Soap setting not specific

Press, 18 May 1989, Page 11

Soap setting not specific

Every soap has its setting: “Coronation Street” belongs 'to Manchester, “Eastenders” couldn’t be set anywhere else but London’s East End, and even our own “Gloss” has a definite Auckland stamp. But "Richmond Hill”? The series is described as everyday life in a smalltown Australian suburb —- but where exactly is that suburb? The producers of “Richmond Hill” are deliberately not saying. "It’s a problem peculiar to Australia,” says Ashley Paske, who plays Marty Bryant, son of local policeman Warren Bryant. “If we set the story in Sydney, people in Melbourne and Brisbane wouldn’t like it. And if we said it was Melbourne, then Sydney wouldn’t like it.

"This way everyone is happy.”

The characters in “Richmond Hill” are supposed to be the sort of people one could meet anywhere in Australia. But sometimes, the producers discovered, this familiarity comes a little too close to home. When the series was originally written, the name of one character had to be changed because it turned out that someone with the same name lived in the real township of Richmond Hill in Tasmania. The name was quickly changed to avoid law suits.

"Richmond Hill” a little slice of somewhere-in-Australia, screens on Wednesdays at 7.30 p.m. on Two.