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| Starting Out | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Soap opera |
| Created by | Reg Watson |
| Country of origin | Australia |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 85 |
| Production | |
| Producer | Sue Masters |
| Production company | Reg Grundy Organisation |
| Original release | |
| Network | Nine Network |
| Release | 5 April 1983 – 1983 |
| Related | |
| The Young Doctors | |
Starting Out is an Australian television soap opera made for the Nine Network by the Reg Grundy Organisation in 1983.
The five-night-a-week series was created by Reg Watson as the network's replacement for the long-running serial The Young Doctors . It was produced by Sue Masters who had also been the producer of The Young Doctors.
It was set at a medical college with an emphasis on young people getting their first experience of living away from home and leading independent lives. Starting Out debuted on 5 April 1983 in Melbourne and 18 April 1983 in Sydney. It aired in an early evening slot of 6pm week night’s before the network's news service. [1]
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The series failed to gain sufficient ratings and was quickly cancelled and removed from network schedules by 20 May 1983. Some of the unaired episodes were screened sporadically out-of-ratings in late 1983. Not until a late night repeat run during the later half of 1989 several years after production did all of the 85 produced episodes go to air. [1]
Robert Fidgeon of the Herald Sun named Starting Out as one of "Australia's All-time Top 50 TV Turkeys". He stated "For some reason Peter O'Brien said yes to this dumb soap about dumb teen medical students living in a boarding house. Planned 17-week run lasted three." [3] Fidgeon's colleague Fiona Byrne included Starting Out in her feature about "long forgotten Australian TV dramas that made viewers switch off." [4] Summing it up, she wrote "It debuted on Channel 9 in April 1983 with little fanfare. It was pulled from the network's schedule after little more than a month and naturally there was not a second season." [4]
