• Source: Bastard Boys

Bastard Boys is an Australian television miniseries broadcast on ABC Television in 2007. It tells the story of the 1998 Australian waterfront dispute.




Plot


The series tells the story of the waterfront dispute, when businessman Chris Corrigan and the Liberal government at the time illegally dismissed the unionised workforce. The story is related from four perspectives: "Greg's War", from the point of view of union leader Greg Combet; "Josh's War", from the point of view of lawyer Josh Bornstein; "Sean's War", from the point of view of dock worker Sean McSwain; and "Chris' War", from the point of view of Patrick Stevedores managing director Corrigan.




Cast


Daniel Frederiksen as Greg Combet
Justin Smith as Josh Bornstein
Anthony Hayes as Sean McSwain
Geoff Morrell as Chris Corrigan
Rhys Muldoon as Julian Burnside, QC
Francis Greenslade as Bill Kelty
Mike Bishop as Peter Reith
Jack Thompson as Tony Tully
Dan Wyllie as Brendan Tully
Lucy Bell as Petra Hilsen
Colin Friels as John Coombs
Deborah Kennedy as Gwen Coombs
Christopher Widdows as Garry Coombs
Caroline Craig as Tali Bernard
Justine Clarke as Janine McSwain
Jeremy Kewley as Frank Parry
Kevin Harrington as Derek Corrigan
Helen Thomson as Valerie Corrigan
Anna Lise Phillips as Cherie Snape
Louis Corbett as Joe Corrigan
Richard Heath as Podge




Episodes






Production



Most of the characters portrayed are real individuals, many of whom were interviewed in the process of writing the drama. However, a number of characters were invented and events were considerably compressed for dramatic purposes. Notably, the waterside workers portrayed in the drama were composites, based on interviews with many waterside workers.
Another example of invention was the placing of lawyer Josh Bornstein at a key protest, which would have been illegal because of a court injunction




Release and home media


Bastard Boys was broadcast on ABC1 in May 2007.
The series was later issued by ABC and Roadshow Entertainment in their "Masters collection" as a two-DVD set (220 mins), packaged with the tele-film Curtin (93 mins) as a third disc.




Reception


The Age's Debi Enker described it as a "thoughtful, illuminating and superbly cast account of a seminal event in our recent history [which] represents exactly the kind of drama that one would want the national broadcaster to nurture."




= Partisan criticism

=
In 2006 Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, while the series was still in production, called it wasteful spending and criticised it as "anti-government, pro-left propaganda". Journalist Michael Duffy described the series as pro-union propaganda. Chris Corrigan, who was involved in the dispute and attempted to sack the unionised workforce and replace it with strikebreakers, was highly critical of the series. Then-Prime Minister John Howard also labelled the series "political propaganda", saying that it ignored the notorious inefficiency of the Australian waterfront and years of collaborative failures to change this.
Criticism also came from some members of the union movement. According to Phillip Adams, unionist Bill Kelty was concerned that "no researcher, writer or producer - spoke to him about the dispute or his role in it. Yet they haven't hesitated to put words into their Kelty's mouth that the original Kelty never said". Chris Corrigan's brother Derek Corrigan has disputed claims that the broadcasting of Bastard Boys was timed to support Greg Combet's run for politics".




Accolades


The script, published by Currency Press, won the 2007 Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Best Television Script.
The film received seven nominations in the 2007 Australian Film Institute Awards, including Best Telefeature or Mini Series and Best Direction in Television with Sue Smith winning Best Screenplay and Paddy Reardon winning Outstanding Achievement in Television Screen Craft.




See also


List of Australian television series




References






External links


Bastard Boys at IMDb

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