Holiday Island (TV series)

"Holiday Island" is an Australian television series made by Crawford Productions for the Ten Network. The show aired twice weekly from 1981 to 1982, with the first episode going to air on June 17 1981.

Like preceding Crawford's series, the aborted "Hotel Story", "Holiday Island" was a "Love Boat"-style drama series set in a luxury hotel. This time the location was a tropical resort island in Queensland. In each episode the regular characters - the various islanders and hotel workers - hosted a new batch of guest star hotel guests. Various plots and situations on the show included a fierce cyclone hitting the island, children being kidnapped, a siege where the hotel workers were held hostage by less than pleasant guests, drug trafficking, the resort being terrorised by a biker gang and a politician dying of a heart attack while staying at the island's resort.

The series became notorious amongst critics for its allegedly poor production values, and the wintry conditions under which the "tropical" drama was shot became the focus of most jibes. Though set in a tropical hotel with palm trees, sunshine and beautiful beaches, for practical reasons all interiors scenes - and the bulk of exterior scenes - were shot at the Ten Network's studios in Nunawading, Melbourne. The exterior set made heavy use of awnings in an attempt to disuise Melbourne's propensity for overcast skies, but attempts to mask the icy breath of the bathing beauties was not always successful. Attempts to shoot location footage in Queensland were hampered by the fact that the local television crews assigned to the shoot had experience only in shooting news footage, and the fact that heavy rain fell for several days of a planned shoot. Former cast member Ray Meagher has since jokingly referred the show as "Horror Day on Iceland".

Members of the regular cast included Tom Oliver, Nick Tate, Steven Grives, Caz Lederman and Marilyn Mayo. Amongst the many actors in guest roles were Judy Nunn, Rowena Wallace, Lisa Crittenden, Rebecca Gilling, June Salter, John Blackman and Penne Hackforth-Jones.

"Holiday Island" was cancelled after 64 episodes. The set was later revamped and can be seen as the Lassiters complex in "Neighbours".

From January 2006 to March 2007, the WIN Television network repeated "Holiday Island" on early Saturday mornings as part of its "Crawford's Australian Classics" series.

External links

* [http://members.ozemail.com.au/~fangora/holiday.html Aussie Soap Archive: Holiday Island]
* [http://www.crawfords.com.au/libary/drama/holiday.shtml Crawford Productions]
* [http://colsearch.nfsa.afc.gov.au/nfsa/search/display/display.w3p;adv=yes;group=;groupequals=;holdingType=;page=0;parentid=;query=Number%3A138043;querytype=;rec=0;resCount=10 Holiday Island at the National Film and Sound Archive]