After the gold standard of
S&D and
ACP, we return to car crash territory, as we profile the beginning of Nine's (to date) unbroken run of soap flops after it's
Young Doctors / The Sullivans imperial phase. With the aforementioned wartime saga nearing it's end, Nine were on the lookout for something big and flashy to add to their schedule, in a similar vein to the US mega hits
Dallas and
Dynasty. Reg Watson and Grundy's were tasked with coming up with the goods and thus,
Taurus Rising was born.
Like many sagas before and since, it was the tale of two wealthy families at war - the Brents and the Drysdales. Opening in the 1920's, young Isabella is jilted by Harry Brent and ends up married to the unloving James Drysdale. Jumping forward to the present day of 1982, the Brents and the Drysdales have become vicious business rivals in the intervening 60 years. Harry (Gordon Glenwright) is on his last legs, much to the delight of James and Isabella's (Georgie Sterling) businessman son Ben Drysdale (Alan Cassell). But Ben is in for a shock when his long lost love and Harry's long lost daughter Jennifer (Annette Andre) shows up at her father's deathbed, after 26 years away, with a son Mike (Andrew Clarke) in tow, that may or may not be Ben's secret son. Throw in a long suffering wife, a rich bitch daughter, a tennis playing wastrel son and a Damien from The Omen-esque child prodigy grandson, and you get the idea of the traumas that ensued.
Taurus Rising's promotion and production were marred with issues. For a start, the title confused many and cast members spent their time explaining in interviews that the show had nothing to do with the zodiac or astrology. When discussing the show at a press launch, one Nine executive cluelessly offered up the explanation of "Taurus rising from the ashes" (Taurus was actually the name of the tower that both families were battling to build in the story). In addition to this, the network were being purposely coy about the show prior to it airing, telling cast members not to discuss any details in interviews, leading Damon Herriman (Phil Drysdale) to wonder "how were people going to watch if they didn't know anything about it". Production wise, the show was facing big delays as a result of their poorly thought out choice of studio location. The Bijou Theatre in Sydney had been converted to accommodate the interior shoots. This decision didn't take into account the fact that it was under a flight path and filming had to be halted every time a plane flew overhead. They also had to stop when the nearby clock on Balmain Town Hall chimed every half hour.
Amid much hype,
Taurus Rising premiered in a two hour special in July 1982. In true soap fashion, a sibling from the Grundy's stable had a hand in it's early demise, as it was scheduled against
Prisoner, which was at the height of it's ratings powers on Ten at the time. On the other side, the final episodes of the ratings grabbing
Brideshead Revisited were playing out. Unable to compete with either,
Taurus Rising didn't stand a chance. Ratings started low and continued to fall, leading Nine to quickly pull it from it's primetime 8.30pm Tuesday slot and dump it in the 10pm slot on Fridays or Saturdays (depending on your city). Reruns of
The Love Boat took it's vacated Tuesday slot, generating various headlines to the effect of
Taurus Sinking / Flopping / Falling while Crawford's labelled their failing rival
Pisces Plummeting. The schedule change gave the writers a clear message that their days were numbered, so they wrote a conclusion, tying up most of the series' loose ends before it was officially axed. Costing $2m to produce, it was an expensive failure for Grundy's (their most expensive at that time). In a bid to recoup some of their losses, they sold it as a 21 hour miniseries around the world, with it airing in the US, Germany and Turkey, where it became the number one show.
