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I like a lot of old Australian television plays, but I’m particularly fond of the genre pieces: thrillers, war stories, musicals, comedy-thrillers, courtroom dramas, that sort of thing. It’s a matter of personal taste, of course – there’s nothing wrong with a sensitive drama or slab of Ibsen, I’m just a more low-brow kind of guy.

Probably my favourite genre script out of any early Australian television play was Bruce Stewart’s The Devil Makes Sunday. I have to go off the script since this is another one of those plays that I haven’t seen. But I have read the script – it’s at the National Archives of Australia – and loved it, so I wanted to do a piece on it, especially as it was so successful.

Stewart (1925-2005) was a New Zealand actor and writer who, like so many of his countrymen working in showbusiness, emigrated to Australia seeking greater opportunities. After a number of years working in Sydney radio, Stewart decided to emigrate to London, again like so many of his countrymen (and Australians) working in showbusiness.

He had a long, solid career in England, ranking with Peter Yeldham, Michael Noonan, Sumner Locke Elliot, Morris West and Rex Rienits as among the most successful Antipodean expat writers of his era. (Sidebar: Like a weirdly large amount of writers around this time – Noonan, West, Thomas Keneally – Stewart once considered being a priest. He’s also not to be confused with another New Zealand writer called Bruce Stewart, a Maori.)

When Stewart was in London, he wrote a number of scripts set in Australia for British television and radio. These included Time of the Serpent, Moonfall, Shadow of a Pale Horse, Day of the Drongo, Day of the Galah, Jungle Juice, an adaptation of Ruth Park’s Harp of the South, and The Devil Makes Sunday. He also played the lead role in the Australian-set Lean Liberty and wrote on New Zealand subjects.

Shadow of a Pale Horse was Stewart’s breakthrough work as a television writer, so I might talk a little about that first.

It was set in 1860 in the New South Wales town of Cobar, and concerned a man called Jem, who is arrested for the murder of a young man. When the town is cut off due to floods, it’s decided to hold a trial in Cobar itself, and the father of the murdered youth is given the job of defending Jem while the dead youth’s employer is given the job of prosecuting him. The script was filmed by ITV in 1959 in a production starring Patrick McGoohan.

The acclaim was such that the script was later filmed for television in Canada, Australia and the US. The Canadian version starred Patrick MacNee and proved controversial when the sponsor pulled its support of the episode over violence. The Australian production was for the anthology series The General Motors Hour and starred Brian James – a contemporary review is here. The American one was an episode of US Steel Hour; it was rewritten by an American and directed by Jack Smight (Harper, Midway), starring Dan Duryea, Frank Lovejoy and Carroll O’Connor, which is totally cool. (American television shot the occasional Australian-set-and-written script eg. The Grey Nurse Said Nothing.)

Bruce Stewart wrote The Devil Makes Sunday not long after Shadow of a Pale Horse. Another violent colonial era drama, it takes place in 1840 on Norfolk Island, a convict settlement run by (the fictitious) Major Childs. A particularly brutal flogging, combined with the absence of troops, prompts a convict uprising led by Clay, a bitter prisoner serving a term for manslaughter, and including the posh Silverwood, the crazed Stukely and the near-dead Jacky. Childs strangles their overseer, knocks out two soldiers, then takes a house of hostages: Childs, his daughter Dora, the drunken Dr Barnaby and the Reverend Gray. Much bloodshed ensues as Clay tries to figure a way off the island.

In other words, it’s a siege story: The Petrified Forest/The Desperate Hours set in a convict settlement. That’s such a brilliant concept for a TV play: inherently tense and dramatic, self-contained, offering the opportunity to say something about the notion of punishment and Australian history (there were heaps of convict uprisings on Norfolk Island). And Stewart writes up to the quality of his idea: his characters are well delineated, the action moves swiftly, tension rises and, perhaps most of all, he doesn’t sell-out. He goes for it – by the end of the one hour running time, Clay (SPOILERS) has killed the overseer, the doctor, the reverend and Childs.

The Devil Makes Sunday doesn’t stuff around. While it has conventional moments (eg. the daughter, the “good” convict Silverwood), the characters of Clay and Childs are really fresh and strong; I especially like Childs, a weak man who thinks God is on his side. Incidentally, the title came from an old song quoted in the play:

Ho ho, says God, for I’ll make man,

I’ll start him off on Monday,

I’ll finish him by Friday night,

And then I’ll sleep, so now take fright,

If I ain’t woke up by Saturday night,

I’ll let the devil make Sunday.

The Devil Makes Sunday enjoyed a similar success to Shadow of a Pale Horse. It was filmed for British television first, being the premiere episode of a new ATV anthology series called Theatre 67. Like Shadow it also sold to the US Steel Hour where the all-American cast included Dane Clark (Clay), Martyn Green (Childs), Brooke Hayward (Dora Childs) and Fritz Weaver (Silverwood).

This was the television debut of Hayward, daughter of legendary agent-producer Leland Hayward and film star Margaret Sullavan; she was once married to Dennis Hopper and wrote a best-selling memoir about her family, Haywire.

Sydney Conabere

The script was rewritten by Joe Palmer who had also adapted Stewart’s Shadow of a Pale Horse for American TV, but like that, it was still set in Australia and the basic story remained the same.

The Devil Makes Sunday was adapted for radio in Australia and on the BBC, and the ABC filmed it for television in Melbourne in 1962. Sydney Conabere starred as Clay, a part he’d played on radio, and William Sterling directed, with Sterling’s wife and frequent collaborator, Carole Potter, playing Dora.

Critics complained about the violence – maybe this is why none of Stewart’s other scripts for British television set in Australia were filmed in Australia (Day of the Drongo, Jungle Juice). Just to recap – Bruce Stewart wrote more TV plays set in Australia for English television than Australian. Still, at least we did two of his best.

Part of the reason Australian television plays remain so little remembered is that none were turned into films. This is in sharp contrast with television plays from Canada (Zero Hour), Britain (Dial M for Murder) and the US (Marty, Twelve Angry Men). I get that there were barely any Australian features made in the 1960s, but there were a bunch in the 1970s onwards, many of which could have done with stronger source material. I guess it was cultural amnesia – if you didn’t see the play when it was on, chances are you wouldn’t again. It’s a shame; most Australian television plays didn’t suit big-screen treatment, but some were a natural for it, such as The Grey Nurse Says Nothing, Lola Montez, The Tower, Light me a Lucifer, and most of all The Devil Makes Sunday. It’s great that the ABC made it.