STAY IN TOUCH
Edited By Jacquelyn Hole And Ava Hubble
08 July 1992
Sydney Morning Herald
BOX SPACE
THE warning that thousands of British holidaymakers are flocking to Australia – lured by scenes from the “popular” TV series Boys from the Bush -left us somewhat puzzled. Have we missed a major TV event? Or has the BBC retitled the Bush Tucker Man for Pommy consumption?
Boys, which has become a cult hit in the UK, is a black comedy about an expat Londoner who pines for his native Shepherds Bush, a London suburb.
The series stars Tim Healy and Chris Haywood as accident-prone London “wide boys” from Shepherds Bush who run an unsuccessful private detective agency.
According to a rave review in the London Daily Mirror, “Tim Healy is the biggest misery on the box as Reg the whingeing Pom in Boys from the Bush.”
The London Sun is also a fan: “Twenty-one-year-old (Australian actor) Nadine Garner steals the show as Reg’s hormonal teenage daughter. A masterly study of sulky, vain, gold-digging adolescence.”
The show is into its second series on BBC TV and is a joint production of the independent British producer Verity Lambert and Channel Seven here.
So why haven’t the locals been allowed to share in the fun?
“We don’t think it’s all that great,” Seven’s network program director, Glen Kinging, told us. “It’s a pleasant, gentle show, but we are overburdened with pleasant shows. It’s more the ABC’s style of show; it’s more of a dialogue show.”
Kinging said Seven is not participating in the second series.