King (The)
- Director: Matthew Saville
- Writer: Jaime Browne; Kris Mrksa
- Producer: Elisa Argenzio; Mark Fennessy
CGiii Comment
It may help if you are familiar with Graham Kennedy and his work.
If you are...then, you are Australian - otherwise, he will mean absolutely nothing to you.
This is very similar with the TV biopics of Frankie Howerd and When Steptoe Met Son - typical TV stuff.
And, typical comedian depression - surely, they all weren't this disturbed?!
Knowing nothing about Kennedy, this film makes him out to be a vindictive, back-stabbing boozer.
It's a TV movie with TV values - as to its accuracy, only the Ozzies know - but, it does show a strange sentimentality at the end...despite the brutality of the attack.
No trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
The King is the story of Graham Kennedy, Australia's first and greatest home grown TV superstar. It traces his rise and rise, from working class Balaclava kid, through radio, TV, film, and back to TV again. But against this backdrop of professional success it also tracks Kennedy's personal tragedies - the loneliness, the unrealised ambitions and the terrible pressures of being Australia's first homegrown superstar in the 1950s and 60s. But The King is not just about a man - it's also the story of the birth of television, a cultural phenomenon that has helped define a nation, and make us who we are today.
Cast & Characters
Stephen Curry as Graham Kennedy;
Shaun Micallef as Colin Bednall;
Garry McDonald as Nicky Whitta;
Steve Bisley as Harry M. Miller;
Stephen Hall as Bert Newton;
Todd MacDonald as Richard Croft;
Bernard Curry as John Wesley;
Nick Farnell as Norm Spencer;
Donal Forde as Geoff 'Corkie' Corke;
Leo Taylor as Sir Frank Packer;
Beau Brady as Tim;
Monica Maughan as Nana Scott;
Roz Hammond as Kathleen Whitta;
Jane Allsop as Noeline Brown;
Beth Buchanan as Val Wesley