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Clip description
Buddy Rand (Fred Cullen), on the run from the police, goes to his sister’s (Marie Redshaw) place but she says he can’t stay. Running out of options, Buddy visits his girlfriend Betty Breen (Bunny Gibson) at the pub before looking up one final old mate.
Curator’s notes
These closing scenes emphasise the central themes of friendship and misplaced loyalty. Cullen delivers an affecting performance, as Buddy sees his worldview collapse and his past catch up with him.
A comparison between this sequence and the studio scenes in an early episode like Homicide – The Decimal Point (1965) shows how far Homicide’s production values had come in eight years. Aside from obvious shifts to colour film and improved sound technology, visible differences include increased variety in framing and camera movement in the studio scenes; smoother editing and action; and the consistent image quality of an all-film production as opposed to a combination of film and video.
A drama series shot entirely on film was not necessarily the norm at the time and, according to Ian Crawford in a TV Eye interview, came about in part due to Seven’s colour video facilities not being ready in time for the switch to colour television. After Homicide and its counterparts Division 4 (1969–75) and Matlock Police (1971–75) were axed in the early 1970s, Crawford’s took the step into cheaper, all-video production with Cop Shop (1977–84).
