Funky Squad

Prophet of Death

2008-01-16T14:54:00.000-08:00

Time for another Funky case - if Stix and Grant can get the Mustang operational.

Cassie: Are you two STILL working on the Funky Buggy?
Grant: Cool it Cas', vehicle maintenance is the key to good crime fighting.
Cassie: But you've been in the garage since six this morning.
Grant: Well, when you're car fanatics like us it don't matter.
Stix: Hey, it says in the manual to change a flat tire you need a "jack"
Grant: Really? Well, you learn something new every day.

With the funky buggy up on blocks, Funky Squad take the bus to HQ, where the Chief has growing suspicions about a cat called Guru Badkarma. After years of "getting his blows from the feet inhaling a cauldron" - or smoking pot - the high-profile flowerchild now speaking out against legalising weed. The Chief suspects that's because he's a dealer himself, and doesn't want legal competition.

Badkarma is recruiting cult members at the University of Hip Studies, so the Squaddies go back to school and turn down the chance to study Conservative Ethics or Old Fashioned Ideals in favour of Groovy Street Wisdom. A passing hippie hears their discussion of the guru - although he has to play the tape back to be sure - and intervenes.

Hippie: Keep clear of Badkarma, that is one dangerous dude.
Cassie: Sounds like you knew the dude?
Hippie: Well, I thought I did - he was my brother.
Stix: You're brothers?
Cassie: Cool it Stix, I think he means in the spiritual sense.
Hippie: Nah, he was my brother. We thought we could change the world through transcendental meditation - but he started spinning out, stopped seeing the green in the plants and started seeing the green in the money.

Impressed by his metaphors, Funky Squad head to class, and are given new names by Guru Badkarma - Sky, Moonbeams, Starfish and, um, Poncho.

OK, neither of those actors were actually in this version. But convince yourself that there swami is actually Santo putting on a voice, and that Grant is being played by Rob Sitch, and you've got the idea. Stop complaining, you've got an imagination - you think it's easy trying to illustrate a radio play?

And then the guru makes his move...

Badkarma: Moonbeams, my beautiful child, come with me.
Stix: OK!
Badkarma: Not you, Starfish.

And soon, it's time for a wedding - between "Moonbeams" and Badkarma. Cassie is set to become the dealer's 100 wife.

Badkarma, in an evil tone: She doesn't know it yet, but she will help me make my biggest drug haul yet, by smuggling LSD in a guitar.
Stix: That's Cassie he's rapping about:
Grant: So that's how he's doing it.
Badkarma: Is that someone overhearing me?
Stix: It's us, your humble servants Starfish, Sky, and, um, Poncho. Can we come in?
Badkarma: Hang on, wait til I put my nice voice on.

When Stix burns an ant and a mosquito instead of the requested incense, the Guru lets slip that the only thing he hates more than incompetence is Funky Squad. It turns out the Squad was nearly Grant, Cassie, Stix and Badkarma (doesn't quite have the same ring to it, really) but the Guru was shafted in favour Poncho at the last moment.

The squaddies leave before Badkarma can put two and two together, and track down Cassie in the Guru's free love chamber. She's acting strangely, space-out and, as Stix points out, rather badly. Then it gets worse. She sings.

Cassie: I took one sip of the Guru's wine
It made my eyes all sparkle and shine.
Stix: Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Grant: That Cassie's a really bad singer?
Stix: Yeah!
But the guitar sounds even worse than Cassie - it's the one the Guru made her cross the border to get, and it's full of acid.

The wedding goes ahead:
Celebrant: Do you, Badkarma, take this flowerchild to be your kaftan-clothed soulmate?
Badkarma: Yeah, man.
Celebrant: And Moonbeams, do you take this freaked out and often implausible character for the rest of your life, however short that may be once you've handed the guitar over?
Cassie: I...

At which point Funky Squad intervenes. But it turns out Cassie's not quite as thick as she seemed, because it's not LSD in the guitar but a gun, which she pulls on the Guru. The guru finally susses that the squaddies are, well, the squaddies. Despite Cassie's attempts to sing him his right, the guru is arrested and the drug ring broken up.

A few elements of this story later morphed into the first television episode, A Degree in Death.

In Uniform

2008-01-16T14:47:00.000-08:00

Continuing the rather slow porocess of posting synopses for the Funky Squad radio shows from the Triple M Breakfast days, we're now up to

In Uniform.

Of which I only have one episode, so don't ask me how it ends. But I can tell you how it begins - with a worried Chief calling Funky Squad into his office.

Chief: Funky Squad, what I'm about to say must never leave this room.
Squaddies: We understand, Chief.
Voices from outside: We understand too, Chief!
Chief: Stix, shut that door.

The Chief suspects some police are dodgy (Wow, really?) and that their headquarters are bugged. His suspicions are confirmed when a microphone is discovered under a lampshade.

Cassie: Smash it, Stix!
SFX: Crash!
Cassie: Not the lamp, the microphone.

It's time for Funky Squad to go Ghost Squad, and investigate corruption within the force.

Chief: You may face great danger.
Stix: Hey, we're no stranger to danger
Chief: There could be pain
Stix: Pain's no strain
Chief: There could be serious ramifications
Stix: Ramifications are.... Fine
Chief: Of course, to properly infiltrate the source, you'll have to go back in uniform.
Squaddies react with horror.

Hunted

2007-12-04T16:58:00.001-08:00

Sorry these updates are taking rather longer than expected. You know how it is - crims to catch, beats to patrol, groovy threads to wear, things to see and people to do.

Moving on to the latest in our series of rather silly synopses of Funky Squad radio stories:

Hunted

Funky Squad find themselves on Primitive Island, private hideaway of the mysterious Sir Pith-Helmet. It's pure luxury of the old school colonial variety.

Pith-Helmet: More drinks? Hor d'oerves? Jungle noises turned down?

The squaddies are here to investigate the disappearance of visitors to Primitive Island. It turns out Pith-Helmet is looking for human scalps to add to the lions, tigers, grizzly bears and cuddly ickle rabbits that line his walls, and has taken to hunting down homo sapiens - and Funky Squad is next on his list of trophies.

Cassie: That's one mean cat
Grant: But if we concentrate, we can beat him.
Stix: Would you pass the cereal?

Dawn approaches in a cacophony of bird noises, and the hunt is on.

Pith-Helmet: Perkins! Sound the horn!
SFX: Beep! Beep!
Pith-Helmet: Not the Barina, the hunting horn!

Funky Squad have an hour to make it across the island to a boat and make their escape before Pith-Helmet wipes out the lot of them (as you do).

Cassie: If only someone would say something that contains a word to trigger an escape plan!
Stix: Look at that beautifully camouflaged butterfly?
Cassie: That's it!
Stix: Butterfly!
Cassie: No, camouflage.

And very soon...

Pith-Helmet: Hmmm, nothing here except four trees with a vaguely human shape...

Despite the squaddies' alledged brilliance, PH tracks them down, and only a last-minute deception involving a handful of fast-acting poisonous berries avoids a messy end.

This story later turned up in comic form in the Funky Squad annual.

Framed

2007-11-27T17:45:00.000-08:00

This Funky Squad story from the Triple M Breakfast days later resurfaced as a comic in the Funky Squad Annual. Which I haven't written about. Yet. And might not. Let's see how I feel once I've got through the radio stories.

Framed begins with the end of the case - the bank robbers are busted and Stix gleefully informs them that "the only loot you'll be getting is the musical instrument they teach you in jail!"

While Stix explains the obscure link between medieval instruments and money laundering, the crooks make their escape. They report their failure to their boss, a Mr Poncycrim of Swish Crims Inc, who must be very, very rich and a villian of noble birth since he has a posh accent and an expensive sounding teaspoon sound effect.

Goon: We only just managed to escape while one of them explained a metaphor, Sir!
Boss: Silence! Enough talk.
Silence.
Goon: But if we don't talk, it gets kinda boring.
Boss: Oh, I don't know. There's always the teaspoon noise.

Jangling aside, Poncycrim crafts a masterly plan to bring down Funky Squad - a couple of loud-speaking goons head to a downtown burger joint, and soon the squaddies think they've got a tip-off about a bank job when all they ordered was a megaburger and fries. But they get a set-up, a dead body, and the Chief and some squares bursting in at the most improbable moment. Funky Squad flees the scene of the crime, in a squeal of rubber.

Chief: Constable Straightlace, Sargeant Square! Go after them at a slightly lesser speed!
SFX: screech!
Cassie: Grant! We can't go on like this!
SFX: screech!
Grant: Why not?
SFX: screech!
Cassie: I don't think the tyres will hold out!

The squaddies head to Poncycrim's stately home to clear their names, braving fences, armed guards, and slavering vicious man-eating labradors.

Cassie: you forget, before joining Funky Squad Grant was a green beret...
Stix: No, Grant OWNED a green beret.
Guard: Hey! You in the green beanie!

Having been spotted, they're dragged inside to darken Poncycrim's doors. And just as all looks black, the Chief makes another inprobable appearance.

Chief: Poncho told me everything.
Stix: But he can't talk.
Chief: He wrote it down.
Stix: He's illiterate.
Chief: It was sign language.
Stix: He's terrible at charades.
Cassie: Stix, shut up!

And I will too, until I drop in again with the next episode in approximately alphabetical order, Hunted.

Dance of Death

2007-11-26T13:30:00.000-08:00

Grant dismisses ballet as "a bunch of straights in tights bouncing to the beat of square music", but he changes his tune when Russian ballerina Anastasia Primadonov wants to defect. In fact, the tough-as cop falls for the flouncy thing with the help of some subtle audio effects:

Grant (apparently thinking): Must not let on I'm falling in love with her...
Ana (apparently thinking): Must not let on I'm falling in love with him...
Stix (apparently doesn't think at all): Must not let on everyone's voice has gone all echoey!

Heading to the noble dance, Funky Squad sneak backstage - after waking up Poncho and Stix, who've nodded off from the excitement of it all - and meet the Iron Curtain Dance Company, whose sinister minder is keeping the dancers on a short leash:

"Anastasia, look at you. Lipstick, decadent nail polish, mascara... How many times must I tell you - leave my makeup alone!"

But Grant is apparently prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice: being seen in public in leotards.

Theatre PA: Ladies and gentlemen, due to an implausible plot development, Vladimir Smirnoff will be replaced tonight by Grant Funkyscoff.

The ruse works, and Anastasia makes her escape with the squaddies in the Funky Buggy, which isn't a Lada. But there's one broken down ahead of them.

Motorist whose voice bears a strange resemblance to that of the sinister Iron Curtain minder: Excuse me comrade, er, cobber, could you a hand be giving to push my Lada vehicle?"

Funky Squad sees through the ruse - eventually - and after a bout of fisticuffs and Stix taking a bullet in the beachball, they make for a conventiently located embassy over the road. Anastasia takes a moment to pose meaningfully on the doorstep, and gets her brains blown out.

Which is probably just as well, since we wouldn't want her and Cassie getting all catty over Grant's affections. Especially since they were both played by Jane Kennedy.

A Cry For Help

2007-11-25T16:13:00.000-08:00

Funky Squad's been through several incarnations, from TV Show to slightly unsettling book, but it started life as a radio serial on Triple M, when the D-Gen team was taking care of Breakfast on that station. Each Funky Squad radio story is made up of five episodes (Monday to Friday) of approximately two minutes each. There's more info on this era over in Wikipedia, if you follow the link to the right.

Since I don't know broadcast dates for these stories, I'm blogging them in approximately alphabetical order, starting with:

A Cry For Help

Grant (Rob Sitch), Cassie (Jane Kennedy), Stix (Santo Cilauro) and Poncho (nobody in particular) are cruising a rough neighbourhood in the funky buggy.

Grant: You know what the murder rate is here?
Stix: One per episode.

A hobo is found dead, and despite reluctance from Deputy Dismissive, Funky Squad are on the case. A string of unintelligibly funky talk from their hip to the groove street contact provides some less than helpful leads.

Stix: What did you make of that?
Grant: Nothing, as usual
Cassie: Man, we've really gotta learn jive talk.

A tip off from Father O'Cool of St Moderns leads them to the classically troubled youth Tito Spanola and his distressed mother.

"Twenty years een zish country and all I haff to show for eet ez zish accent! (sob sob sob) I'm sorry... I get like this when i have only one scene..."

They seem to be getting somewhere when The Chief (Tom Gleisner) puts his irrationally conservative foot down.

Chief: I'm not having you stand there and set up this episode any more Funky Squad. The case is closed, and tomorrow I want you to report for... Useless Duty!"

Funky Squad head off to talk to more incomprehensibly hip street types, but there investigations are curtailed when the Chief inexplicably turns up and slams some car doors at them. Over the banging, they learn that a big shipment of drugs is coming in tonight from Porto Hashish, that young Tito is the lookout and the dead hobo knew too much, hence his ending up with a chalk outline. Funky Squad are back in business.

Grant: Carlos! We have your warehouse completely surrounded!
Carlos: What do you want?
Grant: Throw your weapons out the window!
Carlos: But there are no windows.
Grant: In that case... we have the warehouse beside yours completely surrounded!

This episode later morphed into The Wrong Side of the Tracks when Funky Squad went televisual.

Coming soon: Funky Squad the radio show

2007-08-28T19:46:00.001-07:00

There have been exciting recent developments in FunkySquadLand!

Amazingly, a vast quantity of the Funky Squad radio series as broadcast on Triple M, which I'd written off as lost and unobtainable, has just fallen into my lap with absolutely no effort on my part at all. It was one of those remarkable 'kindness of strangers' moments that suggest the world isn't entirely screwed after all.

So, with a bit of luck and a following wind (and a quick call to BigPond to explain why my download cap's writhing in its death throes) I'll pop some synopses, quotes, and fun stuff online soon.

In the meantime, if you've just wandered in through Google or Wikipedia or somewhere, hello! Use the posts-by-date menu thingo over there to the right to browse through synopses and screencaps for the seven episodes of the TV version of Funky Squad.

Episode 7: The Carnival is Over

2007-05-13T00:44:00.000-07:00

The latest case is closed, the Chief is happy and the uniformed goons aren’t grumbling too much for once, so it’s time for...

Funky Squad on vacation.

But Cassie gets a creepy present - a toy clown with a knife through its head - just as they’re leaving.

A bit of stock footage soon sets the beachside scene. Ponch obligingly slathers Cassie with that Brown and Beautiful muck fictitious actress Verity Svenson Hart was advertising last episode, while Stix braves bare-feet-on-hot-sand syndrome to fetch her a milkshake.

Grant is surfing very convincingly when Poncho realises the blonde one’s in trouble.

Grant’s under - his surfboard’s been tampered with - and when they get back to their towels, there’s a creepy message scrawled in the sand.

They leave the beach... But the Mustang’s brakes are also on holiday...

And the Squaddies nearly get a bit closer to the surf than they had in mind.

When they pop the bonnet, they find Enjoy the Roller Coaster Ride scrawled underneath.

They go running back to the Chief, and some fiddling with the new computer reveals that Elliot Green, sent down by Funky Squad three years ago for sabotaging a fun park, has just been released.

It’s also their chance to do The Pose this week, since we missed it at the start of the episode.

Stix and Grant head to the park in question, to find it’s deserted except for a comedy drunk with financially inspired amnesia.

The former owner of the fun park now runs a scungy cafe from a caravan - the Cafe De Wheels - conveniently situated over the road.

Meanwhile, Cassie and Poncho head to Elliot’s Mum’s house.

She’s the weirdest thing this side of the Bates Motel, but says she hasn’t seen her lad since his release. Which doesn’t explain why he’s sitting in the lounge room.

The Funky Squad eat out at a very Italian pizza and pasta place, where the proprietess tries to matchmake Cassie to her son, oblivious to the big sickening cow-eyes Cassie and Grant are exchanging.

Cassie heads home... And re-enacts the Psycho shower scene. Fortunately, it ends with a phone call rather than a knifing. But there’s a mechanical laughing clown on the other end of the line and a message scrawled on the mirror.

Deciding there’s safety in numbers, and because it’s time for some men-being-useless domestic humour, they all crash at Cassie’s pad.

They get a phone call from Freddy the diner man, to say Elliot’s arrived and wants his old job back. But when Freddy turns around, the young nutter’s gone again.

A cut-and-paste letter arrives, and the postcode matches the mother’s place. The burst in and haul Elliot off to the cop shop, but another mechanical clown phone call while they’re interrogating him would seem to rule him out as the mystery troublemaker.

(Let’s not ask why Poncho was the one who picked up the phone.)

Freddy the diner man is now suspect du jour. They go to see him in the middle of the night - as you do - but the cafe is deserted.

They check out the abandoned, silent, dark fun park...

Which suddenly comes to life. It seems Freddy IS here... Somewhere...

The Here I Am message in Cassie’s flat was written on the mirror, which leads the squaddies to a suitable season finale in the Hall of Mirrors...

But it’s not Freddy they find...

The last of our ads sees the return of RC cola, and a small crowd go ape over - well, get mildly interested in - the Gemini Sandpiper. It’s time for Joey Alvarez - Santo’s FunkySquadLand counterpart - to get publically minded with a drink driving warning, although his ‘five drinks in the first hour and three in the next’ suggestion hints at an inherent weakness with either FunkySquadLand’s DUI laws, or its liquor.

Quotes of Note

Warden on Elliot’s release: That guy didn’t belong in the slammer... He belonged in the loony bin!

Random criminal: I’m entitled to one phone call!
Grant: Why don’t you call the warden, tell him you’re coming.

Grant: OK folks, listen up. We’re cutting loose beachside for a week. Any messages, file them under ‘s’ for surf’s up!

Cassie: Maria, come on - this is the seventies. Some girls don’t get married until they’re at least 25.

Cassie: I’m starting to dig this time off scene. No chief, no crims..
Stix: And the only paperwork we’ll be doing is taking the wrapper off our icecreams!

Well thrillseekers, that's where we leave it for now. I hope you've enjoyed reading this (assuming anyone ever does) as much as I've enjoyed putting it together.

Bye!

Episode 6: Diamonds Are A Cat's Best Friend

2007-05-12T17:44:00.000-07:00

An acrobatic cat burglar makes free with a pricey diamond, leaving a pawprint-emblazoned calling card.

Time to call in...

Funky Squad.

Grant and Cassie check out the scene of the robbery - the tenth diamond burglary in the last month..

While Poncho and Stix get some expert information on diamonds...

There IS an obscure pattern visible to the trained eye - the first stone was four carats, the next five, the next six...

Some skylarking back at Funky HQ jogs Cassie’s memory... The glove marks on the window are from fencing gloves. SuperCassie, on top of a science degree and art school, also went to finishing school where she learned fencing.

They head to fencing school, where they find a guy in a wheelchair and a shifty lump of a law student.

Time for a stakeout, outside the site of the only local 14-carat diamond. And it’s time for Cassie to be prodded with the character development stick.

I grew up in a neighbourhood just like this. Sure, we had all the mod cons, but it came at a price. My parents were divorced. Daddy was too wrapped up in his business deals, and Mummy was too wrapped up in a bottle of gin. I learned the hard way - money’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Then, a dozen cop cars turn up, sirens blazing, to break the mood and scare the cat away. Stix puruses him across the rooftops, getting red tar all over his boots in the process, but the cat gets away.

Mr dodgy law student has an alibi - he was in a fencing tournament that night and won a medal, so obviously wasn’t scaling walls afer all. But the instructor - the guy in the wheelchair - has red tar all over the soles of his shoes....

There’s only one 15 carat diamond in the world - The Abyssinian Queen - and it’s conveniently on show tonight at the Plaza hotel.

(And don't they all scrub up nicely? I think Ponch is channelling Jon Pertwee, though...)

The coach is there, wheelchair and all, and Stix keeps an eye on him while fighting off the advances of a woman with some large... jewels... of her own.

Cassie's fencing skills stand her in good stead for a stand-off with the coach, complete with much dramatic sword-tip-removal of necklace and tie.

In the ads this week Grant Paige, film stuntman, flogs yet another brand of cola, this time in a press-stud can. Someone who might be that ‘Mike’ guy from a few episodes ago is back touting some sort of hammond organ, Verity Svensen-Hart flogs 'Brown and Beautiful’ tanning muck and dyna-mints blow some beachgoers minds’ with the help of some unsublte camera-wobble.

Quotes of note

Stix: My head’s spinning... All those diamonds and carats - I thought only rabbits ate carrots!

Grant: If it’s a cat burglar we’re after... I think we’ve found our puss.

Verity flogs Brown and Beautiful tanning lotion: With a combination of coconut oil and baby oil which allows you to burn easily - which as we all know, is the basis of a healthy tan...
Voice over: Also available, Burnt and Beautiful after-sun cream.

Stix: We just about had that cat in cuffs when you chipped in the straight laces and blew our cover.

The squaddies waltz into a swish do, where everyone’s dripping with furs and jewels.
Stix: Last time I saw this much fur... Was at the zoo!

Grant: So our cat burglar’s in a cell doing 20 plus
Stix: Let’s hope there’s plenty of kitty litter!

Would the real SFD 497 please rev up?

Here's a very strange piece of trivia.

The numberplate of Funky Squad's red Mustang convertible, as seen parked outside the fencing school, is SFD 497. (The convertible’s top alternates between beige and black throughout the series, but we’ll let that slide for now.)

The numberplate of the car in the garage which we see while the cat is breaking into the 14 carat house is SFD 497.

The numberplate of the marked police car complete with flashing lights which arrives a few moments later is SFD 497.

I have no idea what it all means, and I'm not entirely convinced it's not some kind of elaborate in-joke. After all, how do you accidentally have the same plates on three different vehicles in the same scene?

Next time we look at the final episode, appropriately called The Carnival Is Over.

Episode 5: The Wrong Side of the Tracks

2007-05-11T02:18:00.000-07:00

A gang leader is bashed and left near-dead, and a rival gang is implicated. Time to call in...

Funky Squad... because the Chief wants them to solve an unrelated burglary. Chief’s reluctant, but the squaddies argue themselves 48 hours to solve the gangland bashing before they have to give up and move on to some piddling thefts in the better-heeled part of town.

Meanwhile property developer Miles Stricklen cons an immigrant couple out of their shop for a pittance, because it’s in a violent gang-controlled area. How very convenient. Or maybe not, since Stricklen’s goon was behind the thumping in the first place.

A bit of smooth talking from Grant gets them past a ditzy nurse to see the injured Johnny in intensive care. The matron chucks them out, but they get a one-word clue - "eagles" - out of the lad first.

Cassie and Stix head to Johnny’s place to see his Mum and brother.

Stix has a deep and meaningful moment with the kid.

I didn’t talk to cops all that much either when I was your age. Back then, I was in a gang. I ain’t jiving you, Titch, I grew up in a neighbourhood just like this. Used to sit on a fire escape just like you, sit back and stare up at them stars. I could name them all. I dreamed of one day leaving this place, being as free as a star. Then something happened. My best buddy took a switchblade in the back. Then I wised up...

Cassie is obviously moved.

Tito’s young, and convinced Johnny will live forever. But he doesn’t, because the squaddies discover Stricklen’s goon sneaks into the hospital that night and finishes the job.

The squaddies take the red Mustang for a spin, following up Johnny’s clue by looking for a gang called the Eagles.

There isn’t one - but there is Eagle Corporation, Miles Stricklen’s property development company.

There’s a rumble under the bridge... The Skulls think the Bandits started it, and the Bandits think the Skulls started it. We now know Stricklen started it, but try telling that to an unruly mob.

Stix intervenes and reveals himself as a former gang leader. I quit when I realised I was fighting for nothing. Tearing the streets apart - my own turf, my own home...

He singlehandedly talks the two sides into a truce. As you do.

The squaddies head over the tracks to confront Stricklen. No warrant, no firm evidence... but they do have two gang’s worth of bloodthirsty hoods in tow, ready to beat the seedy git to a pulp if he doesn't come quietly - an unorthodox if effective way to secure a confession.

In the ads this week we get yet more cola - Schweppes Export this time - while a woman with a boxy Tarago encourages other ladies who want a new car to "get your husband to talk to Neil Neilson" and some psychedelic camera effects are enlisted in a desparate (and failed) attempt to make ugly harry-highpants jeans sexy.

Quotes of Note

Johnny: Who dies and makes you king?

Random witness type dude: Mystery man was a honky hombre two clicks off the six in mighty flash threads.
(The police are baffled)
Grant: Take a letter, Maria - Suspect was male, caucasian, six foot two and well dressed.

Grant: Some fatcat’s colour TV goes missing, you put out an APB... Meanwhile the kids are doing it hard down ghettoside. Where’s their justice?

Grant and Poncho give up trying to talk to Johnny in hospital and go to leave. Once their backs are turned...
Johnny: Eagles
Grant (to Poncho): Was that you?
Poncho gives Grant a particularly silly look and shakes his head

Now, about those burglaries Funky Squad didn't get around to investigating... more on those next time, with Diamonds Are A Cat's Best Friends.

Episode 4: A Shot in the Dark

2007-05-08T19:16:00.000-07:00

Owing money to a drug dealer is a good way to wind up on a slab... But how do you pin the wrap on the big boss - and his henchman who's already behind bars?

A young bloke unwise enough to take a loan from a drug dealer is shot dead in an alleyway, unfortunately witnessed by his girlfriend. Time to call in...

Funky Squad.

A fortuitous phone call puts them on the scent of a Viktor Ramirez - and with a name like that, you know he's going to be a bad guy. The now-usual split-up takes place, and Grant and Cassie darken the doors of Ramirez and his bunny-girls....

Like Ericson from episode 2, Ramirez is one of these upper-class businessman philanthropist dodgy brother types. He's also quite completely and delightfully mad.

And he has a pet henchman called Driscoll. Now don't laugh - I could never get a decent fitting jacket in an op-shop, either.

While Grant and Cassie admire Ramirez' flash pad, Stix and Poncho interrogate a dinkum bogan sheila who fills them in on the dead boy, his girlfriend Vanessa, and the horrors of regrowth following a dodgy dye-job.

They congregate at Vanessa’s place, wearing their sympathetic faces.

Vanessa has a delightfully camp comic-relief flatmate, but other than that is no help at all. Funky Squad re-group back at HQ, and relax with some cutting-edge computer games...

The computer also informs them that a certain V Ramirez is a silent partner in Fantasia nightclub, where Vanessa worked and shook her groove thang the night her boyfriend died. But the relevation comes too late for Vanessa, who’s been strangled by Driscoll, the erstwhile gentleman in the ill-fitting jacket. Who also rubbed out the boy, in case you hadn’t figured it out by now.

Poncho once again gets the weekly medal for Services to the Advancement of the Plot by figuring out Vanessa’s cryptic comment about the killer "already being behind bars" didn’t refer to jail time, but pub service.

They head back to Fantasia, this time during opening hours...

Which leads to a gunfight between Grant and Driscoll - who works behind the bar.

At this stage, Stix and Cassie are upstairs snooping in Ramirez’ office - although Cassie's high tech method of identifying cocaine by sticking her finger in the bag and then licking it is probably not standard police procedure. Poncho is temporarily out of action after Driscoll threw a drink in his eyes. Fortunately it did no lasting damage, or the poor man would be really screwed, and he comes good in time to bail out Grant.

But this time, it's Cassie and Stix in trouble...

Poncho is a very good marksman - last week he shot out the tyres of an erratically moving vehicle, and in this episode he neatly kills Ramirez, visible in silhouette through a second-floor window, with a handheld pistol.

In the ads this week, that bloke done up as the American flag is back flogging more patriotic personal care items with Uncle Sam antiperspirant - all the weirder because the lyric In Sydney and Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth, implies it’s an Australian ad despite being crammed with eagles, stars, stripes, and other Yankee kitch. Another Aussie ad is Export Cola, before a gent called Mike who was obviously so famous at the time he didn’t feel the need to introduce himself touts an electronics shop so up to date it sells ‘tapes and cartridges’ as well as records and hammond organs.

Quotes of Note

Cop: I take it you were on duty last night?
Cassie: Pest control, pal.
Cop gives a lank look
Cassie: Busting drug pushers
Stix: Exterminating rats as they crawl out of the sewer... A little hard to do from behind a desk.

Grant, led into room by bunnies in leopardprint: Mmmm... I like your taste in butlers
Ramirez: and I like your taste in uniform

Vanessa’s male flatmate Ashley opens the door to Funky Squad: I didn’t know policemen came in such attractive packages
Cassie: Can the come-on, bud
Flatmate: I wasn’t talking to you.

Cassie: Vanessa, we’re gonna split now, but we’d like to come back later and rap some more - you’d be cool with that?

Ashley strokes Stix’ hair: Nice full body... I could do wonders with that.

What might have been

Here on planet Earth, Funky Squad lasted seven episodes and was made in 1995. However, in the alternative dimension where this was a real 70s cop show made in the American state of Australia, it was obviously quite a big hit. The stars all get credts at the front of the show, which implies they're names we should be familiar with, and we've already seen Blair Steele endorsing hairspray - so it's not unlikely that within FunkySquadLand the show ran for years and there are lots of episodes that never made it to Earth.

We get a few clues what these episodes might have looked like from the front credit sequence. Like the first season of The Goodies (you knew there was going to be a Goods reference in here sooner or later, didn't you?) there's a fair bit of specially-shot material in the titles sequence that looks like it could have come from the show itself, but actually doesn't.

So... we missed out on seeing such gems as Funky Squad goes West...

Grant goes undercover someplace girls dig pink shirts...

Cassie proves she's not at all jealous, really, oh no...

(Excuse me, Miss Svensen-Hart, your wig is wilting. Please see makeup.)

And Stix and Poncho go boxing.

There really is no way to follow a discussion so silly, so I'll be off until Episode 5.

Episode 3: Little Girl Lost

2007-05-07T03:19:00.000-07:00

Welcome to exclusive Fernhurst Ladies College, where strangely-accented girls play a trading card game based on classic English portrats like Gainsborough's The Blue Boy in between practice on the school croquet lawn. Tiffany Hartwell, blue-ribbon pony clubber, captain of the debating team, daughter of a senator and all round sickening little brat, is abducted.

The ransom note says "no cops" but nevertheless, it's time to call in...

Funky Squad.

But before we examine the episode itself, it's time to discuss the burning question: where the hell is Funky Squad set? Most of the regular cast have American accents with varying degrees of authenticity, and later in this episode we see the Senator pay the ransom with a briefcase full of American currency. But the girls at the posh school in this episode all sound British (well, more British than American, anyway) and the lifestyle at the Hartwell's place seems reminiscent of British upper-class life. All the vehicles are right-hand drive, with bothersomely Australian-looking numberplates, and quite a few of the incidental characters, particularly older ones like the janitor from episode one and a very funny drunk we'll meet later, have Aussie accents.

Here's my crack-brained theory, which is about as convincing as some of those accents, so it should be right at home: Funky Squad is set in an alternative version of Australia which, sometime around World War Two, became an American state. Federation probably didn't happen, we remained a British colony til the Americans took over. So... we already had a nation's worth of road infrastructure set up for driving on the left by the time the Yanks arrived, so they let us keep doing it, which explains the vehicles. Younger Australians like the squaddies grew up taught American at school, and older ones who knew what was good for them, like the Cheif, soon learnt to talk the talk.

So there you are. Retro-continuity taken to a new level.

Now back to the story... The squaddies are obviously moving up in the Chief's eyes - after pouring scorn on their theories and having a go at them for their youth-type sympathies back in Episode 1, he now calls them his "most highly skilled undercover officers". They all turn up at the Hartwell's place and do some police-type stuff, including a chat with Oscar, the chauffeur.

Much fun is had at the expense of what was considered luxury in the '70s. Ever Mr Technology, Poncho is fascinated by the concept of the dimmer switch...

While Stix checks out what's on the idiot-box. That big box thing attached to the telly by a thick cable is apparently the remote control. I wonder if they got that at the Salvos?

While the Hartwell kitchen effortlessly serves up comedy-luxury food like caviar, frogs legs and that cold soup with the funny name for an extra four people...

Meanwhile, there's a plot in here somewhere, and Poncho wants to get on with it.

There's something fishy. Or more precisely, boozy. The ransom note's on the nose and someone who must have been a scientist because he was wearing a white coat and a bow tie identifies the mystery odour as brewer's malt. Add a phone tap to the mix...

And the squaddies are ready to track down the missing kid before her mother explodes from the prescription tranquilisers she's shovelling down.

Meanwhile, there's some character-development-by-sledgehammer for the Chief, played in FunkySquadLand by Baldwin Scott, or Barry Friedlander as he's known here on Planet Earth. There is much dramatic crushing of plastic cups because "Tiffany reminds me so much of my own daughter... if she was alive..."

At which point, thankfully, something happens before he can elaborate.

This week's ads saw the second of ABBA's promotions for National. (That Panasonic DVD player's working, by the way, but only coz I swapped the tellies around. Never did get it to talk to teh one it was supposed to.)

The next one I think is for Sportsgirl, although whether that's Sportsgirl in the sense we know it is anyone's guess, since the ad was just a series of closeups of women doing things like smiling, crying, or smoking. Then there were Cool Charmers, recursively described as "deodorants that smell nicer than deodorant." Returning to FunkySquadLand, Tim Ferguson in his Blair Steele guise flogs hairspray, somehow oogling a girl's cleavage yet still looking camp as a row of pink tents.

Quotes of Note

Grant: Senator, Mrs H, we know this is a heavy scene, but I’m afraid it’s question and answer time.

Stix: Hey, get a load of this! Remote controlled colour! Man, this place has got it all!

Stx: Psst! Cass - this soup’s cold.
Cassie: It’s vichyssois - it’s supposed to be cold.
Sitx: well, I dig these!
Cassie: Frog’s legs!

Robert: Has Sir finished with his plate?
Stix: Not yet Silvertop, this black stuff really hits the spot
Robert: Beluga caviar, Sir
Stix Mmmm... Say what?
Cassie: Raw fish eggs.

Cassie: Hartwell’s swimming in cash. Could have spared themselves all that heartache just by upping Uncle Oscar’s wage sheet.
Grant: Senator figured the smoke was coming from higher up, couldn’t see the fire in his own backyard.

Before I leave you in peace until Episode 4, an instance of scripty-type cleverness. When the girls are playing their strange Eighteenth-Century-Portraits trading card game, you'll hear one say "I'll give you Pink Girl for The Blue Boy" while the card on top is the Gainsborough painting of a little brat done up in a blue suit. I was doing some research - partially to remind myself who Gainsborough was - and discovered that there is a portrait called Pinky, of a girl in a pink dress, which is considered a partner to The Blue Boy. The two paintings were done at different times by different artists and have no connection at all, but they were displayed as a set in the 20s and the association's stuck.

Episode 2: The Art Of Murder

2007-05-04T02:45:00.000-07:00

A small-time sculptor is murdered by a well-respected art dealer after a confrontation... But is there more to this dealer’s recent shipments of modern art than meets the eye? Time to call in

Funky Squad.

While Stix and Poncho infiltrate the local art scene, Grant and Cassie hang out in some art galleries, eventually making the acquaintance of the obviously shifty Ericson. We learn that Cassie, on top of her science degree, went to Art School.

Meanwhile, Poncho has either discovered a new creative outlet, or he's just realised he's in the presence of a complete loony with only Stix to save him.

This episode we get a better look inside the Funky Squad's office/pad/hangout or whatever you want to call it, inside police HQ.

A fortuitous phone call leads the squaddies to a late-night stakeout...

...which ends with the lot of them tied up at the mercy of a jovial henchman type called Fernandez.

That's not Fernandez, by the way, that's Poncho. But you get the idea. These next two specimens have nothing whatsoever to do with the story...

... But let's just take a moment to soak up that wild hair.

The bow tie is in honour of a charity shindig being held at Ericson's gallery, to celebrate Ericson giving some cash to the local children's hospital. But Funky Squad crash the soiree and teach the well-heeled crowd exactly what Ericson means when he says "the value of modern art lies within".

The ad breaks this week yielded a rare treat for ABBA fans: one of the ads the group recorded in Australia, for Australian television, plugging electronics company National.

Apparently National was the name Panasonic used to trade under in Australia, and yes, that really is ABBA singing a version of Fernando that if anything makes more sense than the original. Find out more, and view the whole collection, here: ABBA's National ads on YouTube.

(Don't get me started on the dodgy Panasonic DVD player I just bought, by the way...)

Cassie was obviously aware that ABBA had been on when she chose her outfit for the final scene:

The other ads were for Walshs clothing, touting their leisure range as "the look for the ’74 executive" and Uncle Sam’s Miracle Herbal Hair Shampoo, an advertising musical extravaganza featuring a guy panning for gold, a group of Amish people, a paddle-steamer, a host of Southern Belles and a very natty bloke, done up in an American flag, playing the banjo.

Quotes of Note

Chief (reading from Funky Squad's report): 0800: Case joint and eyeball suspect, money man splits and we make like fast downtown hot on his tail. Night moves dockside: shadow the chick and hit on the stash. This is not the way we construct a police report!

Grant: You mean people pay money for this stuff?
Cassie: Grant, it’s modern art - folks dig this stuff!
Later...
Cassie: Grant, there’s something wrong with this painting.
Grant: I’ll say - check out the price tag.

Grant: So big daddy pumps a guy full of lead, makes with the stain remover, opens his wallet and walks into the sunset?

Stix: Who died and made you art collector, Fernandez?
Fernandez: A couple of people, actually.

I'll be back next week... or whenever I get around to getting some words and pictures together... with Episode 3: Little Girl Lost.

Episode 1: A Degree In Death

2007-04-30T02:45:00.000-07:00

The students are revolting... and it's not just because they've got long hair and loon pants and smell of incense and mushrooms. The on-campus protest at Central University ends spectacularly when the Dean's car - and probably a fair slice of the opening episode's thousand-dollar budget - is blown sky high.

Police suspicion rests on the protesting kids... Or is it a rival academic with his eye on the top job? Time to call in...

Funky Squad.

In this episode we find out Cassie has a science degree, and she identifies chemicals stolen from the university laboratory as ingredients of a car bomb.

But why sodium chloride - better known as salt - would be kept under lock and key in the first place is anyone's guess.

We find out Stix went to Uni, where in true student style he flunked many classes and eventually dropped out.

He obviously sees something in this bird, since he hits onto her in every episode, using such lines as I got the motor, you got the body, what say I check out your chassis tonight? And yet in the course of seven episodes, never once does she smack him down for using such lousy pick up lines. So much for womens' lib.

The undercover Squaddies hit Central University, in real life shot on location at Monash Uni's Clayton campus.

Poncho stops Stix becoming the second person to rest in pieces.

And retrieves the firecracker from under the car...

While Grant talks hip with the college swami.

Now, here's a genuine piece of trivia for you - despite being on the ABC, Funky Squad featured actual real ads. Actual real twenty-year-old ads for actual, real, long-since-defunct products, that is. There are a few spoof ads to come later in the series, but in this episode we are encouraged to sample RC Cola (that the ad features the well proportioned rear end of a young swimsuit-clad woman may or may not be a co-incidence. Say it alound if you haven't got it yet), Lime Fresh soap "With streaks of lime, so fresh it tingles!" and "VYI" who sold spectacles. Or sunglasses. Or something.

Poncho's obviously learnt a thing or two from Harpo about how to describe women. So, Poncho doesn't talk, because - as we discover rather frequently - he got shot in the tongue. Let's not pause to wonder what expert marksman did that without so much as dislodging his stuck-on moustache and deviate instead into the weird sideways world inhabited by people with names like Blair Steele and Joey Alvarez. Apparently the fictitious Harry Zdalka Jr, a refugee from Nevaherdovitistan, didn't speak English well - again, let's not pause to ask how he got the role, then - so the bullet story was concocted as a way to get him to keep his mouth shut.

Quotes of note

Cheif: No doubt you've heard there was an incident yesterday at Central University
Grant: Yeah.. Somebody celebrated Fourth of July under a flash set of wheels.

Swami: Violence is a hungry beast, but it feeds only on itself.

Mulvaney, a square cop who insists on going undercover to a student revolutionary meeting, and gets sussed. That he turned up in a police car probably didn't help: No, I'm not a cop! I'm a hippie like you! Make peace, not war! Ooh! Ouch! No!...

Ace the Revolutionary: It's always nice to see a new face around here... Especially one as pretty as yours.
Cassie: I'm not just a pretty face.. I've got a mind, too... And I want to learn all about your ideas.

Later...
Ace: You want to get high? Call me Kite Man... I'll be back before you can say Mary-Jane.

And I'll be back next time with Episode 2: The Art Of Murder.

Welcome

2007-04-28T21:09:00.000-07:00

What is Funky Squad?

Funky Squad are a team of four young cops who take on a variety of cases from drug rings and diamond robbery to murder, while tazzing around in a red Ford Mustang convertible, wearing cool threads and being hip to the scene.

OK, now for the more sensible answer.

For the benefit of those who had better things to do at 8 o'clock on Monday nights in 1995 than watch ABC TV, Funky Squad was a seven-episode comedy series from the same generation of Aussie comics that brought us Frontline and The Late Show.

It was basically a pastiche of every 70s cliche you can imagine, rolled up into a cop show; tough-talking Chief in a poo-brown suit, sinister baddies with zee moscht outrrrrageoush ackshonts, sedate car chases with much tyre screeching dubbed on, and much leaping into piles of cardboard boxes. It was set in the 70s, made in the 90s, and apparently the costumes all came from op-shops, because the budget was in the order of $1000 per episode. To which I say Melbourne must have better op-shops than we do up here.

The writing team included some familiar names: Santo Cilauro, Rob Sitch, Jane Kennedy and Tom Gleisner. It started life as a radio show on Triple M, and when this place is finished - if it ever is - you'll find information on the radio version of Funky Squad in the archives, after the television episodes. Rob Sitch was in the radio version, but study committments kept him out of the TV show, with Allstar Tim Ferguson brought in to reprise his role.

And here he is, in character as Grant, the 'so cool you could use him if the fridge broke down' leader of the Squad.

So, if that's Tim under that ever-so-subtle hairpiece, and the character's name is Grant, who's Blair Steele?

In keeping with the parody, the front-end credits for the show used fake 'real names' for the actors, to reflect the kind of dodgy names actors had in 70s cop shows.

Here we are, another Funky Squaddie, another wig. Santo's under that afro somewhere.

Cassie, as played by Verity, I mean Jane Kennedy.

Tom Gleisner demonstrates his understanding of The Harpo Principle - playing a mute character means you get lots of physical business and no lines to learn. We find out in the first episode (and in every subsequent episode as well) that Poncho doesn't talk because he got shot in the tongue.

And here they all are together:

See you next time with information on Episode 1: A Degree In Death.