A Chronological History of Australian Soap

AndyB2008

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A cursory glance over the historical TV listings sites doesn't bring anything up. Granted they're not exhaustive, it's probably safe to say All The Way didn't make it "all the way" to the UK.
I never saw it on any TV channel at all, not even ITV or BBC, and they aired the Grundy\Crawford shows.

As I wrote before, the failed Nine soaps (even the Grundy and Crawford ones) weren't picked up for UK transmission -only Chances, Paradise Beach and Pacific Drive were the ones to get a UK airing.
 

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Here's a few Dannii Minogue scenes of her character trying to make off with her cousin's husband. The editing is choppy but there's not much else out there.

And a bonus picture of Rowena wearing one of her hated hats.

 

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The Power, The Passion - 1989


After failing to strike daytime soap gold in every decade since the birth of Australian TV, Seven tried one last time in the 80's with a show originally titled Love, Passion and Desire, which head of drama Alan Bateman said would be "larger than life" and would be "massive because a locally produced soap will always outperform an international version". Nine's The Ray Martin Show dominated the midday ratings and Seven hoped that pairing the new soap with TV legend Bert Newton's new show, would lure viewers away from the rival network.

The show got off to an inauspicious start when it finally made it to air in 1989. Now titled The Power, The Passion, soap stalwart Bevan Lee had written the first five episodes before leaving the show (having been headhunted by Nine alongside Alan Bateman). He felt that while he wrote it as outrageous but with a knowing wink to the audience, the new writers made fun of the audience rather than bringing them in on the joke. The drama began as wealthy businessman Gordon Byrne (Kevin Miles) returned to Australia after five years abroad, throwing the cat among the pigeons with his three daughters, all of whom had sone sort of grudge against Daddy Dearest. Anna (Suzy Cato) was dealing with an unhappy marriage to Justin Wright (George Mallaby) as well as being blackmailed by stepson Samuel (Danny Roberts) over her affair with toyboy Nick (Nick Carrafa). Ellen (Olivia Hamnett) was happily married and counted Julian McMahon (in his first regular TV role) among her offspring. Kathryn (Tracy Tainsh) was a psychologist with a split personality, who hated her father for separating her from the love of her life Ryan (Ian Rawlings) five years prior.

The heady mix of alternative personas, drug addiction, affairs and murder, didn't outperform the international soaps as Alan Bateman had predicted. Despite the presence of well known TV actors and a reported wardrobe budget of $1.5 million, viewers were still choosing Days of Our Lives and The Young & the Restless over The Power, The Passion. Even the spoof soap A Town Like Dallas, that ran as a segment on The Ray Martin Show each Friday, was outrating it. Producer Oscar Whitbred admitted "My main headache was that it was caricature and the American soaps were so sincere. There were also too many kids in it and the audience wanted more mature stories".

Realising they weren't going to topple the mighty Ray Martin, Seven axed The Bert Newton Show and shoved The Power, The Passion off to 11.30pm weeknights, where it burned off the remainder of the 168 episodes that had been made. It's mostly forgotten these days although it did make it overseas, airing in countries including France and Zimbabwe. Danny Roberts remembers it as one of his more unusual job offers "I swore I was never going to do television again but Skase (Seven's owner) met me, sold it to me and put me on a retainer and contract right there and then - which is unheard of today. It never surprised me that it didn't work because the 80's were ending".
 

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The Power, The Passion - 1989


After failing to strike daytime soap gold in every decade since the birth of Australian TV, Seven tried one last time in the 80's with a show originally titled Love, Passion and Desire, which head of drama Alan Bateman said would be "larger than life" and would be "massive because a locally produced soap will always outperform an international version". Nine's The Ray Martin Show dominated the midday ratings and Seven hoped that pairing the new soap with TV legend Bert Newton's new show, would lure viewers away from the rival network.

The show got off to an inauspicious start when it finally made it to air in 1989. Now titled The Power, The Passion, soap stalwart Bevan Lee had written the first five episodes before leaving the show (having been headhunted by Nine alongside Alan Bateman). He felt that while he wrote it as outrageous but with a knowing wink to the audience, the new writers made fun of the audience rather than bringing them in on the joke. The drama began as wealthy businessman Gordon Byrne (Kevin Miles) returned to Australia after five years abroad, throwing the cat among the pigeons with his three daughters, all of whom had sone sort of grudge against Daddy Dearest. Anna (Suzy Cato) was dealing with an unhappy marriage to Justin Wright (George Mallaby) as well as being blackmailed by stepson Samuel (Danny Roberts) over her affair with toyboy Nick (Nick Carrafa). Ellen (Olivia Hamnett) was happily married and counted Julian McMahon (in his first regular TV role) among her offspring. Kathryn (Tracy Tainsh) was a psychologist with a split personality, who hated her father for separating her from the love of her life Ryan (Ian Rawlings) five years prior.

The heady mix of alternative personas, drug addiction, affairs and murder, didn't outperform the international soaps as Alan Bateman had predicted. Despite the presence of well known TV actors and a reported wardrobe budget of $1.5 million, viewers were still choosing Days of Our Lives and The Young & the Restless over The Power, The Passion. Even the spoof soap A Town Like Dallas, that ran as a segment on The Ray Martin Show each Friday, was outrating it. Producer Oscar Whitbred admitted "My main headache was that it was caricature and the American soaps were so sincere. There were also too many kids in it and the audience wanted more mature stories".

Realising they weren't going to topple the mighty Ray Martin, Seven axed The Bert Newton Show and shoved The Power, The Passion off to 11.30pm weeknights, where it burned off the remainder of the 168 episodes that had been made. It's mostly forgotten these days although it did make it overseas, airing in countries including France and Zimbabwe. Danny Roberts remembers it as one of his more unusual job offers "I swore I was never going to do television again but Skase (Seven's owner) met me, sold it to me and put me on a retainer and contract right there and then - which is unheard of today. It never surprised me that it didn't work because the 80's were ending".
The Power The Passion and The Bert Newton Show also had to compete with the established Santa Barbara and The Bold and The Beautiful on Ten (in Sydney and Melbourne).

Santa Barbara was aired at noon against BN, and B&B's original slot was 1pm, against The Power, The Passion.
 

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The Power The Passion and The Bert Newton Show also had to compete with the established Santa Barbara and The Bold and The Beautiful on Ten (in Sydney and Melbourne).

Santa Barbara was aired at noon against BN, and B&B's original slot was 1pm, against The Power, The Passion.
I see also that Bert Newton wasn't immediately axed following The Power, The Passion's move to 11.30pm. Bert was extended to 90 minutes, running from 12pm - 1.30pm (alongside rival Ray Martin) but it was to no avail.
 

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I see also that Bert Newton wasn't immediately axed following The Power, The Passion's move to 11.30pm. Bert was extended to 90 minutes, running from 12pm - 1.30pm (alongside rival Ray Martin) but it was to no avail.
Bert after the expansion though still had to face B&B.

If he couldn't compete with one California based soap, he could hardly defeat B&B, given The Power The Passion had lost out.
 

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E Street - 1989 to 1993


In 1988, two soap pilots went into production in the Sydney suburb of Balmain. Somerset Street was a gentle drama following family life on the titular terrace and starred soap stalwarts including Judy McBurney (The Young Doctors), Sarah Lambert (A Country Practice) and Sheila Kennelly (Number 96). Meanwhile, Westside was described as an edgier, urban version of A Country Practice, which Westside creator Forrest Redlich had worked on. Somerset Street never got past the pilot stage, while Westside became E Street (after it's setting, Eden Street). Redlich began shopping it around the networks with the stipulations that it would never air against his beloved former home ACP and it would air in a later timeslot, to allow for a more full on take on hard hitting storylines. ABC were initially interested but Ten made a better offer and pre-production began.

The show gathered initial buzz as it was announced that ACP favourite Penny Cook would star as Dr Elly Fielding, a role specifically written for her. In addition to raising her daughter with ex husband David (Noel Hodda), she was the chief medical officer of the Westside Medical Centre. Filling out the community were legal aid officer Sarah McIllop (Katrina Sedgwick), district nurse Martha O'Dare (Cecily Polson), pub owner Ernie Pratchett (Vic Rooney), policemen George Sullivan (Les Dayman) and Paul Berry (Warren Jones), girl "from the wrong side of the tracks" Lisa Bennett (Alyssa-Jane Cook) and unorthodox minister Reverend Bob Brown (Tony Martin).

Ten's decision to launch the show at 7.30pm on Wednesday and Thursday nights caused major repercussions. Richmond Hill got the chop to make way for it, while on set at E Street, scripts that were written 15 weeks in advance had to be hastily reworked to fit the earlier timeslot. After a lavish media launch (reportedly costing over $100k), E Street premiered in May 1989. The show opened with an ageing rector handing over his parish to his younger protege, Reverend Bob, who soon got involved with the case of a local girl with an intellectual disability who was pregnant to a local thug. Bob butted heads with Elly over what was right for the expectant mother, but in traditional soap fashion, this conflict would be the beginnings of a romance. Ratings weren't great but management at the beleaguered Ten saw it's potential and halted production for three weeks while reducing already produced episodes to once a week in order to let the team catch up with rewrites. As the show emerged from this initial tumult, Ten's research found that it was attracting a lucrative audience of under 40's, particularly a large male audience of 14 - 35 year olds. "We had no children watching because it was too hard hitting and no grannies watching because it was too hip" said Forrest Redlich. To tap into this, the team began writing for a male skewing audience, in the first of many changes in tone that the show would have during it's relatively brief soapy run. New characters like misfit Wheels (Marcus Graham), pilot Daniel (Chris Orchard), his daughter Toni (Toni Pearen) and talk show host Micki (Peta Toppano) were introduced as the show became the hit show among the Gen X audience.

As ratings steadied, while still seen as a grittier version of Neighbours and H&A, the show evolved into a warmer, friendlier, less issue led programme. The show's look became more colourful, new music began being featuring heavily on the soundtrack while comedy was encouraged among the writers. Forrest Redlich was still keen to hang on to the male audience, so Lisa's bad boy brother Sonny Bennett (Richard Huggett) was released from prison to wreak havoc in Westside. The sex factor was also upped and the mix of crime and passion proved to be a ratings winner as it culminated in the headline grabbing "Christening Massacre" that saw new parents Chris (Paul Kelman), Megan (Lisbeth Kennelly) and friend Abby (Chelsea Brown) killed off in a car bomb planted by Sonny. By the end of 1990, E Street had reached a ratings highpoint, outperforming A Country Practice for the first time and becoming the most watched drama in Sydney.

As the series returned in 1991, a slew of new characters arrived to fill the gap left by the six who'd departed by the end of the previous year. Most notable among them were rich bitch Sheridan Sturgess (ACP's Kate Raison in a role written for her) and Nikki Spencer (Melissa Tkautz). Forrest Redlich announced that the show would be "more upmarket & more slick and hip than ever before". As one ex-ACP star arrived, another departed as original cast member Penny Cook jumped ship. Determined to see Elly and Bob (who was in prison for a crime he didn't commit) tie the knot, Elly was recast with Diane Craig. Producers decided to take the music factor to the next level and filmed a music video featuring new arrival Melissa Tkautz, to be used in the show. "Read My Lips" took off like a missile after Tkautz was signed by Polygram, topping the charts in Australia and becoming the biggest selling single of the year. Meanwhile, Redlich spun off a record label from his TV production company. Westside Records would sign bands and put out their albums while featuring their music on the show.


With the show reaching highs in both the TV ratings and the music charts, the storyline it's probably best remembered for was introduced. Serial killer Mr Bad (Vince Martin) arrived under the guise of Stephen Richardson, an old friend of Bob's. By day, he was romancing Virginia (Julieanne Newbould) but by night he was painting his face black and silver and terrorizing the neighbourhood. After a terror campaign that saw Virginia and Michael dead and ratings hitting record highs, Mr Bad was locked up in a psychiatric hospital, only to escape in the year end cliffhanger. As his reign continued into 1992, some of the cast grew tired. Kate Raison and Marcus Graham decided to leave, with Raison saying "the Mr Bad stuff was just too weird. It was impossible to play because nothing was based in truth". Vince Martin also thought there was a lot of "unmotivated killing" but Forrest Redlich disagreed, making comparisons to Shakespeare and Freud. Martin jumped ship too, with Mr Bad now being played by Olav Evanson (from behind a leather mask) who was being controlled via injections by crazed nurse Amy (Rebecca Rigg).

Post Mr Bad, storylines seemed to take on a grimmer tone. Newlyweds Toni and CJ (Adrian Lee) were thrust into trauma straight after their honeymoon as he got hooked on drugs and she began an affair with Constable Sam (Simon Baker). When Reverend Bob was killed off in a car crash, the press began to turn on the show. A scene where Max (Bruce Samazan) turned into a werewolf led to more ridicule, although producers defended it as it was only a dream sequence. The stars weren't buying the explanation, with Samazan unhappy at having to perform it while co-star Scott McRae (Jamie Newman) was allegedly fired for criticising it. But there was a bigger shock around the corner, when on the eve of the 1993 Logies (where the show was nominated for nine awards), E Street was axed. By this time, Westside Productions had been subsidising the show to the tune of $20k - $30k per week. When the troubled Ten Network was bought by a new owner, Redlich went to them to renegotiate. Ten proposed to axe Neighbours, give E Street it's vacated five nights a week slot and move production from Sydney to the Neighbours studio in Melbourne. However, they offered no extra money for them to produce an additonal 30 minutes of drama per week and no relocation costs. Disillusioned by the whole process, Forrest Redlich called time on the show himself and E Street ended with a hospital bedside reunion for the remaining cast (following a fire in Ernie's pub) followed by a best of clips montage. By the time it ended, E Street had been sold to 15 countries worldwide and has been remade twice for German and Belgian TV. It's record label offshoot folded not long after the show went off the air.
 

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The christening bombing which killed Chris, Megan and Abby was cut and was preceded by a warning when it aired in the UK.

Around the time the christening bombing storyline episodes aired on Sky One, a real life bombing occured in Warrington, Cheshire.

The lunchtime repeat of the same episode did not air on Sky One the following day as planned, with the slot handed over to a Simpsons repeat.
 

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Melissa Tkautz had to leave briefly because of her music career and E Street's gruelling schedule. They sent her character over to New Zealand.

She came back later because her music career stalled.
 

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Being in E Street meant Marcus Graham and Diane Craig weren't available to reprise their roles for Chances, both having appeared in the unscreened pilot. Jeremy Sims and Brenda Addie got their parts.
 

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Family and Friends - 1990 to 1991

We step into the 90's with the first of many flop soaps of the decade, Family and Friends. Nine hadn't had a soap success since The Young Doctors and The Sullivans ended in the early 80's and were now looking on as their rival networks enjoyed great success with Neighbours and Home & Away. They decided to take action by poaching the creative team behind H&A from Seven (including Alan Bateman, Bevan Lee and John Holmes) and tasking them with creating a similar soap success for Nine's evening schedules. It was originally called The Family, then A Family Matter before they settled on Family and Friends. Bateman came up with the idea of the intertwined lives of two families - one Australian, one Italian - and the cultural differences between them. Struggling to come up with an opening premise, Bevan Lee told the writers to "do a Romeo and Juliet but not tell anybody because the audience is bored shitless with that story". Alas, Nine's publicity department had other ideas and began promoting the show as a Romeo & Juliet for the 90's. And that was just the beginning of it's troubles.

The show would revolve around the warring Chandler and Rossi clans and their feud that began way back in 1951. Rossi matriarch Antoinetta (Dinah Shearing) was the driving force in keeping the feud alive, still angry that her peeping Tom husband had been killed after being caught spying on a Chandler sister all those years ago. Her son Joe (Robert Forza) and his wife Luciana (Anna-Maria Monticelli) had three kids - Marco (Adrian Lee), Claudia (Rachel Beck) and Robert (Renato Bartolemei), who would play Romeo to Jennifer Chandler's (Roxane Wilson) Juliet. Jennifer's family, who had just moved back to town after being relocated to a nearby air force base included parents Greg (Sean Myers) and Pamela (Diane Craig) and siblings Damien (Simon Westaway), Toby (Dominic McDonald) and Ignatius (Jonathan Hardy). Others rounding out the cast included Pamela's sister and Rossi widow Dan (Anne Phelan) and dressmaker Doreen Stubbs (Abigail).

Fresh off of E Street, F&F producer Bruce Best had reservations about the show from the beginning. He said the pilot "wore it's ethnicity very uncomfortably because there were no Italians in it, acting wise or even in the crew. As far as I knew, nobody knew anything about the Italian way of life so it was pretty forced right from the start". While Nine promoted the show heavily during it's exclusive Commonwealth Games coverage, there were troubles behinds the scenes as their programming manager Ross Plapp resigned before the show premiered, supposedly in response to Alan Bateman being allowed have a say in where the show would sit in their schedules. When it's February premiere rolled around, they scheduled it directly opposite E Street on Wednesdays and Thursdays, in the hopes of displacing the fledgling soap that still hadn't proved itself as a hit. Their plan backfired and Family and Friends tanked on opening night. John Holmes said "One of the worst moments of my life was when I was told it had premiered with a disastrous rating of just eight. I knew on that day it was rooted". Bruce Best said that in the eyes of Nine, they went from "being the feted children to pariahs after opening night".

Nine soon moved to damage limitation, announcing that the show would be moved to the 5.30pm slot, Monday to Friday. Bruce Best recalls "just hacking it up" with an editor, in order to fit the new format. The struggling show enjoyed a brief burst of positive coverage (and it's only TV Week cover story) when it was announced that S&D and Sale of the Century star Alyce Platt would join the show as psychologist with a dark secret, Stephanie. By April, only two months after premiering, Nine announced that the show would undergo a major revamp with six characters being dropped in addition to the Chandler-Rossi feud which they admitted "hasn't proved popular with viewers" and that with the arrival of Rebecca Rigg as temptress Pasquelina "it's the start of a whole new look for Family and Friends". Just as the cast and crew were being told who was being written out, word broke that the show was being axed altogether. It was taken off air and replaced with Bugs Bunny repeats. The final episodes didn't start airing until the non-ratings period in November. Ironically, the final week of episodes is actually what should have been the beginning of the new era. After Robert Rossi drunkenly drove into his father in law Greg Chandler and killed him, bitter Antoinetta finally declared the feud over. Greg's pregnant widow Pamela went into early labour at the shock of his death and the final scene saw her sister Dawn smiling at Pamela as she cradled her newborn "New start, eh?".

With the show finished, the H&A crew that Nine had poached went their separate ways with Alan Bateman eventually returning to Seven, John Holmes went off to become Ten's head of drama while Bevan Lee stayed on at Nine to work on a few more 90's soap fiascos. He recently referred to Family and Friends as "one of the sinkers of his career" while Bruce Best said "Family and Friends was talked up way beyond it's ability to deliver but I actually enjoyed working on it. It was one of the more poignant shows that I've worked on".

 

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The 5.30pm timeslot move for F&F to add meant it was a lead in for the 6pm National Nine News bulletin.

The ratings for F&F were as poor at 5.30pm as they were in primetime, and Nine's news department got unhappy as their bulletin started to be affected.
 

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If you overlook the dodgy Irish and Italian accents of Brother Ignatius (who I incorrectly identified as a Chandler sibling in my original post) and Antoinetta, it's not the worst bit of soap we've discussed in this thread.
Poor Dinah Shearing having to do that accent. You would need subtitles to understand.



It's up there with Hank Azaria's Italian accent as Luigi in the Simpsons.
 

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Anna Maria Monticelli to add later joins the cast of the next Nine soap Chances as an Italian mother. Talk about typecasting.

(As does fellow Family and Friends star Abigail later).

Anna's arrival in the soap forms the exit storyline for Deborah Kennedy, Mark Kounnas and Simon Grey as Chances started to be revamped in desperation. (They had been demoted to recurring status by then anyway. Also, the stepmother Cheryl, previously part of the Eddie murder storyline, returns at the same time too as the Reynolds family exit, but either they couldn't afford Louise Siversen with the budget reduction or she was busy, so the role was recast with another, and probably cheaper actress).
 
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Chances - 1991 to 1992

WARNING!!! For those of you currently "Taking a chance on Chances", you may want to skip this post until you've finished watching, as it'll contain spoilers.

Chances was originally conceived in 1988 by Nine's head of drama Lynn Bayonas and was the straightforward enough tale of a family that would (according to TV Week) experience "an event that turns their comfortable middle class existence inside out". The Taylor family consisted of housewife Barbara (Diane Craig), husband Dan (John Sheerin) and their three kids - ad exec Alex (Marcus Graham), bride-to-be Rebecca (former Miss Australia Natalie McCurrey) and the youngest sibling Nikki (Mouche Phillips). The Sullivans' Michael Caton would play Dan's best mate Bill Anderson while Mercia Deane-Johns played Dan's saucy sister Sharon. Keen to get some local drama on the air, Nine commissioned it as a telemovie which opened with Rebecca's tragic wedding day and ended with the family winning $3 million in the lottery. However, they clearly weren't that keen as after the film was finished shooting, Nine never aired it, instead choosing to invest in the ill-fated Family and Friends. When that show crashed and burned, Nine revisited the Chances pilot and decided to get it on the air as a weekly serial.

By this time, several of the cast had moved on to other projects, most notably Marcus Graham who was enjoying success over on E Street, so roles had to be recast. Lynn Bayonas expressed disappointment at losing Marcus but said "he couldn't have been any better than Jeremy Sims", the actor who'd now stepped in to play Alex. John Sheerin, Mercia Deane-Johns, Michael Caton and Natalie McCurrey were all able to return, albeit to two major changes. Firstly, while the pilot had been shot in Sydney, the show was now being produced in Melbourne, meaning they'd to decamp south. And most notably, the show was now being produced as an adults only drama in the vein of Number 96 and The Box, which required the actors to strip off. McCurrey was unhappy with the changes, stating "I'm not happy about doing nude shots but it's part of the job. As long as it isn't gratuitous and is done with some class, it's alright. But if it's nudity for it's own sake then it really degrades the show". Little did she know what was to come.

In the lead up to the show's premiere, the producers began talking up the sex and sin angle. Lynn Bayonas told the press that most cast members had to sign a nudity clause. "The first bare backside in the show belongs to Jeremy Sims and I'd say by the end of the month, it will be seen from here to breakfast". She also told TV Week that it wouldn't be an "issues" show and that they'd "leave that to A Country Practice and GP". She said that what Chances did have was "older women and younger men, marriage break-ups, affairs with secretaries and women desperate for love and racing off with everybody". It was actually the network who pushed producers to add more spice to the series, for two reasons. One, while winning the lottery is an exciting opening premise, research had shown that what comes after is actually quite boring. And two, more importantly, after a string of drama flops over the course of the previous decade, Nine were trying everything to build a buzz around Chances, insisting on more and more sex and nudity in order to make full use of it's adult 8.30pm timeslot. Bayonas looks back and admits that scenes like this didn't fit into the early episodes "It made the actors uncomfortable because it looked gratuitous. Later on it fitted perefectly and nobody was embarassed".

Amid ads proclaiming that "TV Sex is Back", Chances premiered in January 1991. It opened to the same premise set out in the original unaired TV movie with daughter Rebecca's wedding to David Young (Rodney Bell). Patriarch Dan was hiding his financial woes from his newly recast family including wife Barbara (now played by Brenda Addie), daughter Nikki (now played by Cathy Gobold) and the aforementioned troublemaker son Alex (Jeremy Sims). In addition to Dan's sister Sharon, there were more Taylor siblings rounding out the cast including nurse Connie (Deborah Kennedy) and her two sons - gym instructor Chris (Mark Kounnas) and younger Sam (Simon Grey) as well as Dan's brother Jack (Tim Robertson) who had a rocky relationship with wife Sarah (Anne Grigg). By the end of the episode, Alex had accidentally killed his new brother in law in a car crash that he subsequently blamed on dead groom and the press showed up to announce that one of the troubled clan had won the lottery. Opening night ratings were high but after the lottery reveal in the second episode (Dan had won), ratings began to fall. It faced tough competition on the both nights that it aired, going up against L.A Law and Beyond 2000 (from the same producers as Chances) on Tuesdays and against established Aussie hits Police Rescue and Fast Forward on Thursdays.

Despite ratings troubles, the sexy show still drummed up lots of publicity, both good and bad. Actress Tammy McIntosh had a public falling out with the producers over a cut of a nude scene that they used, with her featuring in TV Week under the headline "I was treated like a piece of meat". Other tabloid tales included the actress that would call for ice cubes to "enhance" her performance before nude scenes and the on set stripper, hired to train the cast in various moves and positions. Onscreen, as Dan distributed his wealth, various relatives showed up including Barbara's mother Hettie (Yvonne Lawley) and Connie's bad boy ex-husband Eddie (Dennis Miller), who seduced Connie despite having a secret wife Cheryl (Louise Siverson). There were affairs aplenty as Chris slept with his uncle's wife Sarah while cousins Ben and Alex had a fling with the same woman, leaving them wondering just who was the father of her baby. Tiffany Lamb (later to be seen on Paradise Beach) showed up as prostitute Brandy "Mistress of Fantasies" while in a moment of high drama, Barbara was struck by a speeding car and when Dan went to see what had happened, he too was struck by another car, leaving Barbara in a coma and Dan requiring the services of a sex therapist played by Lynda Stoner. When none of this helped the flagging ratings, producers resorted to the tried and tested whodunnit arc, which saw Eddie murdered and an ensuing court case when the killer was revealed. Ratings continued to slide which prompted Nine to announce that the show would be pulled from it's twice weekly timeslots and would only air one episode a week on Tuesdays at 9.30pm.

The change in broadcast pattern and in budget prompted producers to pare the original cast of 17 down to just 6 regulars. It was announced that they would tackle "more contemporary issues" and that it would be "deliberately controversial". Jeremy Sims said "The tailed wagged the dog from the word go with Chances. They started with a concept that would bring in a certain audience and when that didn't happen, they just started trawling for any audience they could. The ratings would determine what demographic or niche they would go for. Every other week there was a change in style or tone". Chances relaunched with episode 60, which saw the show jump forward one year in time. Alex was presumed dead following a plane crash but was actually living on a farm, his memory slowly returning following a trip to the city. Producers decided to make the most of the later timeslot and go for broke by trying something they thought hadn't been done on Aussie TV before - high camp and outrageous storylines (they clearly hadn't watched Return to Eden). Jeremy Sims said "the actors wouldn't have minded doing high camp from the very beginning. What pissed us off early on as the attempt to do Home & Away with the odd cutaway dropped in of some tits. We were quite happy to get naked but we wanted it to be sexy rather than stupid. Everyone had a ball on that show during the last six months when we all got on famously and laughed and laughed making some of the silliest TV ever".

As the new Chances headed into 1992, Alex was hooked on drugs and under the control of an evil doctor who was supposed to be helping him recover his "lost year", mother Barbara had picked up poolboy toyboy Cal (Gerry Sont), who was actually a jewel thief while uncle Jack was killed off after Stephanie (Molly Brumm) gave him a heroin overdose, only for Jack to return as a ghost, seeking revenge for his death. Around this time, Chances was sold overseas. In the UK, Sky TV's raunchy billboard campaign featuring a Page 3 model that gradually lost more of her clothes as it got closer to the premiere date, caused controversy among London councils who demanded she be covered up while in Russia, questions were asked in parliament about why a seedy import was getting more viewers than local programming. Playboy TV in the US tried to buy the show but producers refused as "they felt Chances wasn't soft porn".

In Australia, Chances wasn't enjoying the same success as it was abroad, this time being beaten by reality soap Sylvania Waters. Writers continued to pile on the wackiness in a bid to keep the show afloat. Crowley Lander (Barry Hill), one of the world's richest men, showed up and revealed that he had been manipulating everything, including the lottery win, up until this point. He announced that Alex was "the chosen one", who would donate his DNA to Crowley so he could live forever. Soap stalwart Abigail (in her final soap role) was drafted in as ex-porn star turned TV host Bambi Shute who tried and failed to help Dan and Barbara save their marriage. While they went their separate ways, they continued as colleagues, running the high class brothel that the late Jack secretly owned. As things got wilder, the timeslot got later, with Chances seeing out it's days at 11pm. Crowley's daughter Imogen (Ciri Thompson) married Alex and was sent off to a convent to hide as Melbourne was invaded by Triads and Nazi's while another character plotted with the Hong Kong mafia to stop the British handover of Hong Kong in 1997. A supernatural necklace once owned by Eva Braun cast a spell on Madeleine (Karen Richards), turning her into an Egyptian sun goddess. After 127 episodes, Chances drew to a close, but not before Alex was saved from death and then spoken to by God in Melbourne library. Along the way, the show had featured sex, nudity, Israeli secret agents, man eating plants, voodoo and vampires. Notice had obviously been given that the show was ending, as the final scene saw everyone celebrating Crowley's death in Sharon's bar when Alex walked in and told them that he'd inherited Crowley's fortune and had bought everyone lottery tickets as a gift. "You never know" he said, "Some win.....".
 
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