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Kingswood Country - Graham Kennedy
Title:
Kingswood Country - Graham Kennedy
NFSA ID
1468658
Year
1980
Courtesy
RS Productions, Gary Reilly, Tony Sattler
Graham Kennedy appears as a special guest on the award-winning comedy series, Kingswood Country (1980-84).
Thelma Bullpitt (played by Judi Farr) has won an evening with a TV celebrity thanks to her TV Week award-winning recipe for meat loaf. The clip opens with Graham's knock at the door and Ted Bullpitt (Ross Higgins) responding with one of the series' famous catch-phrases, 'pickle me grandmother'. When Ted goes to the kitchen to fetch the meat loaf, he picks up the wrong tray and instead serves up a slab of Pal dog food, complete with gravy, mashed potato and parsley. Graham comments on the strong smell and names it the 'Graham Kennedy Meat Loaf' before taking his first bite.
In this episode Graham delivers his lines with his legendary timing and charm. The script also references Graham’s TV career, with lines such as, ‘knocked all the Logies off the bumper bar' and 'mine's the King’s car'. Even the use of Pal dog food is a reference to the live dog food commercials seen on In Melbourne Tonight which often involved Graham's beloved labrador, Rover, which he acquired from the Jack Davey Memorial Guide Dog Centre.
Series creators Gary Reilly and Tony Sattler remained life-long friends of Graham Kennedy and supported him during his final years living in the surrounds of Bowral, New South Wales.
The 86 episodes of Kingswood Country were broadcast on the Seven Network from 30 January 1980 to 13 September 1984. The sitcom examined the attitudes of a conservative working-class man (Ted) and his resistance to the social changes occurring in Australia in the 1980s, seen through his wife, Thelma, and their two adult children, Craig (Peter Fisher) and Greta (Laurel McGowan), and her husband Bruno (Lex Marinos), the son of Italian migrants.
Notes by Helen Tully
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.