‘Stop the tape’: how Simon Baker was discovered amid the evolution of E Street

In the summer of 1989, the financially troubled Channel Ten took a gamble and premiered a gritty new soap opera on January 25 from one of the writers and producers of Seven’s A Country Practice.

The show was E Street. It would become appointment television for young viewers, thanks in part to a series of fantastical plot lines – culminating in the infamous Mr Bad serial killer story arc – and a cast of teen idols including Marcus Graham, Melissa Tkautz, Simon Denny (now Baker), Toni Pearen and Bruce Samazan.

E Street ran from January 1989 to May 1993 and won a string of Logies for Ten.Credit: Westside Television Productions

But it was no overnight success. Set in grungy Westside, the show centred initially on local doctor and single mother Elly Fielding (the late Penny Cook of A Country Practice fame), her love interest Reverend Bob Brown (Tony Martin) – a man of the cloth with an earring and a mysterious past – and goings-on at the local pub, community legal centre and police station.

It was re-worked within six months to veer away from harder-hitting social content under the direction of US television executive Bob Shanks and would reach the peak of its popularity during a turbulent time in Ten’s history. The network was sold by Frank Lowy’s Westfield Corporation in 1989, placed into receivership in 1990 and bought by a consortium led by Canadian broadcaster CanWest in 1992.

The final episode of the soap aired on May 20, 1993, after snaring Logies for most popular series (1992), most popular actor (Samazan in 1992) and most popular new talent (Denny in 1993).

The genesis

Forrest Redlich, creator and executive producer: “I’d actually devised a show called Westside for the ABC at 8.30pm. I guess it was like an adult city version of A Country Practice. Channel Ten got wind of all of this and decided to make me a big offer so I’d come over to them.

How The Sydney Morning Herald reported on E Street on January 22, 1989.Credit: Fairfax Media

“When Channel Ten approached me, we had some of those scripts written already. But what happened was they stuck it on at 7.30pm. All those early episodes were definitely 8.30pm material. We had to modify the show. They [the ABC] adapted what we did and turned it into a show called G.P. which my co-producer on A Country Practice, Bruce Best, ran. It was pretty hard-core, social content stories.”

Dorian Newstead, one of three first assistant directors: “Before going to air ... they were trying to sell it as A Country Practice goes to the city. So the majority of the publicity was around Penny Cook and the fact that she was going to be the new doctor in town. As it turned out … everything seemed to centre around the pub [Patchett’s Pacific run by Ernie Patchett, played by the late Vic Rooney] rather than the doctor’s office.”

Paul Kelman, role of Ernie’s son Chris Patchett: “Penny tapped into that A Country Practice audience, but obviously E Street was ... a bit different. I think she brought a lot of viewers with her.”

Trouble at Ten

Redlich: “I was from this really safe environment that was making A Country Practice [as a writer and later producer] because all we did was the creative end of it and Channel Seven had all the studio and the sets. I land at Channel Ten ... Frank Lowy was about to unload it. I had to set up a huge production company. We had to build the sets; we had to do all that because the network was a goner, basically, by the time we started making the show.”

Alexa Wyatt, one of the show’s writers: “There were times when we thought, ‘Well, are we going to be renewed? Is this the end of the line?’ There was an awful lot of turmoil at Ten and you never quite knew what was happening there and was it all going to be taken over again by somebody else.”

Warren Jones, role of Constable Paul Berry: “E Street was really touch and go for the first six months. We were rating horribly. I remember we were up against Graham Kennedy’s Funniest Home Videos and that was just huge. We were this new upstart soap.”

Change in direction

Wyatt: “I was there when we got called in to Channel Ten [under Bob Shanks’ management]. They didn’t like the original direction that the show was going in. They wanted it much more sort of family friendly viewing.”

Noel Hodda, role of Dr Elly’s ex-husband Dr David Fielding: “It started off like a gritty inner-city drama with light tones and some comic characters and some soap elements, and then it went ... [into] a more heightened soap world.”

E Street’s Dr Elly Fielding, played by the late Penny Cook, and her ex-husband Dr David Fielding, played by Noel Hodda.Credit: Westside Television Productions

Cecily Polson, role of nurse Martha O’Dare: “The show changed dramatically halfway through ... and they concentrated on the young [characters], which was great, that was who they were appealing to. But those of us, the more mature ones, thought, ‘Oh, well, we probably won’t be around much longer’, and were thrilled to be there at the end.”

The music

Redlich: “We did [a deal] ... with Sony initially; we could use all their back catalogue. But we also struck a deal with ... [independent record label] rooArt, who had INXS. We could use the Angels and INXS and Mental as Anything and music like that. And then we had ... our own little record company going, Westside Records. In one of the episodes, I shot a music clip in about two hours just to open the show. I always tried to look for a really funky opening … [like a] dream sequence. Particularly in the later episodes. All of a sudden, film clips became records and records became platinum sellers. To me, it was just about publicity for the show. [In one episode, Melissa Tkautz’s character Nikki Spencer was dreaming about being a pop star.]”

Melissa Tkautz, role of Nikki Spencer: “They wanted to do a dream sequence on the show. We ended up recording this song [her platinum hit Read My Lips] and recording it quite well, and then they ended up releasing it. No one had any idea it was going to go to number one. I think people underestimated how popular Nikki Spencer was with the public, with the kids. I certainly didn’t know. Back then, we didn’t have the internet; we didn’t have TikTok and Instagram. It was all through fan letters. I used to get a lot of letters, but nothing to think my character was so popular that if I released a single it was going to shoot to number one in a matter of weeks. That surprised everybody.”

Marianne Howard (Alice Sullivan) and Melissa Tkautz (Nikki Spencer) at a Ten launch party in 1991.Credit: Mark Bradley

Lisbeth Kennelly, role of Megan Patchett: “I think that the music was such a point of difference with other shows. Because they had access to all this great contemporary music … they were able to use music in a way that movies are more likely to use it, rather than TV can ever afford to. I think [Redlich] should be very proud of that.”

E Street’s Chris and Megan Patchett, played by Paul Kelman and Lisbeth Kennelly, on their wedding day. It was a ratings winner for the show.Credit: Westside Television Productions

Marianne Howard, role of Alice Sullivan: “I think that when they cast people like Melissa Tkautz and Bruce Samazan and they brought those younger ones in a couple of years in, it was with a vision. That was all happening for the first time, where television people were stepping into music and having that dual role and so I think they were trying to make that happen.”

The look

Newstead: “An enormous amount of care was taken in the lighting and the sound and the set dressing to keep it as genuine as possible. It needed to look different because of the content. It needed to look a little bit more gritty.

“One night we had a director ... and he decided one night he was going to shoot an entire scene in the rectory kitchen by the light of the refrigerator. It was moody.

“If you look at programs like G.P. ... they were shooting single camera, very much like film, and we were shooting multi-cam. You don’t have to stop and reshoot for over-shoulder shots and all the rest of that, and close-ups. It’s all there in one take. You get this flow going with the scene.”

‘Bad guys are better’

“Bad guys are better”; Vince Martin and Kate Raison in an episode from the Mr Bad storyline in the 1991 season of E Street. Credit: Patrick Riviere/Getty Images

Redlich: “I created a character called Sonny Bennett [played by Richard Huggett]. He was a bad bastard, but he was the most popular character in the show. I was very proud of those episodes. The second time I tried it, obviously, was with Mr Bad [played by Vince Martin]. That worked gangbusters. Bad guys are better than good guys in drama. We ran Mr Bad for nearly a year in one form or another. And [they were] our highest-rating episodes ever. Now you look at shows like Breaking Bad or Dexter, all those big hits, they’re all antiheroes. They’re all bad guys.”

Jones: “The ratings obviously went sky-high through that Mr Bad [period]. People still talk about it.”

Newstead: “People were interested in seeing something that was just off the wall. The weirder it got, the more people seemed to watch it. We hit our highest ratings and then, within a couple of months, we were gone.”

The ratings winners

Wyatt: “The other big, big story that really shot the show up the ratings charts ... was Marcus Graham’s character of Wheels. That whole relationship with him and AJ [Alyssa-Jane Cook playing] Lisa Bennett, oh my god. Of course, the music on top of that [was very popular] and then Melissa [Tkautz] coming in and Simon Baker-Denny.

The romance between E Street’s Stanley “Wheels” Kovac and Lisa Bennett, played by Marcus Graham and Alyssa-Jane Cook, made headlines – including for this steamy bathtub scene.Credit: Westside Television Productions

“We used to have a viewing at 7.30am on Tuesday mornings with Forrest and the director in the script office. We were always a little bit fearful because you never knew (‘Please, god, let Forrest like this episode’). I remember we were watching one episode [with the Read My Lips clip] and ... Forrest said, ‘Stop the tape.’ He was pointing at a dancer who was behind Melissa Tkautz, and that was Simon Baker-Denny. It was like, ‘Find him and bring him to me, and I will make him a star.’ And the rest, as they say, is history. That was how he got discovered. It was like, ‘Wow, who’s that?’”

Tkautz: “All the main characters were huge stars. It wasn’t just me. Everybody. They were all very well known and very, very popular. We had some massive stars on that show.”

Kennelly: “Two of my major plot lines, actually the beginning and the end, were kind of publicity grabs, in a way. The first one was that I got married … and it was a ratings grab killing me off at the end. They killed off three of us in one go in a car bomb blast. Boom! They had all these cameras from different angles get shots of this car exploding. It really exploded into an inferno.”

Simon Baker (Denny) played Constable Sam Farrell on Ten’s E Street.

Redlich: “That episode [with the car bomb], that was our highest-rating episode before the Mr Bad stuff kicked in. We had a ball with the ticking clocks under the car and who was going to drive it at the time. Oh, man. It was a lot of fun.”

Fan mania

Jones: “I remember we did an appearance. This was probably into our second year, so we were on the ascendancy by then, and we were due to make an appearance at Darling Harbour [in Sydney]. We arrived on this big boat and there must have been ... tens of thousands [of fans there]. We had some security but not nearly enough to go off the boat, so they had to cancel the whole thing. We couldn’t get off the boat. I remember when that happened, I just went, ‘Wow.’ We were languishing in the ratings a year ago and, suddenly, we were hot for a bit.”

Kelman: “There were thousands and thousands of people going berserk [at Darling Harbour]. It was just unbelievable, really, to see that many people screaming for the cast.”

Alyssa-Jane Cook (Lisa Bennett) and Paul Kelman (Chris Patchett) on E Street.Credit: Ten Network

Hodda: “If I caught a train or a bus then or like when I was doing Sons and Daughters or when I was doing E Street it was full on. Nowadays, I can get on a train or a bus and be completely unnoticed except by people my age. I think it’s nice that you’ve played a part in someone’s life, and they’ve been entertained by you, which is our job as actors.”

Newstead: “Sometimes I’d drive Malcolm Kennard [who played young heartthrob Harley Kendrick] home and we [once] got stuck in traffic coming down towards the Harbour Bridge ... next to a bus full of school girls, and they were going off. They were screaming, ‘Harley! Harley! Harley!’ People went crazy over these people, especially the young guys like Bruce, Malcolm, Marcus Graham. Amazing.”

Popular E Street couple Harley Kendrick and Toni Windsor, played by Malcolm Kennard and Toni Pearen.Credit: Westside Television Productions

The final act

Redlich: “Our options at the end of it were to go to Channel Nine [or to move production from Sydney to Ten’s Melbourne studio] or ... you know, quit while we’re ahead.

I opted for the quit while we’re ahead. Upend everything and then bring it down to the Nunawading Studio, with no extra money or anything? It was just a ridiculous concept.

“The Channel Nine thing, we never actually came to terms on what kind of show they wanted. They wanted us to be a bit more conservative than we were being.

“In the end, we had no option, really, but to wrap it up. It wasn’t because of poor ratings.”

The show’s legacy

Tkautz: “[Forrest] really had the balls to go out and do something completely different and it worked so well. For that time, it was huge. I think E Street was a groundbreaking show for its time. I think it handled issues way beyond its years. I think we had some incredible actors on that show and … it sort of set the pathway for so many other shows to come after that.”

Polson: “I think it took risks, which was very good for that era. Truly, it opened doors for a lot of talented young people and it was courageous. I feel it was really innovative for its time.”

E Street’s nurse Martha O’Dare, played by Cecily Polson, and Constable Paul Berry, played by Warren Jones. Credit: Westside Television Productions

Howard: “I think that E Street definitely pushed boundaries; definitely was way edgier than anyone had ever done before. In saying that, when I grew up in the ’70s, you had Number 96 and The Box and shows like that, which were the first kind of series that pushed boundaries. They pushed boundaries and then E Street definitely did. I think shows like Wentworth ... are still pushing boundaries.”

What came next

Redlich: “Probably the thing that stole some of my thunder was when the network finally got into some decent hands and they bought the Fox shows, they bought The Simpsons and [Beverly Hills] 90210, for nothing, for zip. It bolstered the network. I think 90120 may have superseded us a little bit. That’s the closest you could probably get to a version of E Street, but then you wouldn’t have the big plot lines.

“When I left the business, it had all gone to reality [TV]. It was just a cheaper way of making television. And now with television, you get to a stage where the deal is the art form. You make eight episodes of something for Netflix, and maybe you spend eight or nine months making that and about eight or nine years trying to get the deal together. It’s ridiculous.”

The international re-makes

Redlich: [E Street was remade in Germany and Belgium as Westerdeich and Wittekerke]. “With Germany, they ended up doing 50 or 60 hours from our scripts. In Belgium, they made the first 400 [episodes] from our scripts, virtually shot for shot from our tapes. That show [ran for] 15 years. They did 1500 episodes. It was exactly the same concept.”

The youth network

Macquarie University Professor Michelle Arrow, historian and author of Friday on Our Minds: Popular Culture in Australia Since 1945, said Australian television had typically occupied the “middle ground, trying to appeal to as many people as possible”, but E Street proved networks could narrow-cast to a younger audience. The show was part of Ten’s branding as the youth network.

“The legacy [of the show] was partly saying that broadcasting to everybody isn’t necessarily what you have to do to make a show successful,” Arrow said.

The Secret Life of Us, which premiered on Ten in 2001, would pick up on that theme of “young people moving to the city to establish themselves” in a more realistic dramatic form, Arrow said.

E Street is available on DVD.

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