Whiplash

As a kid, I used to stay up late and watch this series on Saturday nights. The theme song was one that I could sing for days.

Loved the idea of an Australian western. Sure wish some of these old shows were available to see again tonight.

I think that I was the only viewer in south Mississippi, as none of my friends ever got it.

That stagecoach and the crack of the whip were just music to my ears as an 11-year-old.

I was truly as upset as a kid could every have been when our local channel in New Orleans stopped airing it after only a few episodes.

This was one of my favourite shows as a kid, loved stories of the Cobb & Co coach line and especially our bushrangers Most of our bushrangers were deemed heroic and the law was the bad guys Loved the theme song too - it is one of the few very show showing how Australia was back in those early days. I know that myself and my friends use to play at being bushrangers - we had some wonderfully colorful characters. Peter Graves gives a great portrayal of a coach driver of the era. Must admit though it was odd seeing him in Whiplash and then later on in the afternoon in an American series called Fury. I was unaware that it was shown in the US but nice to know that other nationalites liked it too - it is a shame that it did not take off.

Whiplash is a little known, largely forgotten ITC television series, a co-production from the 60's. It features Peter Graves – more famous through his later association with the original Mission Impossible – as hero Christopher Cobb. He's an American immigrant in 1840-50's Australia who owns and manages a stage line - a life apparently very loosely based on an actual business which ran between Melbourne and the Victorian goldfields. Each 30 minute episode of Whiplash deals with the travails and tribulations surrounding his endeavour, in which Cobb frequently has to fight for his business and his life.

Whiplash was a result of ITC seeking new entertainment fields to conquer after the success of such earlier programmes as William Tell, The Buccaneers and The Aventures of Robin Hood, all of which had fared well in the important American market. No doubt this was allied to encouraging familiarity with successful 50's stateside western shows, such as Wagon Train. Shot as a co production at Australia's Atransa Studios as well as on location, Whiplash tried the interesting step of appealing to the transatlantic audience in particular by setting what, in effect, is a western scenario in the Antipodes. This was not the first time it had been tried, in The Sundowners (1960) for instance, Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr starred as sheep drovers down under, perhaps was another inspiration for the 1961 TV show.

Interestingly, the stories making up the 34 episodes of Whiplash steer clear of what would seem an obvious choice of subject: that of Cobb's initial arrival and earliest attempts at making his way in the country. Instead we join the hero with his enterprise already fairly well established. In the first episode for instance, 'Convict Town' we see Cobb first encounter the young friend Dan (Anthony Wickert) who was to make a regular appearance in support on the show. Dan – who wears for the first and only time a distracting hick-style straw hat – after some initial doubts proves himself and is offered regular employment with a company that's already opening roads, and with more than one office and employees.

The effect of this 'pre-establishment' of Cobb & Co is to remove the main source of drama away from the birth pangs of a fledgling, civilising business and place it elsewhere, noticeably in the free-ranging Cobb's various encounters which may, or may not prove closely connected with his stagecoach line. But throughout such latitudes Cobb himself is always beyond reproach, remaining a strong and reliable outsider in a small community someone who, although an outsider, has the ability to see things afresh and offer a unique input. Watching Whiplash today one is reminded sometimes of another, highly successful series from just a couple of years before: The Rifleman. This too featured a strong man fighting for his right to settle in and then make his way in a small (western) community, and one who had a trademark weapon at his skillful disposal. But Cobb's whip makes fewer appearances than The Rifleman's famous, modified, firearm and it has to be said that Graves brings to his central role none of the dangerous rectitude so ably demonstrated by The Rifleman's Chuck Connors. In one episode, 'Episode in Bathurst' (aired very early on and one of 4 written by one Gene Roddenberry) Cobb even goes out of way to deny the mystique and allure of firearms. calling them "ugly stupid and vicious".

That's Whiplash attempting to have its prairie oyster and eat it, and points up the serial's central creative dilemma. In attempting to be a western and yet on such occasions overtly denying some of the genre's key pleasures, there's a danger of it being neither fish nor fowl. This is a problem exacerbated by the American scriptwriters' treatment of early Australian society, with pace and drama but often no real research behind each episode. Allied to the difficulties in finding suitable stock footage, admitted at the time, and the creators found things awkward. One week revelling in those familiar elements expected out west, or its equivalent, next time the programmes will deny many of those some pleasures, featuring story lines that take matters far away from the traditional American frontier. (A degree of this uncertainty is shown at the start of each show when the episode is put into context for the audience by a few words on screen.) In 'Sarong' for instance, a story line about pearl divers and their exploitation - a show incidentally including some mild titillation which the more morally austere Rifleman might have blanched at or that of 'The Adelaide Arabs'. Aimed squarely at a younger audience, and lacking the irony or sophistication found in other series of the time, Whiplash may have struggled to find its way amidst competing shows with less confusing inspirations, one reason why its run was relatively short.

Today, with hardly any westerns airing on TV, and with the pleasant ring of nostalgia surrounding it, Whiplash poses audiences fewer problems. Indeed, its original aspects have much more going for it. Fresh from the now equally overlooked series Fury (1955-1960) Graves makes for a very watchable hero and, if in the event he seems slightly wary of giving his all to dramatic, violent action, ultimately this fits in nicely with the thoughtful character he portrays as Cobb. Other elements have dated less well: noticeably the treatment of the aboriginal peoples, highlighted in the striking episode 'Dutchman's Reef' (another Roddenberry effort) where, playing a missing heir 'gone native', an actor wears blackface.

Taken as a group though, the shows make for consistently entertaining viewing and, as an overlooked track of early 60's British television juvenilia certainly worth a look, even if not of the top rank.

I loved this show, and it turned me on to Australia at a very young age. This was my first exposure to the trademark "Aussie" hat (aka "Akubra") with one side of the brim up, attached to the side of the crown. In Peter Graves' character's case, I believe it was some kind of animal tooth that held it in place.

I pestered my mom and dad for YEARS to find me one, and finally we found a rough approximation in an Army surplus store, with a chain that would clip one side of the brim to the side of the crown. I wore it every day, and even after I got older I would wear it on camping trips.

I too wish at least one or two episodes had survived. I'm sure it would be terribly dated, but I think it would be fantastic.

Excellent TV from the 60s, this production was very interesting, it involved many styles from both countries the USA & Australia, it shows how close both cultures have evolved and have actually been one of the same through the past century. USA battled native Indians, Australia almost obliterated the aboriginal peoples, both countries had a gold rush, both countries had cowboys and outlaws, both countries made movies about its upbringing at the same time (Errol Flynn),and this TV show brings the closeness of the Australian culture and American culture as a culture born with many significant cultural ties. Both the USA and Australia have a common goal, that is to make everyone on earth feel they have made a contribution towards life as we know it. The great Peter Graves has added to this common goal, not only did he make Whiplash in 1960 in Australia he also made another Mission Impossible series in Australia in the 1980s.