Plotting the death that broke a nation’s heart

On a winter night in June 1985, the writers of A Country Practice orchestrated a tender yet determined tug of the nation’s heartstrings with the death from leukaemia of Molly Jones.

Molly, played by Anne Tenney, was being written out of the series and the writers had plotted an episode in which the beloved character watches husband Brendan and daughter Chloe fly a kite as the screen fades to black.

Cue theme music. Pass the tissues.

Playwright and confessed ACP tragic Melanie Tait has interviewed cast, crew and writers from the popular soap for her show A Country Podcast.

Now she has written a comedy, How to Plot a Hit in Two Days, that has riotous fun with the creative and commercial imperatives of a good screen death.

“It was 40 years ago and no one can agree on who was actually in the room,” Tait says of the writers involved in Molly’s demise.

“But they were crying all the way through, and when they got to the end of plotting her death, they all stopped and had a drink – they drank to Molly. They grabbed their tissues and wrote the end.”

While a team of writers plotted the storyline of Molly’s illness and death, the role of executioner fell to Judith Colquhoun, who scripted the episode. In the play she’s referred to as Australia’s “most wanted serial killer” – Colquhoun was responsible for several TV deaths – and Tait has lovingly dedicated How to Plot a Hit in Two Days to her.

Georgie Parker plays a writer called Judy in the comedy in which any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.

She says the scene of Molly’s death was so affecting because of its simplicity.

“It’s such a simple goodbye – and it’s interesting that there’s no dialogue,” says Parker, who later joined the cast of A Country Practice as Lucy Gardiner.

“The character of Molly was so beautifully written, and Annie played her so beautifully. So you had a perfect combination – it’s a mix you have to get right. And when you take away the life of a young woman who has so much to live for … the emotional investment from the audience was actually quite effortless.”

Tait says Ensemble artistic director Mark Kilmurry – not knowing of her obsession with A Country Practice – had approached her with the idea of writing a play about the death of Molly Jones. He had in mind Russell T. Davies’ British series Nolly, about the axing of Noele “Nolly” Gordon from soap opera Crossroads at the height of her fame. In Tait’s play, Nolly has become Molly.

“The making of television is what’s always been interesting to me,” Tait says. “I love creative people, and anything about how the sausage is made, behind the scenes.

“I’ve been in lots of writers’ rooms myself. In researching this play, I spent some time in the Home and Away story room which is run by Louise Bowes, who was also in the Country Practice story room. So it’s like a direct line to A Country Practice.”

Lee Lewis directs the comic five-hander, which also features Amy Ingram, Genevieve Lemon, Sean O’Shea and Julia Robertson as the masterminds behind the hit soap – their creative flights fuelled by instant coffee, ciggies, Fantales and the occasional bottle of scotch.

Viewers across the nation were glued to the TV for Molly’s passing, but neither Parker nor Tait can recall watching the episode 40 years ago.

Parker – who fell in love with theatre at the Ensemble, where she once worked as an usher – says that, as a young working actor, she was probably treading the boards somewhere. “When you do theatre, you miss all the TV,” she says.

Tait was five years old in 1985 and says she probably watched the episode with her mother between her bath and bedtime. Within a few years, she had developed an obsession with A Country Practice – and with the Bette Midler weepie Beaches – and started writing her own episodes for characters from the show.

She went on to write hit plays, including the widely toured The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race and A Broadcast Coup, both of which premiered at the Ensemble. With How to Plot a Hit in Two Days she is returning to the heartland of Australian TV drama that shaped her as a writer and possibly as a person.

“It’s morally aspirational,” she says of A Country Practice. “Pretty much everyone in the show is decent. They are good people trying to come to terms with things. If A Country Practice existed today, I would be writing for it.”

How to Plot a Hit in Two Days, Ensemble Theatre, August 29-October 11.