Richmond Hill (TV series)

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Richmond Hill
Genre
Network Ten
Release27 January (1988-01-27) –
22 June 1988 (1988-06-22)

Richmond Hill is an Australian

Ten Network. It was devised by Reg Watson who also created Neighbours. It debuted on 27 January 1988 in a two-hour episode on Network 10 at 7.30pm. The series was only moderately successful and was cancelled on 22 June 1988. A total of 92 episodes were produced.[1]
As of March 2021, there has been no DVD Release of Richmond Hill.

Synopsis

Whereas Neighbours was set in Melbourne, this series was set in a small fictional Australian country town near Sydney and most of the scenes revolved around the local police station, a real estate agency, and the pub. The serial drew comparisons to the hugely popular Seven Network soap operas, A Country Practice and Cop Shop. The programme was produced in Sydney, some location shooting took place in Mona Vale, New South Wales. Connie Ryan's house in the series was in Berryman Street, North Ryde NSW.

The cast was intentionally made up of experienced soap actors in a bid to secure immediate success. Well-known names included

Ashley Paske, Emily Symons (pre Home and Away), Marc Gray, and Melissa Tkautz, all made their TV debuts in the series. Former comedy star Ross Higgins of Kingswood Country
played the central role of the local police officer and family man Dan Costello.

Broadcast history

Richmond Hill was broadcast on

Network Ten in an evening timeslot 19:30–20:30 as two one-hour episodes each week on Wednesdays and Thursdays.[2]

The series, although quite popular, was considered a lukewarm success in the Australian ratings, and was cancelled after six months in June 1988, and ended abruptly at episode 92 later that year. The decision came as a shock to producers, not least due to the fact that key actors contracts had just been extended for another year. As a result, the actors continued to be paid even though the series was no longer in production. There was not a definitive conclusion to the series because production was expected to continue. A final blow was the series had just been sold to the ITV network in the UK the very week it was axed in Australia, but ITV still aired all the episodes.

During early 1989, Channel Ten replayed Richmond Hill at 3.00pm weekday afternoons though after only 35 episodes that were replayed it was then abruptly removed from its programming schedule in replacement of US chat shows like Donahue and The Oprah Winfrey Show. The remaining episodes have still not been seen on Ten since their original 1988 broadcast.

Foxtel's UKTV Gold channel in Australia replayed the entire Richmond Hill series during the late 1990s between 1996 and 1997 during weekday mornings at 9.00am. The series has not been seen in the last 20 years on Australian TV and is waiting to be seen again whether it be released through DVD consumption or by a streaming channel.

International screenings

The UK's

primetime series on ITV, although in April 1988, the ITV network cancelled Crossroads, leaving 3 half-hour evening slots. This would have meant the re-formatting of episodes, but Network Ten's cancellation of Richmond Hill seemingly resulted in ITV losing interest in the series completely, and its mid-afternoon timeslot meant that it didn't achieve anywhere near the audience figures that Neighbours
, was achieving in its tea-time slot over on BBC One.

Due to local programming commitments,

Granada Television started the series two weeks later than the rest of the ITV network, and started to screen the series weekly from 20 October 1988, and chose to screen A Country Practice
in the Thursday slot instead. In 1990 the series was moved to a Sunday and didn't finish until spring 1991.

Central Television also broke away from the network screenings in 1989, eventually falling behind the rest of the network by dropping to one episode a week towards the end of its run (running Quincy in the Thursday slot instead). The majority of ITV regions resumed A Country Practice as its replacement, with regional UK viewers now considerably behind Australia and at varying parts of the storyline.

Richmond Hill was last screened in the UK in the mid-1990s on cable & satellite channel Wire TV (hosted by Femi Oke and co hosted Chris Stacey with guest presenters Darren Edwards, and Darren Gray), it was screened back to back with USA soap The Bold and the Beautiful, before Wire TV was finally axed in 1994.

In New Zealand, Richmond Hill was bought by TVNZ and premiered on Network Two at 8.20pm on Sunday 19 February 1989, after the series had been cancelled in Australia. Following the feature-length pilot, the series was aired as one episode a week (as opposed to two episodes a week in Australia) and shown Wednesday nights at 8.00pm (from 22 February) before moving to 7.30pm (from 5 April until 2 August) and then to Tuesday nights at 7.30pm (from 8 August until 24 October). After a short break, the series was moved to Friday nights at 7.30pm (from 8 December 1989 until 7 December 1990). All episodes were played.

Grundy also sold the soap to German television channel

Pro 7
, and Richmond Hill was dubbed into German. It was aired twice a week from 1991 to 1992.

Major cast

References

  1. ^ "Richmond Hill – Nostalgia Central". 21 June 2014.
  2. ^ "Simply Put Blog: RICHMOND HILL".
  3. ^ Sunday 07 August 1988 Sunday Mirror "TV chat" Page: 25
  4. ^ Saturday 06 August 1988. Evening Herald (Dublin) "G'day" Page 2"

External links

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