1 9 7 5 (Australia)
13 x 50 minute episodes
1 9 7 6 (Australia)
13 x 50 minute episodes
Cash and Company followed on the heels of the success of the Australian ABC TV show, Rush which had helped create a market for an Australian western series set in the 19th century.
When gold was discovered in Australia in the 1850s, the country suddenly became a target for almost every get-rich-quick merchant in the world. Thousands of characters streamed into the country and turned the once peaceful penal colony into a turbulent melting point.
It is against this backdrop that Cash and Company is set.
Sam Cash (Serge Lazareff) – a tough, resourceful Irish Australian with an inborn distrust of the English, Joe Brady (Gus Mercurio) – an American adventurer equally at home with guns and his fists – and helpful young widow Jessica Johnson (Penne Hackforth-Jones) are a wild colonial trio on the run from the law after Cash and Brady were framed for murder by corrupt police trooper Lieutenant Keogh (Bruce Kerr), during the gold rush in Victoria.
Other recurring characters include Jessica’s father-in-law (John Frawley) and her servant, Annie (Anne Scott-Pendlebury).
Channel Seven were pleased with the 1975 series and commissioned a second 13-episode series. However, the show’s title had to be changed to Tandarra (the name of the property owned by Widow Johnson) for the 1976 season because Lazareff declined to revive his Cash character from the first series to take up new challenges.
His place was taken in Tandarra by Gerard Kennedy, playing a former bounty hunter called Ryler.
Penne Hackforth-Jones died of lung cancer on 17 May 2013 in Melbourne. She was 63.
Sam Cash
Serge Lazareff
Jessica Johnson
Penne Hackforth-Jones
Joe Brady
Gus Mercurio
Lieutenant Keogh
Bruce Kerr
Ryler
Gerard Kennedy
Episodes
Three’s Company | The Witness | Up to Scratch | Golden Girl | Dolly Mop | The Intruders | Joe Sent Me | A P.J. Clarke Original | Home Brewed | The Halfway House | All My Worldly | Happy Christmas | Such Sweet Sorrow
Tandarra | Shadow of the Past | The Brothers | Plain Lizzy | The Manly Art | The Return of King Simpson | The Odds | Davey | Whoyoo Kudaitja Man| Come the Revolution | The Legacy of Walter Dummett | Your Money for Your Wife | That’s What Worries Me