Forgotten Australian Television Plays: The Blind Balance

by Stephen Vagg

Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault that may distress some readers.

Monte Miller is one of the best known old-time Australian screenwriters, not so much for anything he actually wrote but because an award was named after him: specifically, the Monte Miller Award, given by the Australian Writers Guild for Best Unproduced Script from an Associate Member, which probably gets more entries than any other Awgie category because of the whole “unproduced” aspect.

Winners over the years include people like Robyn Sinclair, a writer, producer and former Nine Network drama executive, who I’m mostly mentioning because I knew her and she was a very nice person. Losers include, well, me (#fulldisclosure), but I was nominated once. Didn’t win. Not bitter. Maybe a little. Anyways, back to Monte Miller…

He died in 1981, aged only 58 years old. I knew he was a big deal in the Australian Writers Guild but always wondered what sort of writer he actually was. Miller had a lot of credits back in the day – Crawford cop shows, mostly, like Homicide and Division 4. He was a former policeman and was working as a police prosecutor in Bathurst in the mid 1960s when he got his first screen credit (I think) via the ABC: an episode of the anthology series Australian Playhouse called Should the Woman Pay?

The script I’m talking about today is a second one Miller wrote for that show: The Blind Balance, from 1966.

The Blind Balance takes place in and around a courthouse at night, focusing on two people awaiting a jury verdict from a criminal trial: Shirleen (Julie Costello) is the complainant, James (Alan Bickford) is the accused, and the charge, while never expressly spelt out, involves assault and is mostly likely rape. Shirleen is highly nervous and agitated at the prospect that the jury might not believe her story, and policewoman Mary (Margaret Cruikshank) begins to suspect Shirleen hasn’t been telling the whole truth.

At this point, I began to think “uh oh” and assume this would be another in the long, long, long line of innocent-man-falsely-accused-of-sexual-assault-by-deranged-woman dramas (To Kill a Mockingbird, Sergeant Rutledge, Brian Banks, The Crush, Wild Things, The Life of David Gale, Atonement, Of Mice and Men, A Passage to India, Disclosure, Joseph and His Technicolor Dreamcoat, Phaedra, The Wronged Man, If Beale Street Could Talk, L’Affaire Dumont, etc, etc).

And, look, I guess you could interpret The Blind Balance that way, maybe… James certainly thinks he’s innocent (“all those marks and bruises – I didn’t do that”) claiming Shirleen is crazy; Shirleen is given a possible motive for lying (she was dating James who then went off and got engaged to a never-seen “good girl” called Wendy) and Mary suspects Shirleen is keeping something secret. And plenty of viewers, even today, will watch this and go “oh the poor guy, that Shirleen’s clearly a liar”, in part because people still get a lot of their “knowledge” about rape from the aforementioned wrongly-accused-of-rape dramas.

But Monte Miller does not endorse this point of view. He doesn’t make it 100% clear that James is guilty, it’s true, but Shirleen never changes her story, even under constant questioning, and her behaviour, while highly emotional (she’s agitated, tearful, shouty) is entirely consistent with how we know today that traumatised rape survivors tend to behave: she’s just been emotionally bashed-about by the whole experience, assault, trial and all, and is (justifiably) paranoid about people thinking that she is a liar. And James’ plaintive wail that is innocent is completely consistent with how we know genuine rapists to behave.

It all feels so real: Shirleen nervous and panicky, from a broken home, having a meltdown while the jurors go through hours of deliberation; James in his cell, being indignant and shouty about his innocence, demanding to see his fiancee and refusing to see the complainant; the matter-of-fact police guard (Lloyd Cunnington), not without sympathy for the accused, but not really caring one way or the other; Mary, who thinks she’s doing the best for Shirleen, but who still distrusts her; the anxious first-time defence lawyer (John Godfrey) and seen-it-all prosecutor (Brian James) having a friendly post-trial chat that results in the prosecutor arranging for the defence lawyer to have a social game of golf with the judge the next day; Shirleen seeking reassurance from the prosecutor that the jury will believe her and him being a patronising prick, not really caring about her feelings. Even when James is (SPOILERS) found guilty, the prosecutor tells the defence lawyer that James has a good chance of getting off if they appeal… while within earshot of Shirleen, leaving Shirleen devastated, despite the jury believing her.

It’s a really, really good script, smoothly directed by John Croyston with a particularly good performance from Brian James as a complete see-you-next-Tuesday of a prosecutor. It feels like something written from close observation, with a lot of skill and empathy, as well as skewering of unfeeling officialdom.

The Age TV guide listing for The Blind Balance described the plot as thus: “the main witness in a criminal trial is motivated in her actions by the thought that she can win back the love of her boyfriend who is on trial”. That is categorically wrong and a complete misrepresentation of what the script is about. So, don’t believe TV guide listings. And Monte Miller – more than just a name on an award.

For more articles like this, read:

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