Bodgie is an Australian television movie, or rather a live television play with filmed sequences, which aired on ABC during 1959. Originally broadcast on 12 August 1959 in Sydney on ABN-2, a kinescope recording was made of the program and shown in Melbourne on ABV-2 on 2 September 1959. At the time, most live plays broadcast on Australian television were simply performances of overseas plays. Bodgie was based on a British story written by an Australian, Rex Rientis, which was adapted to be relocated to Australia by another Australian writer, Alan Seymour. It is not known if the kinescope recording of the broadcast is still extant or not. Plot Kenny is a "bodgie" who lives in Kings Cross with his ex-convict father (Douglas Kelly). Kenny has a girlfriend (Lola Brooks) and is forced into blackmail of a politician (Nigel Lovell). He tries to protect a woman (Thelma Scott) and murder results. Cast John Ewart as Kenney Don Crosby Lola Brooks Douglas Kelly as Kenney's father Nellie Lamport Nigel Lovell Thelma Scott Louis Wishart Production The story was originally written by Rex Rienits and previously filmed in Britain as the film Wide Boy (1952). Rienits also adapted this story as a radio play and as a novel. Rienits' script was adapted for Australian TV by Alan Seymour, who relocated it to Australia. It starred John Ewart and was produced by Ray Menmuir, who had previously collaborated for the ABC in Murder Story. While mainly a live drama, it also featured exterior scenes shot in King's Cross, Darlinghurst and North Sydney. A number of police worked as extras; Ray Menmuir had to get permission for this to be done. Reception The critic for the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that: The thoroughly professional qualities of Rex Rienits' writing in his play Bodgie were fairly satisfactorily matched in production and acting... Mr Rienits has said very little that is new in his neatly tailored but conventional plot about the eroding effects of crime and its spurious glamour on a weak character, or about the relative moral positions of the blackmailer and his victims - around whom the play revolves. But then his aim, justifiably, is not sociological comment but entertainment. Not that social comment was entirely missing. John Ewart as the "bodgie" at least showed how the mind of a lay about turned involuntary murdered, works, although the part gave him little opportunity to