All Saints: articles


Michael and Gigi Edgley

Judith McGrath on the set of All Saints.

All Saints fades away

Seven finally pulls the plug on its medical drama. Michael Idato explains why.

Few partings are as bitter-sweet as those from shows we've grown to love. This week, after 11 years and 493 episodes, Seven's All Saints will air for the last time.

"All things must end," says Judith McGrath, who has played patient liaison nurse Yvonne "Von" Ryan for the show's entire run. "Every show has its own life. You don't believe they're going to finish quite the way they do, perhaps, but it's inevitable. I have yet to know how I feel, really, because it's still so familiar but in a way I'm not surprised. I think you could sort of smell it coming — or at least, I could, so you're prepared anyhow."

The series was cancelled in July and filmed its final episode in August. The decision, by Seven's head of programming, Tim Worner, was not taken lightly. At the time he cited, quite candidly, "an audience shift and increased production costs" as the reason for the decision. Audience shift being television-speak for its audience being simply too old.

All Saints' audience may be old but they are rusted on. During its decade-plus life, All Saints went from a peak average audience of 1.6 million to 1.1 million — still respectable figures. It collected two AFI awards for best television drama series and a swag of Logies — for the series and for its most popular stars, Georgie Parker, Erik Thomson and Libby Tanner.

For at least six months before its cancellation there were persistent rumours the show was doomed. Seven had expanded its drama portfolio to include two new local productions, City Homicide and Packed to the Rafters. Both were hits, commanding audiences of more than 1.5 million nationally.

In the past five years, two major efforts were undertaken to reinvent the All Saints concept — the day-to-day slog of hard-working nurses in a busy medical ward — in an effort to engage with a younger audience. The first was in 2004 when the focus was shifted from Ward 17 to the emergency department. The second was earlier this year, with a title change to All Saints: Medical Response Unit and a focus on accident and emergency scenes. Neither took hold, though the 2004 revamp did rebuild some of the show's lost audience.

McGrath believes that ultimately All Saints strayed too far and too long from its original concept, with its focus on working nurses. "It was a great premise, I think, because every other medical show was about doctors. Doctors are written in a fundamentally heroic way but nurses are written as hard-working — a more brutal kind of portrayal. It's perceived as the most thankless aspect of medicine and that's why I think the show had so much merit, showing nurses could be smart-arses, or stupid, but they were always there doing the dirty work."

The series was originally conceived as a vehicle for network star Parker, who played the show's original nursing sister (and nun), Terri Sullivan. Her romance with the show's dashing Dr Mitch Stevens (Thomson) was one of the show's most enduring.

In its time on air, there were many other much-loved characters, including paramedic Bronwyn Craig (Tanner), doctors Vincent Hughes and Jack Quade (Christopher Gabardi and Wil Traval), nurses Erica Templeton and Gabrielle Jaeger (Jolene Anderson and Virginia Gay) and cranky but lovable Dr Frank Campion (John Howard).

McGrath believes the cast played the most significant role in the show's longevity. "Stories are important but I think it was well cast. It was such a perfect environment, with characters so well encapsulated in a working situation that you didn't need to go outside. Everything you saw took place there, in this high-pressure working environment."

It was also, she adds, a hotbed of romantic misadventure. "They were rooting like mad on the ward," she says, laughing. "The characters, that is. Though the actors gave it a burl, too. Everybody was bonking everybody but I felt the line had to be drawn."

When the writers suggested a romance for Von Ryan, McGrath expressly forbade them. "I said, 'Don't you dare. There has to be one person in the show who isn't doing it.' And I never got a romance after that." On that score she has no regrets. "I was lucky. Nobody knew anything about my character for about eight years but that was my decision. I thought it was better to see her in the work element but know nothing of her life outside."

When the show was cancelled, preparations began immediately for an appropriate swansong. McGrath is reluctant to give away too many details about the final episode but will say this: "Personally, for my character, I tried to end it positively. You're letting the audience know it's going to end, so it's got to be a definite thing. For my character, it was important to me that it look positive, as though there was something after this."

Asked to sum up the past decade, McGrath is forthright: "It feels like we went from A to Z, fabulous to get the job, great to be in work but frustrating and wonderful at the same time." She singles out co-star Josh Quong Tart, who played orderly Matt Horner between 2001 and 2003, for particular praise. McGrath was considering quitting in 2001 and "in walked a madman and that kept me going".

In some respects, she says, the end brings with it a sense of relief. "Because it's been so long for me, I just wanted to stop and take a moment, so the break is almost welcoming. I haven't quite come back from the break yet and I haven't reached the point where I'm missing people because I still see people from the show. But as a working ensemble, we were in every frame. It's hard to say goodbye."

By Michael Idato
October 26, 2009
Sydney Morning Herald