Captivating movie !

A different way of telling a story

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Blistering performances.

'The Virgin Fellas' ( also known as 'Birds In The Bush' and 'Strike It Rich' ) was a rare disaster from the talented writer/director/producer David Croft, co-creator of 'Dad's Army' and 'It Ain't Half Hot Mum'.Shot on film and lacking a laugh-track, it was a co-production between the B.B.C. and Australia's A.B.C. network. The late Hugh Lloyd was 'Hugh', a water diviner by profession, who flies Down Under to claim an inheritance - a farm in the Outback run by a group of beautiful girls, collectively known as 'the fellas'. They wear blue smocks, and have names like Friday ( Kate Sheil ), Tuesday ( Briony Behets ), and Wednesday ( Nicola Flamer-Caldera ). There's even one called 'Buster' ( Jenny Hayes ). More interestingly, none has ever slept with a man ( hence the title ). Hugh, along with his Australian half-brother Ron ( Ron Frazer, later to play Patrick Cargill's brother in the Australian version of 'Father Dear Father ) sets about trying to ( ahem ) educate these poor girls. I'm not sure about this but I think there was another plot element involving a greedy baron trying to obtain the land on which the farm was built because he knew there was oil there. The reason for my uncertainty is that I have not seen the show since it went out. It was unbelievably sexist even by the standards of an era that gave us 'The Benny Hill Show' and 'Casanova 73', and worse, about as funny as a dead dingo. I like Lloyd very much ( particularly in 'Hancock's Half-Hour' and 'Hugh & I' ), but he worked best as a feed. Casting him as the lead was never going to work out - and did not.Audiences in both Australia and Britain gave 'Fellas' the cold shoulder. The B.B.C. ditched it after only seven of the 13 episodes had been screened. Kate Sheil said in a 1981 interview that it had been hard to live down the experience as 'everyone hated it'. Croft came back to Britain soon afterwards and got on with his most-famous show.

David Croft was a successful writer/director with many, much loved British comedies like "Dad's Army", "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" and "'Allo 'Allo!" to his credit but this was a complete loser - no "Dad's Army".Obviously scripted to get the best out of popular Australian TV comedian Ron Frazer, it ended up more like "Are You Being Served?" with rather puerile "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" jokes and a bevy of untalented, if attractive girls in various states of undress, it just didn't work.Imported British actors Hugh Lloyd and Anne Sidney filled out the cast but it was pulled halfway through it's British run and never got another showing in Australia where it was set and filmed.