Charlie Cole and his grandson Pete Jarrett travel around outback Australia in a beaten-up ute, finding itinerant work along the way. In each place they befriend locals and become involved in... Read allCharlie Cole and his grandson Pete Jarrett travel around outback Australia in a beaten-up ute, finding itinerant work along the way. In each place they befriend locals and become involved in an adventure, culminating in their solving a mystery, crime or local conflict.Charlie Cole and his grandson Pete Jarrett travel around outback Australia in a beaten-up ute, finding itinerant work along the way. In each place they befriend locals and become involved in an adventure, culminating in their solving a mystery, crime or local conflict.
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Yeah great cult TV series. Great atmosphere, top script and good performances make this a class A candidate for DVD release.
This is a seminal tour de force of Australian TV history and has that unforgettable groovy period piece soundtrack with Doug Parkinson's gravel and phlegm voice spewing 70's Australiana all over your cathode ray box as a amazingly long camera zoom out reveals the religion of the open road in all its Antipodean glory. This is a memento from another and not too distant era, and has the proud stamp of the land mighty Down Under from start to finish in all its raw freedom and gritty grandeur.
Come on ABC! Get with the program and release this cool 70's cult baby for all to enjoy - or re-enjoy if you're lucky enough to have lived the dream at the time.
This is a seminal tour de force of Australian TV history and has that unforgettable groovy period piece soundtrack with Doug Parkinson's gravel and phlegm voice spewing 70's Australiana all over your cathode ray box as a amazingly long camera zoom out reveals the religion of the open road in all its Antipodean glory. This is a memento from another and not too distant era, and has the proud stamp of the land mighty Down Under from start to finish in all its raw freedom and gritty grandeur.
Come on ABC! Get with the program and release this cool 70's cult baby for all to enjoy - or re-enjoy if you're lucky enough to have lived the dream at the time.
10butali
This is the Australian TV series. It is a classic. The stories and actors are excellent. Who can forget Picker and his gramophone or Chet being ambushed? This is cult TV. The Australian actors in the series were the best of their day and have immortality in The Outsiders. What can I say timeless adventure. The music and song just fantastic. The closing credits starting with the close up of the wheel, then Keir sleeping n being jostled around and then the long shot just cannot get much better than that. All 13 episodes are equally solid in the portrayal of the Australian myth and I think this is what this series has.It does not matter that the two main characters were from overseas, I think that is the key to the series and why it is so good.
Rich kid Pete Jarrett is bored with his comfortable existence and wants to know the meaning of life and on hand to help him is his grandfather Charlie (played by Andrew Keir) along with his Holden Ute which takes them both for adventures all around the Australian outback...
It was a mainstay of British afternoon TV in the seventies and the one thing I loved about it as a kid was the soundtrack and the end credits (loved the programme I must say...) where it started with the moving wheels of the ute and it would pan away as it became smaller and smaller and all you would see in this great, big, hot, dry, immense country and the glaring sun... and I was like - give me some of that!
Never got round to it though - wish they would bring this out on DVD too.
It was a mainstay of British afternoon TV in the seventies and the one thing I loved about it as a kid was the soundtrack and the end credits (loved the programme I must say...) where it started with the moving wheels of the ute and it would pan away as it became smaller and smaller and all you would see in this great, big, hot, dry, immense country and the glaring sun... and I was like - give me some of that!
Never got round to it though - wish they would bring this out on DVD too.
I agree, it was an excellent series, and was one of the first joint projects I am aware of that the Australian Broadcasting Commission (now Corporation) with a German film company. I was fortunate enough to do a similar type of journey with my grandfather in the late 80's, and take him on a return journey to Darwin, where he served during WWII. I then returned to the outback to continue that dream. The Outsiders was an example of fine Australian drama produced by the ABC at the time, and stood out for its contemporary look at the outback when others were continuing to concentrate on period drama. I suppose that sums up much of the Australian psyche really, those in the cities dream of being the old time drover...and still think that many of us in the outback are like that...eh.
I remember seeing some episodes of this Australian 1970s TV series in the UK in the late 80's, and have since managed to track down the series via bootlegs recently . The stories are unique, with strange outback characters and stunning scenery. It's not watered down television, with Pete and Charlie running into some seriously dodgy people on their travels. Travesty that it never went past one series, and even worse that it's never had a DVD release.
Did you know
- TriviaSascha Hehn's voice was dubbed throughout by Andrew Harwood, as his English was heavily accented.
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