The Stranger (1964-1965).
IMDb meta-data is 12 episodes of 30 minutes each, rated 8.1 by 35 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species Australian; Sub-species Adolescent.
Verdict: Daring then, boring now.
One dark and stormy night a man knocks at the door as he lies down on the steps in the rain. This odd way of prone knocking is the first of many odd things about this man, call him Adam. The ideal family within welcomes him only discover (1) Adam remembers nothing (= the scriptwriter’s old friend, amnesia) and (2) he is multi-lingual. Sure enough Dad puts him to work teaching school. (I started to think of that conman Parkin.)
Adam bunks at the bottom of the garden and two more things become apparent: (1) he is secretive and (2) has a near hypnotic power over the boys in the class room that makes him the envy of other teachers.
Aimed at adolescent viewers with three clean-cut, asexual, and elderly teenagers wearing school uniforms in the leads. Two of them look to be in their 30s, but I could not confirm or deny that perception on the IMDb. Reg Livermore is in it, yes, Frank-N-Furter from the Rocky Horror Show (1972 +).
In later episodes there is a Queensland caravan on stilts for vertical takeoff, a pipe-smoking professor, two thick plank plods, a media frenzy, a cigar-chopping industrialist, a bumptious secret agent, and the Parkes Radio Telescope which stole the show.
We took it one episode at a time, but shied at the last one, fearing we would fall asleep on the sofa and crash to the floor. For it is lugubrious. It is slow enough to have been filmed underwater.
Yet at the time it must have been a bold decision for the staid old ABC to make it when nearly all programming was very conventional: Dance programs for teens, cooking for women, fishing for men. The two commercial channels (7 and 9) were the same, very careful not to offend or confuse. At the time the commercial channels vigorously opposed any local content requirement, leaving it to the ABC to do that. Bold because science fiction was certainly not mainstream in 1964 and bold because there are segments where the aliens speak their language with no translation of any kind, leaving the audience as lost as the characters in the story. Bold also because it is not respectful of authority, the plod range from incompetent to obstructive, the media representatives are irresponsible, the government agents are rule-bound, even the United Nations gets a slap.
The story does play on the Australian dichotomy of immigration. Yes, immigrants are needed but no we don’t want them disturbing our ways. The Pacific Island solution, rediscovered a few years ago, is applied here and the aliens are settled on an inaccessible island. The Prime Minister is one Chips Rafferty, a long way from Tobruk.
The Parkes Radio Telescope is a set for several episodes and it looks like they really did use it long before The Dish (2000). There is also extensive footage of parade through Sydney at the end, and that might have been the Queen’s visit. If so, then Herself was lined up along the street somewhere.
Made 60 years ago, it creaks. You Tube’s Mechanical Turk recommended it and then Kate discovered it on iView.