Misplaced Pages

"The Final Factor" is the 15th television play episode of the first season of the Australian anthology television series Australian Playhouse. "The Final Factor" was written by John Warwick and directed by Ken Hannam and originally aired on ABC on 25 July 1966.

Plot

Many lives are at stake while giants of the engineering world struggle for supremacy.

Cast

• Peter O'Shaughnessy as Kruger
• Richard Meikle
• Noel Brophy

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald wrote "If Australian Playhouse is to be worthy of its name, it needs to find more interesting one-act plays than "The Final Factor,"... Perhaps there was a beginning, a middle and an end but the sequence was unbalanced. The end did not justify the means. Action lacking Lacking any dramatic action visible on the screen —unless one counts telephone conversations—the whole piece consisted of a jumble of dialogue embracing engineering, big business and possible human disaster, and centring around the possible collapse of a bridge in the final stage of its construction. The deciding factor was apparently not so much human agency as the arrival of "cool southern change" some minutes before it was due. It was owing only to the acting of Peter O'Shaughnessy and, to a lesser degree, that of Richard Meikle, that a feeling of tension was built-up—to reach a complete anticlimax which no actor's skill could mitigate."

The Age said "there was plenty of suspense... the dialogue was good and the clash of characters was well drawn."

References

1. "TV Guide". The Age. 21 July 1966. p. 33.
2. "TV Guide". The Sydney Morning Herald. 25 July 1966. p. 12.
3. "TV Guide". The Age. 21 July 1966. p. 33.
4. "MONDAY". The Canberra Times. Vol. 40, no. 11, 529. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 25 July 1966. p. 14. Retrieved 27 February 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
5. Darlington, Dorothy (26 July 1966). "A play without balance". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 9.
6. Monitor (30 July 1966). "Antigone and Drama". The Age. p. 36.

External links

• "The Final Factor" at AusStage
• "The Final Factor" at AustLit
• "The Final Factor" at IMDb

This article about a television episode is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• 1966 television plays
• 1966 Australian television episodes
• 1960s Australian television plays
• Australian Playhouse season 1 episodes
• Films directed by Ken Hannam
• Television episode stubs