Killer in Close-Up (1957)

Directed by

Christopher Muir

Country

Australia

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A series of four half-hour television plays based on real historical court cases. Each episode dramatizes a famous trial using close-ups and dialogue taken from the actual records. The anthology was produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission in the late 1950s.

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What happens

Killer in Close-Up is a blanket title covering four live television drama plays produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1957 and 1958. It could be seen as the first anthology series produced for Australian television. Production of the plays was split equally between the Melbourne and Sydney ABC stations, with the first and fourth being produced in Sydney, the second and third in Melbourne. Each ran for 25 minutes. The plays were produced by Christopher Muir, Raymond Menmuir and Will Sterling. The title came from the use of the close up in television drama. The drama plays were based on real-life cases, dramatised for television by George F. Kerr. They were, in order: “The Robert Wood Trial” (4/9/57) “The Wallace Case” (20/11/57) “The Rattenbury Case” (18/6/58) “The Trial Of Madeleine Smith” (13/8/58) In Melbourne, the play aired against Chesebrough-Ponds Playhouse on HSV-7 (which consisted selections from US anthology series) and Douglas Fairbanks Theatre (aka Douglas Fairbanks Jr Presents, a British-American anthology production) on GTV-9, and was broadcast at 8:30PM. In effect, viewers had a choice of three different half-hour self-contained dramas during that night. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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