Movie review - "The Box" (1975) **1/2

They don't make 'em like this any more - a fascinating reminder of the sort of TV that was served up to Aussies: high spirited, influenced by British sex humour, plenty of boobs, little erotica, camp humour, over the top plotting, played with gusto. It's a big screen adaptation of the TV series made to compete with Number 96 and was never as popular although it had it's fans. In these days heart throbs were people like George Mallaby and there were lots of old characters and TV stations were run by people with knighthoods and had tea ladies.

Judy Nunn became a name as a vicious bisexual reporter but she's quite tame here, and doesn't sleep with that many people (she's wasted really); Ken James is fun as a dopey leading man, presumably based on one of the Crawfords stars; Lois Ramsey is a bossy tea lady (whatever happened to tea ladies? Actually I know - costs - it's a shame that's all); Paul Karo is a flamboyantly gay producer - over the top but sympathetic. A plot involves one character pretending to be gay but actually he's straight. Most of the stories are silly farce type ones - but there's one played totally straight, with married Belinda Giblin being tormented over her love for Mallaby (they have a stylised love sequence which is hilarious). There's also a young Cornelia Francis (looking like the old Cornelia Francis) as an efficiency expert (Nunn's former lover although they don't really get it on); a young Tracey Mann; Graham Kennedy playing himself in quite big role.

You don't have to follow the series to get what's going on and I'm assuming it's a decent recreation of the show. Looks a lot more professional than the Number 96 movie but not as much delirious fun.