Screened as part of One's The Friday Play slot.
High Country (16/5/1980)
Sam Barnett has spent 35 years slaving to establish the best Hereford stud in the country on 22,000 acres of rough land. Now is the time to let a younger man take over.
Jocko - Bruce Allpress
Sam Barnett -Derek Hardwick
James Cameron - Peter McCarthy
Carol Barrnett - Kathryn Rawlings
Jack White - Jeffrey Thomas
Clive - Grant Tilly
Writers - Earl Spence and Julian Dickon
Music - William Southgate
Producer/Director - Mark DeFriest
The play served as a pilot for Jocko (1981 - 83)
Chch man’s rural drama to be produced by TV1
By FELICITY PRICE
Press, 8 March 1979
A power struggle set on a high-country sheep station is the subject of a new television drama written by a Christchurch farm management expert, which TV1 is filming in the Mackenzie Country.
Film crews from TV1 will be at Haldon station today shooting crowd scenes for the drama — tentatively called “Tantalus Range” — during a high-country field day on the station.
The rest of the filming will begin on May 1. The modern drama is about Craig Cameron, a young valuer with no capital, who takes over the management of a highcountry station as a leaseholder, with the right of purchase, and who becomes embroiled in a power struggle with freezing companies and stock firms when he tries his hand at marketing.
“Tantalus Range” will probably be shown in August with a 90-minute pilot, consisting of two episodes from a planned series. If the pilot is successful. the remaining episodes will be filmed.
The author, Dick Shelton, is a lecturer in farm management at Lincoln College. He is very familiar with the farming scene and the conflicts encountered by his young protagonist, Craig Cameron. Mr Shelton, who owns a meat-packing business, has a bachelor of agricultural commerce degree and two diplomas from the college. He is also a registered valuer and worked for six years as a Government valuer.
He said that he was worried about the state of the farming industry at present, and his script reflected his concern.
“Farm production has not increased in the last 10 to 12 years,” he said. “Farmers have no incentive to produce, mainly because of taxation and the problems in the freezing industry, combined with the cost spiral.” Mr Shelton believes that a capital gains tax would be an added incentive to produce.
“Farmers don’t make their money out of farming these days,” he said. “They make their money from capital gains, which is not right.” He sees the main qualification needed to go farming as a big bank balance, and he believes that is the wrong qualification. Mr Shelton’s script has been rewritten several times for the television production, but the producer (Mark de Friest) has assured him that his basic theories about farming are still there.
Mr Shelton wrote the first episode, he said, from his “love of doodling, dreaming, and writing.” However, after criticism by family and friends, he put it away in a drawer and forgot about it. Six months later he found it, read it again, and decided to send it off to TV1.
“I showed it to Mike Scott-Smith, the head of drama at TV1, and he asked for six episode story-lines,” he said. Mr Shelton got up at 4 a.m. every day that week, and had the episodes finished before the week was out.
TV1 has decided to screen the first two episodes as a 90-minute. self contained drama, but the other four episodes may still be used if the programme is successful.
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