The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 79

did it? guess who Can you criminology, and it is still acclaimed as the leading criminology course in Australia. McFadyen, said his fellow students there in the 60s included police, social workers, youth welfare workers, psychologists and a priest. (A similar network exists today). The show is based on a board game and TV show which has been a hit in the UK and, to a lesser extent, the US. Channel Nine and Crawfords are working together on the Australian version along with a British-based international game show company, Action Time.

Watching the program being made at Nine's Melbourne studios was fascinating. The 142-member audience loved it and couldn't wait to make a guilty verdict. The hour-long show begins with a drama segment involving a regular cast of six well-known Australian actors who enact the crime. The actors play the same characters each week. The characters, straight from the board-game, are named with some nice double entendres: Miss Scarlet (Nicola Paul)), Mrs White (Joy Westmore), Professor Plum (Andrew Daddo), Lt-Colonel Mustard, (George Mallaby), Mrs Peacock (Jane Badler) and the Reverend Green (Peter Sumner).

For television there is one additional character: Det-Sgt Stanley Bogong (Frank Gallagher). The rooms in the murder house are all coloured according to the main characters' names, not that that gives any hint to who did it. McFadyen quips that "it's a wonderful guest role for people who will be murdered" (the murder victim only appears once each week). He says he has invited his wife, Maryanne Fahey, to be killed one week. The audience views the dramatised version of the crime from studio monitors and then has a chance to deduct who did it, with what, and where, with the help of a computer link-up to each studio viewer's chair.

The TV audience can also ring in with their solutions. After questions to the actors, in which the actors can obviously not give too much away, viewers can progress to accusations accusing a character in the team of either possessing the murder weapon, committing the murder, being in the offending room, or whatever. Says McFadyen: "(As the show progresses) the audience's understanding of the game will increase and the questions will become more and more tricky it'll be essential that the actors know their characters backwards; they'll have to improvise radically." The prizes are an attraction at the taping I attended it was a trip to Disneyland and San Fransisco. According to McFadyen: "Once you tell them they've got a prize they get very excited." It was hard to do a show like Cluedo live, he said, in case the cast gave away some information or someone in the audience asked potentially defamatory questions. In the show, a large screen depicts six rooms in the house (a separate murder happens each week in the same house), there are six regular characters that could be guilty, and there are six potential murder weapons ranging from guns to poison.

The successful winner has to guess all three components who, where and with what. The Australian show will differ from the British, which goes for only half an hour and does not allow audience participation. McFadyen admitted he was a bit nervous as the series began because "we've never done it before. It takes me back to teaching in a way you've got to control them (the audience)." Some of the show is very similar to Donahue when Whkh of thwn commits Mm murdwrt McFadyen leaps through the audience to get their deductions or accusations. He admits the analogy somewhat ruefully, but points out that that there is a lot more to the show than the Donahue-like frenzy, like the drama content and the computerised audience participation.

The murder each week takes place at the "Brindabella and McFadyen and the Channel Nine publicity people said they were surprised at the audience reaction at first they expected them to be too shy to ask thorny questions. But despite all the paraphernalia of a TV studio including multifarious cameras and a very long sound boom, the fairly young audience really was intrigued. They were asking some aggressive questions of the actors too, not letting too many evasive answers get past. Channel Nine and Crawfords are hoping viewers will keep on guessing who the murderer is for many weeks to come. CHRISTINE RAU Outdo compare Ian McFadyon ITS the new TV whodunit game show Tor audiences who are amateur sleuths Cluedo.

If you like drama, murder, and finding out who the murderer is, you might be as riveted to the show as studio audiences have been. The innovative series, which is due to begin soon on Channel 9, is seen as a gamble by the network. According to compere Ian McFadyen, tx-Comedy Company producer and TV entrepreneur. Nine regards it as "a complete experiment, they regard it as an absolute unknown McFadyen says it's both a deductive game for adults, and it teaches kids logic. "It's funny that murder can become a game, but it's been a standardised art form (in novels and movies) for years and years.

The show is a wonderful send-up of the old (Agatha Christie-style) drawing-room murder. Cluedo has got nothing to do with real crime at all it's all sanitised." This comes from an ex-teacher who found that the most fascinating course he studied at Melbourne University was myE8 tlPlis THE AflflSYCSAE) B8H3 OS HERE from the very clever infra-red remote control unit with LCD timer. Fortunately for the rest of us, the Amstrad Double Decker also has a very simple one- IfTTflll The Amstrad Double Decker is brilliantly simple. It does everything you think a video recorder should do, but up till now has not. At last you can watch a video and record a programme at the same time.

If the programme you want to record runs over the length of a video tape, you don't have to worry because the Amstrad Double Decker can record up to 16 hours continuously using two E240 tapes. It can play back for the same amount of time, too, so it's perfect for product demonstrations, parties and the like. In addition to these practical benefits, it's fun for the technically minded, too. It does a heap of complicated programming tricks all button quick timer recording option, selectable up to 16 hours. But, most of all, it tapes tapes.

Not that we suggest you do. The Amstrad Double Decker, brilliantly simple and brilliantly priced. $777 RRP. VIDEO mm. Simultaneoustimerand manual operation Watch a videorecwd a channel simultaneously HQ technology for superb picture quality Continuous hours recordplayback Loop reptat recordplayback using one or two tapes Eight event over one month programmable timer Infra-red remote control with LCD timer programmer Long play facility providing double the recordplayback time One-button quick timer recording selectable up to 16 hours.

AVAILABLE AT BRASHS SUPER STORES, K-MART, BINC LEE AND SELECTED GRACE BROS STORES. PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT LAWS AND CANNOT BE DUPLICATED WITHOUTTHE CONSENT OF THE COP LEGAL WARNING: TELEVISION BROADCASTS AND PRERECORDED VIDEO TAPES CONTAIN MATERIAL WHICH.