John Walton straps into plywood cockpits built for $500,000 as pioneering pilot Charles Kingsford Smith in this three-part Seven Network mini-series that shot across 144 locations. Writer-director David Stevens frames the airman's 1928 trans-Pacific triumph and subsequent disappearances as a male love triangle between Smith, co-pilot Andrew Clarke's Charlie Ulm and the overlooked navigator Joss McWilliam's Keith Anderson. Shot by David Eggby on a $4.5 million budget partly financed by Film Victoria, the series recreates the era with no studio sets beyond its replica aircraft.
Melbourne's The Age delivered both barrels, declaring the drama simultaneously "television excellence" and "emotionally uninvolving" as ratings settled in the low twenties. Stevens, fresh from A Town Like Alice, adapted Tasman Beattie's novel The Empty Sky to ask what greatness costs and who gets written out of the legend.
Broadcast over three consecutive Wednesdays in October 1985, the six-hour saga ends with Smith's 1935 disappearance above the Andaman Sea, leaving only radio static and the lingering scent of castor oil.
Production Details
Seven Network / 1 Season / 3 Episodes / 1985
Created by: David Stevens
Writer(s): David Stevens
Producer(s): Ross Dimsey, Robert Ginn
Cinematography: David Eggby
Music: Bruce Smeaton
Main Cast
John Walton as Charles Kingsford Smith
Andrew Clarke as Charlie Ulm
Joss McWilliam as Keith Anderson
Celine O'Leary as Mary Powell-Kingsford Smith
Helen Jones as Bon Hilliard
Jane Menelaus as Thelma McKenna
Geoff Parry as Bob Hitchcock
Phyllis Burford as Kate Kingsford Smith
Richard Hutson as William Kingsford Smith
Judith Massey as Mrs. Hilliard
Paul Karo as English Director
