Lupercali

Please bear in mind that it's over 30 years since I've seen this, and I was eleven at the time.

The series centers on a farm worker with unbelievable natural football (Australian rules) skills. A talent scout accidentally spots him kicking a bale of hay about 50 feet. He is quickly snapped up by a VFL team (which became the AFL, which is roughly the equivalent of the NFL in the US), and to be blunt, I don't remember much more than that, except that I thought it was great when I was eleven years old, and so did most of my mates.

This comes from a period of Australian comedy that produced other shows like 'Kingswood Country' (later to become 'Commodore Country') and saw the tail end of the Grahame Bond/Aunty Jack series, like 'Flash Nick from Jindavik' and 'Woolongong the Brave', and before Australian comedy deteriorated into tedious stand-up comedy shows.

I suspect this show will remain lost forever, which is a shame. It just might be as much fun as I remember.

I can't believe the rating this very ordinary Chuck Jones short has at the moment. Two starving castaways turn up on a desert island, already occupied by Bugs. A bunch or predictable, stupid jokes and not particularly outstanding animation ensues. Don't get me wrong, Warner were putting out some classic cartoons during this period, but Tex Avery had just stormed out the door, and frankly in 1943 he had it all over Chuck Jones, even if Jones was to perfect his craft and surpass Avery in the 1950's. I really can't understand how anyone but an animation buff could be more than passingly distracted by this completely ordinary and ever so predictable WB short. Plus it's yet another WB so-and-so wants to eat so-and-so cartoon. *yawn* Now watch the '0 out of 115 people found this helpful' stats pile up.

'Solo One' was a short-lived (one season) spin-off from the long-running and popular early 70's rural Australian cop drama 'Matlock Police'. In the series Paul Cronin reprised his role as Sen. Const. Gary Hogan from 'Matlock'. The show's signature motif was Cronin's police bike (which would probably have been a Honda 750, if memory serves). I remember enjoying while it was on, as Hogan had grown to be such a memorable character from 'Matlock' - however the show didn't last long before a sea-change came across Crawford Productions, which had produced a succession of cop dramas since 1964. This was one of their last forays into that genre, excepting the groundbreaking 'Cop Shop' (1977). Their next venture, 'The Sullivans', was an entirely different an enormously successful series; a period drama set in the 40's, and Cronin was recruited for the central role of patriarch of the Sullivans clan for the next seven years.

My recollection is that 'Solo One' was a decent show, but good luck finding it anywhere on TV now. Keep your eye on WIN in the early hours of the morning. They're presently repeating two other Crawford cop shows at 3 am.