A Town Like Alice | |
---|---|
Based on | Novel by Nevil Shute |
Written by | Tom Hegarty Rosemary Anne Sisson |
Directed by | David Stevens |
Starring | Helen Morse Bryan Brown Gordon Jackson |
Theme music composer | Bruce Smeaton |
Country of origin | Australia |
Original language | English |
No. of episodes | 3 x 1 hour 45 minutes. |
Production | |
Producer | Henry Crawford |
Running time | 301 mins |
Production companies | Mariner Films Australian Film Commission Victorian Film |
Budget | $1.25 million [1] |
Original release | |
Network | Seven Network |
Release | 4 October – 18 October 1981 |
A Town Like Alice is a five-hour 1981 Australian television adaptation of Nevil Shute's novel of the same name. Produced by the Seven Network, and directed by David Stevens, it was the second major adaptation of the book. [2]
In the United States it was shown on PBS under the Masterpiece Theatre banner, a rare non-British production to be so aired.
While generally faithful to the original book, there are several notable differences, the most significant right at the end.
It was the most expensive Australian television series at the time. It was filmed on location in England, Malaysia and western New South Wales. [3]
The series was a huge ratings success in Australia, getting a 49% viewing share. [4]
The series won an International Emmy Award for drama in 1981 [5] and won a Logie Award in the Best Single Drama or Mini Series category at the 1982 awards with Morse, Brown and Jackson winning Logies for their performances. [6]
Room at the Top is a 1959 British drama film based on the 1957 novel by John Braine. It was adapted by Neil Paterson, directed by Jack Clayton, and produced by John and James Woolf. The film stars Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears, Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston, and Hermione Baddeley.
A Town Like Alice is a romance novel by Nevil Shute, published in 1950 when Shute had newly settled in Australia. Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman, becomes romantically interested in a fellow prisoner of World War II in Malaya, and after liberation emigrates to Australia to be with him, where she attempts, by investing her substantial financial inheritance, to generate economic prosperity in a small outback community—to turn it into "a town like Alice" i.e. Alice Springs.
Robert Alan Morse was an American actor. Morse, known for his gap-toothed boyishness, started his career as a star on Broadway acting in musicals and plays before expanding into film and television. He earned numerous accolades including two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Bryan Neathway Brown AM is an Australian actor. He has performed in over eighty film and television projects since the late 1970s, both in his native Australia and abroad. Notable films include Breaker Morant (1980), Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984), F/X (1986), Tai-Pan (1986), Cocktail (1988), Gorillas in the Mist (1988), F/X2 (1991), Along Came Polly (2004), Australia (2008), Kill Me Three Times (2014) and Gods of Egypt (2016). He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award for his performance in the television miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983).
Gordon Cameron Jackson, was a Scottish actor best remembered for his roles as the butler Angus Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs and as George Cowley, the head of CI5, in The Professionals. He also portrayed Capt Jimmy Cairns in Tunes of Glory, and Flt. Lt. Andrew MacDonald, "Intelligence", in The Great Escape.
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Helen Morse is an English-born Australian actress who has appeared in films, on television and on stage. She won the AFI Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for the 1976 film Caddie, and starred in the 1981 miniseries A Town Like Alice. Her other film appearances include Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Agatha (1979), Far East (1982) and The Eye of the Storm (2011).
Herbert James "Ringer" Edwards was an Australian soldier during World War II. As a prisoner of war (POW), he survived being crucified for 63 hours by Japanese soldiers on the Burma Railway. Edwards was the basis for the character Joe Harman in Nevil Shute's novel A Town Like Alice. The book was the basis for a 1956 film and a 1981 Australian television miniseries of the same name.
Dorothy Alison was an Australian stage, film and television actress
A Town Like Alice is a 1956 British drama film produced by Joseph Janni and starring Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch that is based on the 1950 novel of the same name by Nevil Shute. The film does not follow the whole novel, concluding at the end of part two and truncating or omitting much detail. It was partially filmed in Malaya and Australia.
A Town Like Alice is a 1950 novel by British author Nevil Shute.
David Stevens was an Australian writer and director, best known for his work on Breaker Morant, A Town Like Alice, and The Sum of Us.
A Thousand Skies is a 1985 Australian mini series about the life of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith.
The 9th International Emmy Awards took place on November 23, 1981, in New York City. The award ceremony, presented by the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (IATAS), honored all programming produced and originally aired outside the United States.
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