Dunphy as Lucy Perelli Ken Lawrence as Charlie Perelli Production The play was based on stage play called Hideout by Rex Rienits and Stewart Howard which was produced at Sydney's Independent Theatre in 1937 starring John Alden. This in turn was based on a story called "Heat," which appeared in the Melbourne magazine, Pandemonium. "Heat" led to Adelaide police to seize copies of the magazine. Early Australian TV drama production was dominated by using imported scripts but in 1960 the ABC was undertaking what has been described as "an Australiana drive" of producing local stories. Nonetheless advertising promoted it as "the play seen on British TV". It was Ron Haddrick's first TV appearance. Reception The Sydney Morning Herald said it was "a fairly efficient if unimportant variation on the "and then there were none" theme" whose "only unusual contributions to the form were its "don't - come - the - raw prawn" dialogue and its coincidental echoes of the two most successful Australian dramas of recent years", namely The Shifting Heart (in Edward Howell's character) and Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (in the characters of the two robbers). The reviewer said Haddrick's "appearance was entirely convincing, a piece of sculptured Australiana" but that Ginn's character "a rat under a hot tin roof if ever there was one, was the most interesting character before the cameras." The reviewer added the "production made a virtue of dispensing with background music and of confining the action almost entirely to one setting. The unconvincing sounds of shooting at the end of the play were a minor flaw." The allegations of "coincidental echoes" with two other Australian plays prompted Rex Rienits to write to the newspaper pointing out the play was based on a stage play called Hideout which had been performed at the Independent Theatre twenty years earlier, well before Shifting Heart or Doll had been written. The critic responded to Rienits, denying he had made a charge of plagiarism. See also List of television plays broadcast on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1960s) References External links Close to the Roof at IMDb Close to the Roof at AustLit Full copy of script at National Archive of Australia 1960 television plays 1960s Australian television plays Australian Broadcasting Corporation original programming English-language television shows Black-and-white Australian television shows Australian live television shows