, that Half Man Half Biscuit are rock & roll – in that the energy, individuality and sheer force of what they do is closer to this music's roots, and all it can achieve, than almost anything else that's left out there on its wind-picked, overfarmed land.
Hatsune miku clock widget for xp. 'Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not'
Back in 1998, Half Man Half Biscuit recorded a song called 'A Country Practice', recently voted the favourite track of fans sufficiently bothered to vote. It's an amazing piece of sustained, barely-contained vitriol, flitting through the foolishness and waste of the late 20th century, settling at last on the folly of the London millennium celebrations. In its last verse an old woman, denied a hospital bed by the billions earmarked for malfunctioning fireworks, sits at home in front of the telly and expires with the century. All of Nigel Blackwell's brilliance is there in these bottomlessly bitter lines, which isolate the horror behind the blanding of Britain, and the realisation that yes, it's really come to this: 'They reckon the last thing that she saw in her life was Sting singing on the roof of the Barbican. Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican.'
That was the moment when Half Man Half Biscuit really broke free of their ragged beginnings, and became something which, in 1985, no one could possibly have predicted - not just the funniest group in the world, but something serious and valuable, too. Back in the first verse, Nigel drops his guard for once, complaining of the commercial and critical oblivion into which he'd sunk. 'Where did that bloke go who said I was vital?' Probably off to B&Q with the rest of them… but you know what? He was dead right. Say it again: Half Man Half Biscuit are vital, and 90 Bisodol (Crimond) is not just the funniest album of the year.
A Country Practice | |
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Main title caption in 1981, depicting the Wandin Valley Hospital | |
Genre | Soap opera |
Created by | James Davern |
Starring | Brian Wenzel Lorrae Desmond Joan Sydney Shane Porteous Georgie Parker Grant Dodwell Penny Cook Anne Tenney Shane Withington |
Theme music composer | Mike Perjanik |
Opening theme | A Country Practice (instrumental) |
Ending theme | Reprise |
Country of origin | Australia |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of seasons | 14 |
No. of episodes | 1,088 (List of episodes) |
Production | |
Producer(s) | James Davern |
Running time | 48 minutes |
Production company(s) | JNP Productions |
Release | |
Original network | Seven Network (1981–93) Network Ten (1994) |
Picture format | 4.3 PAL |
Audio format | Stereo |
Original release | 18 November 1981 – 5 November 1994 |
A Country Practice is a multi-Logie award-winning Australian television soap opera/serial. It ran on the Seven Network for 1,058 episodes at 7.30 pm Monday and Tuesday nights, from 18 November 1981 to 22 November 1993. It was produced at both ATN-7's production facility at Epping, New South Wales with exterior locations filmed in Pitt Town and Oakville in the outskirts of Northwest Sydney. Several of the regular cast members became highly popular celebrities through their roles in the series. It also featured a number of native Australian animals, particularly the iconic Fatso, the Wombat adding to its enduring appeal both domestically and internationally. After the series was cancelled by the Seven Network in 1993, a reworked version of the series ran briefly on Network Ten in 1994. At the time of its cancellation, A Country Practice was the longest running Australian TV drama; however, it was soon surpassed by Neighbours. At its height, the show attracted 8–10 million viewers weekly, when the population of the time was a mere 15 million, and was sold to 48 countries.
- 7Cast list
- 9International broadcasts
Founding[edit]
A Country Practice creator and Executive Producer (EP) James Davern of JNP Productions, had worked on a previous similar type rural series, as producer and director of the long-running Bellbird that screened on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1967-1977) and had written the pilot episode for ACP and entered a script contest for the Network Ten in 1979. He came third and won a merit award.,[1] although TEN turned the series down, the Seven Network picked up the series stating it liked the characters and setting. Davern would be inducted into the Logie Hall of Fame in 1991 and be honoured as an Order of Australia. recipient in 2014.
Logie Awards[edit]
A Country Practice is the third most successful television program in the history of the Logie Awards, after Home and Away (1st) and Neighbours (2nd), having won 29 awards during its twelve years of production.[2]
- Best Supporting Actor In A Series: Brian Wenzel
- Best Juvenile Performance: Jeremy Shadlow
- Most Popular Actor: Grant Dodwell
- NSW Most Popular Female: Penny Cook
- NSW Most Popular Show: A Country Practice
- Most Popular Drama Series: A Country Practice
- Best Supporting Actress In A Series: Lorrae Desmond
- Most Popular Lead Actor: Grant Dodwell
- Most Popular Lead Actress: Anne Tenney
- NSW Most Popular Male: Grant Dodwell
- NSW Most Popular Female: Penny Cook
- NSW Most Popular Show: A Country Practice
- Most Popular Drama Program: A Country Practice
- Best Lead Actor In A Series: Shane Withington
- Best Supporting Actress In A Series: Wendy Strehlow
- Most Popular Australian Actor: Grant Dodwell
- Most Popular Australian Actress: Anne Tenney
- NSW Most Popular Female: Anne Tenney
- NSW Most Popular Program: A Country Practice
- Most Popular Australian Drama: A Country Practice
- NSW Most Popular Program: A Country Practice
- NSW Most Popular Program: A Country Practice
- Most Outstanding Actress: Joan Sydney
- NSW Most Popular Program: A Country Practice
- Most Outstanding Actor: Shane Porteous
- Most Popular New Talent: Georgie Parker
- Most Popular Actress: Georgie Parker
- Most Popular Actress: Georgie Parker
- Most Popular Actress: Georgie Parker
Format[edit]
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. The storylines were meant to have a primary appeal to adult and older youthful audiences, and in particular they had greater appeal to children from middle-class backgrounds.[3] As it did not have the open ended narrative of a traditional soap opera, it was technically a series.[4] Nevertheless, many storylines were developed as sub-plots for several episodes before becoming the focus of a particular week's narrative block. Overall, the program 'so emphasized the ongoing storylines of its major characters as to make the distinction between series and serial more or less meaningless'.[4]
Setting and stories[edit]
A Country Practice Episode Guide
The series followed the workings of a small hospital in the fictional New South Wales rural country town of Wandin Valley as well as its connected medical clinic, the town's veterinary surgery, RSL club/pub and local police station. The show's storylines focused on the staff, and regular patients of the hospital and general practice, their families, and other residents of the town. Through its weekly guest actors, who appeared in the series portrayed differing characters, it explored various social and medical problems. The series examined such topical issues as youth unemployment, suicide, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS and terminal illness, as well as Aborigines and their importance in modern Australian society. Apart from its regular rotating cast, mainly among the younger personnel, A Country Practice also had a cast of semi-regulars who would make appearances as the storylines permitted. One of the more popular and frequent characters from its inception included the valley's corrupt town councillor Alfred Muldoon (Brian Moll). The program as well would also showcase a number of animal stars and Australian native wildlife, most famously Fatso the wombat. Fatso was played throughout the series by three separate wombats, Fatso (1981–1986) replaced due to temperament issues with the cast, George (1986–1990) replaced due to early signs of wombat mange (a marsupial viral disease), and Garth (1990 through series end).
Iconic storylines over its lengthy 12-year run included the wedding of Dr. Simon Bowen, to local vet Vicki Dean, in 1983, and the later wedding of Dr. Terence Elliot to Matron Rosemary Prior amidst the series' bushfire scenes that marked the final episodes. The death of nurse Donna Manning in a car crash, the off-screen death of longtime resident Shirley Gilroy in a plane crash, as well as the final undoing of town councillor Alf Muldoon, which were highly watched. The highest rating episode however featured the death of beloved farmer Molly Jones from leukemia in 1985. After being diagnosed, receiving treatment and battling the terminal illness, Molly retires to her garden, watching her husband nurse Brenden and young daughter Chloe flying a kite and passes away peacefully as the screen fades to black. Molly's death storyline was originally written for an 11-week script, but producers realized that her death was proposed in a week the ratings were not being monitored, hence the storyline lasted 13 weeks and an extra two episodes.
Network Ten continuation[edit]
After its lengthy run on the Seven Network, just months after its demise it was announced that the serial would be picked up by Network Ten with a mainly new cast and a few key cast members continuing from the Seven series. Unlike the Seven series which was produced in Sydney, the Network Ten series was produced in Melbourne with location shooting in Emerald, Victoria. The new series debuted in April 1994, but it was not as successful as its predecessor and was abruptly cancelled in November.
Celebrity guest stars[edit]
A Country Practice became renowned for its long list of guest cameos, totalling over 1000 stars, with well known mainly Australian actors (predominately of the period) who would appear in each week's two part episode arc. Some actors became more prominent during the series runs, and were classified as semi-regulars, appearing as the storyline permitted, Famous international stars included: Baz Luhrmann, Smokey Dawson, John Meillon (the program would also feature Meillon's one time wife June Salter), Sir Robert Helpmann, Nicole Kidman, Paul Kelly, Toni Collette, Delta Goodrem, Peter Phelps and Simon Baker. At the program's height even the then Prime Minister of Australia, Bob Hawke, appeared as himself.
Cast list[edit]
Matrons and Directors of Nursing[edit]
Doctors[edit]
Nursing staff[edit]
Clinic reception (itinerant nurse)[edit]
Veterinarian services[edit]
| Park Rangers[edit]
Police[edit]
Publican[edit]Syd Heylen as Vernon (Cookie) Locke (1982-1992) The Hudsons[edit]Judith McGrath as Bernice Hudson (1992-1993)
-1993) Farming[edit]
Town Folks[edit]Gordon Piper as Robert (Bob) Menzies Hatfield (1981-1992)
Other characters[edit]
|
Broadcast history[edit]
Aired on the Seven Network Monday and Tuesday nights at 19:30.
Seven aired repeats at 09:30 weekday mornings from 1996–2002.
Foxtel's Hallmark Channel broadcast the complete series twice (including the short lived Network TEN series) from 2002 to 30 June 2010. Also Replayed a few episodes in 2014 on channel 7two at 2pm Monday to Friday.
International broadcasts[edit]
United Kingdom[edit]
In addition to being broadcast in Australia, the series also had a successful run on the ITV network in the United Kingdom. Shown regionally from October 1982 to March 1999 (HTV), episodes were initially shown in their original format as a one-hour episode per week (Wednesdays), however, from 1984, Yorkshire Television screened it as two half-hour editions over two days (Mondays and Tuesdays). This format eventually led to the series being stripped Monday to Friday as five continuous daily episodes, and by 1990, the half-hour format was adopted across most of the ITV network.
Considered a daytime soap and notably several years behind Australian broadcasts, A Country Practice was very popular in the UK and achieved consolidated viewing figures of between 2–3 million which is good for daytime television. To that end, some regions (HTV and Granada) moved the later episodes of the series to an early evening slot of 17.10–17.40.
ITV broadcasts
- A Country Practice was broadcast on the ITV network and was screened at different times, on different days, by all 14 regional companies. Originally, the series was partly networked by Thames Television to a cluster of regions and began 27 October 1982 airing on Wednesdays at 14:45 in the original hour-long format. In October 1984, Yorkshire Television broke away from the network transmissions and began editing each episode into two half-hour episodes. TVS and Thames followed in 1988, and by 1990, all regions (except Scottish) adopted this method which allowed the series to be stripped Monday to Friday in a daytime slot, usually before or after the lunchtime edition of Home and Away. This also resulted in curtailment of the full closing credits in certain regions. Due to the content of some episodes, a substantial amount were withdrawn from transmission by some regions as the content was considered unsuitable for daytime viewing and this inevitably led to considerable chunks of the story being skipped.
- Yorkshire Television started A Country Practice in October 1982 but broke away from the main Network transmission in October 1984 and was the first television station in the world to break the programme into two half-hour episodes, screening on Mondays and Tuesdays at 15:30. This led to continuity problems as whenever a public holiday occurred (usually on Monday), the 15:30 slot would be unavailable. The series was moved to back to an early afternoon hour-long format in 1988 when Sons and Daughters was stripped five afternoons a week at 15:30. A Country Practice then replaced Sons and Daughters when that series ended in March 1989, being again split into half-hour episodes and now being shown five afternoons a week for the first time. It was then moved to an early afternoon slot, and eventually hour-long episodes were reinstated. The series concluded in March 1998 and the Network Ten series was not shown. When Tyne Tees Television merged with Yorkshire, a number of episodes were skipped. This was to allow an alignment of schedules for the two regions.
- Central Television first broadcast A Country Practice on Tuesdays, 11:10, during summer 1983, but by September, the series had been shelved. Five years later on 16 September 1988, the series returned in the original hourly format, on Fridays at 14:00. From 2 January 1990, the series was stripped in half-hour episodes Monday to Friday at lunchtime. Central concluded the original series in August 1998 and immediately commenced the short-lived Network 10 series of A Country Practice. The network had shown the entire 12 year series in 10 years, considerably less than the rest of the ITV network, even though it was the last region to start showing it.
- Scottish Television started broadcasting the series in 1983 and always aired A Country Practice as hour-long episodes. Throughout the 1980s the programme moved about in time and day but was generally broadcast once a week in an afternoon slot. In January 1994, after (episode #486), it was dropped from the schedules for about 4 months until June. From episode 491 screened every weekday morning at 10:55 for the duration of the summer school holidays (around 6 weeks) until 2 September. It reverted to its old weekly Tuesday slot the following week. It was the dropped completely after episode #588, during 1996. Although the company took over Grampian Television, the series continued until the end, doing so by airing daily episodes during the summer of 1998.
- HTV started the series on Wednesday, 26 October 1983, broadcasting 1 hour episodes until 1990, when the series moved to 15:25 Wed-Fri as replacement for Sons and Daughters in half-hour format. From September 1993, moved to earlier time slot, but from March 1994, began airing in the 17:10–17:40 slot. By the end of 1998, the series had been reduced to being shown on Thursdays and Fridays only. From January to March 1999, the series was shown on Tuesday through to Friday until Friday 5 March 1999 when the final Channel Seven episode was reached. HTV were the last ITV region to complete the series(although they did not air the short lived Channel 10 series).
- Carlton Television, who superseded Thames Television, became the first region to conclude the series, followed closely by Anglia Television in the daily 13:50 half-hour slot in April 1996. Anglia Television then commenced a short repeat of the first 40 episodes shortly after reaching the end. Granada Television, from 1994 until they aired the last episode during the autumn of 1996, moved the series to the later 17.10 slot.
Satellite and cable broadcasts
- In the mid-1980s, A Country Practice was a prime-time series on Sky Channel, airing twice a week at 20:00 from at least 1985. During August 1985, the series was screened at 19:20 and 20:10 on Tuesday and Thursday evenings in hour-long episodes and by 1986, it was screened at 20:00. The channel also screened The Sullivans and The Young Doctors. When the Sky Channel was launched on the new Astra 1A satellite in January 1989, it became Sky1 and A Country Practice was dropped from the schedule. For a brief period, later episodes were shown in 1997 on the cable channel Carlton Select.
The programme was only screened in England once unlike other soap opera/serials such as Prisoner that was broadcast multiple times and also Sons and Daughters
A Country Practice also aired in Ireland, New Zealand, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Hong Kong, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and was carried on several United States and Canada stations, both during the show's lifetime and after.
It was estimated[by whom?] that at its height, the show received a worldwide audience of five to six million each week.[citation needed]
Ireland[edit]
aired on RTÉ Two weekdays at 18:00 or 18.30. In Autumn 1988, to make way for Home and Away, it moved to main channel RTÉ One airing weekdays at 17:30. The final episode (1088) aired in 1996.[5]RTÉ stripped episodes into a 30-minute timeslot. RTÉ commenced a repeat in 1998 beginning with season 8 (1988) in a morning slot.
France[edit]
A Country Practice was named 'À Coeur Ouvert'.
Germany[edit]
A Country Practice was named 'Das Buschkrankenhaus'.
Italy[edit]
A Country Practice was named 'Wandin Valley'.
Norway[edit]
A Country Practice (called 'Hverdagsliv') was broadcast on TV2 during the 1990s Deadlands hell on earth core pdf editor free.
Kenya[edit]
was also transmitted on Kenyan Television (VoK now KBC) during the 1980s.
Zimbabwe[edit]
broadcast on ZBC state television in the 1980s
New Zealand[edit]
was transmitted on TV2 on Sunday afternoons in the late 1980s and early 1990s
Canada[edit]
![Biscuit Biscuit](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133908632/778033891.jpg)
The entire series was broadcast, from start to finish, by CBC Television outlet CBET in Windsor, Ontario. 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. Its inclusion on CBET's schedule was out of necessity to fill a television schedule: because Windsor was part of the same advertising market as Detroit, Michigan in the United States, 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. Most American programming that was part of the CBC schedule throughout Canada could not be broadcast by CBET and, thus, was 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.
From 1991 to 1994, the show also aired on ASN, a cable network that served Canada's Maritimes. 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.
ASN ceased carrying the show when specialty cable channel Showcase was launched on 1 January 1995, as they picked up A Country Practice for broadcast throughout Canada. 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 28 June 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 21 August 2000, episode announced that the show would be removed from the Showcase lineup as of Monday, 28 August 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.
Novel[edit]
Series writer Judith Colquhoun, who also wrote episodes for other Australian serials, Blue Heelers, Neighbours and Home and Away released a novel in 2015. Called New Beginnings, it is based on the early episodes of the series from 1981. This was followed up by two further novels from the same author, To Everything a Season and Silver Linings.
DVD release[edit]
In late 2005, MRA Entertainment announced they had obtained the rights to release the entire series on DVD. In 2008, Magna Pacific Pty Ltd bought out MRA Entertainment, with plans to release Series 6, however the rights were then acquired by Beyond Home Entertainment which then re-released the first 5 seasons in 2007-2008, followed by Season 6 in 2010.[6] As of October 2018 Beyond Home Entertainment haven't received the rights to release further seasons.
Episodes | Discs | Licensed to | Released | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Season 1 | 1-14 | 4 | MRA Entertainment | 3 April 2006 |
Season 2, Part 1 | 15-44 | 6 | MRA Entertainment | 3 April 2006 |
Season 2, Part 2 | 45-106 | 12 | MRA Entertainment | 11 April 2007 |
Season 3, Part 1 | 107-148 | 12 | MRA Entertainment | 11 April 2007 |
Season 3, Part 2 | 149-190 | 12 | MRA Entertainment | 11 July 2007 |
Season 4, Part 1 | 191-236 | 12 | MRA Entertainment | 14 November 2007 |
Season 4, Part 2 | 237-280 | 12 | MRA Entertainment | 14 November 2007 |
Season 5, Part 1 | 281-318 | 12 | MRA Entertainment | 23 April 2008 |
Season 5, Part 2 | 319-356 | 12 | MRA Entertainment | 23 April 2008 |
Season 6, Part 1 | 357-400 | 11 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 7 April 2010 |
Season 6, Part 2 | 401-444 | 11 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 9 June 2010 |
Season 1 | 1-14 | 4 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 11 April 2007 |
Season 2 Part 1 | 15-44 | 6 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 11 April 2007 |
Season 2 Part 2 | 45-106 | 12 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 11 April 2007 |
Season 3 Part 1 | 107-148 | 12 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 11 April 2007 |
Season 3 Part 2 | 149-190 | 12 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 11 April 2007 |
Season 4 Part 1 | 191-236 | 12 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 14 November 2007 |
Season 4 Part 2 | 237-280 | 12 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 14 November 2007 |
Season 5 Part 1 | 281-318 | 12 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 16 April 2008 |
Season 5 Part 2 | 319-356 | 12 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 16 April 2008 |
Season 7, Part 1 | 445-488 | 11 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 5 October 2011 |
Season 7, Part 2 | 489-532 | 11 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 5 October 2011 |
The Early Years: Seasons 1-6 | 1-401 | 116 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 1 May 2013 |
Season 8, Part 1 | 533-576 | 11 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 2 January 2014 |
Season 8, Part 2 | 577-622 | 11 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 2 January 2014 |
Season 9, Part 1 | 623-666 | 11 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 5 March 2014 |
Season 9, Part 2 | 667-706 | 10 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 5 March 2014 |
Season 10, Part 1 | 707-750 | 11 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 28 April 2014 |
Season 10, Part 2 | 751-792 | 11 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 28 April 2014 |
The Middle Years: Seasons 7-10 | 445-792 | 87 | Beyond Home Entertainment | 28 April 2014 |
Available At (National Film and Sound Archives)[edit]
Season Title | Episodes | NFSA Content | Available For Viewing |
---|---|---|---|
Season 11 | 02/90 | Episodes 29&30 (Only) | Episode 29 (Format: Disc) |
Season 13 | 01/90 | Episode 89 | Episode 89 (Format: Digital) |
Season 14 | 30/30 | Episodes 01-30 | Episode 01 (Format: Tape) |
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^baybee. 'A Country Practice (TV Series 1981–1993)'. IMDb.
- ^'TV Week Logie Awards – Past Winners'. Yahoo!7 TV.
- ^Jacinta Burke; Helen Wilson; Susanna Agardy (1983), 'A Country Practice' and the child audience: a case study, Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, Melbourne. ISBN0-642-87073-X
- ^ abBowles, 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. ISBN1-86508-014-4 p 127
- ^'RTÉ TV Listings 1981 – 1996'. Archived from the original on 30 July 2012. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
- ^'A Country Practice - Full Episode DVD Box Sets'. www.acountrypractice.com. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
External links[edit]
- Wandin Valley Bush Nursing Hospital.
- Encyclopedia of Television.
- A Country Practice (Seven Network) on IMDb .
- A Country Practice (Network Ten) on IMDb .
- A Country Practice at TV.com.
- A Country Practice at the National Film and Sound Archive.
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