
Tommy Dysart
Acting
Biography
Tommy Dysart (24 December 1935 - 7 June 2022) was a Scottish-born actor, currently resident in Australia. Dysart has been a regular fixture on Australian television for several decades, frequently appearing in guest-starring roles in drama series and comedies, and in character roles in films and miniseries. High-profile early roles included appearances in Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Phoenix Five, and several roles in the Crawford Productions police drama series Homicide, Division 4 and Matlock Police. In the early 1980s he played what is perhaps his best-known acting role, that of vicious and corrupt prison officer Jock Stewart in Prisoner. In the storyline, after being fired from the prison service Stewart admitted to prisoner Judy Bryant that he was the one responsible for murdering her lesbian lover, fellow prisoner Sharon Gilmour. This revelation brought to a close a murder-mystery storyline in the series but launched a long-running story-arc where Bryant repeatedly escaped from prison in a succession of attempts to exact her revenge on Stewart. After this Dysart continued in guest-starring television roles in drama series and situation comedies, and appeared in many feature films. His films included The Man from Snowy River (1982), Bliss (1985), Garbo (1992), and Flynn (1996). Television roles of the 1990s included appearances in All Together Now, The Games, State Coroner, Blue Heelers, Something in the Air and Neighbours. He also provided the voice for Captain Griswald in Anthony Lucas' animated short film The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello (2005). Starting in the 1990s he appeared in a series of well remembered advertisements for the Yellow Pages where he calls a series of mechanics about his problematic Goggomobil. He was also known for playing a recurring character of a Mafia-boss like butcher in advertisements for Don's Smallgoods. In the early 2000s he continued his Goggomobil persona advertising Shannons Insurance. The concept played on the role of a person searching for the car parts as any car enthusiast would. Telstra challenged this in the Supreme Court and Shannons withdrew the advertisements, but continued with Dysart and the accent (which Dysart insisted was his own and could not change). The adverts continue and Shannons Insurance also owns several of the Goggomobil cars which feature regularly in their shows. Tommy has enjoyed a long friendship and working relationship with director/writer Frank Howson in the movies Backstage, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, What The Moon Saw, Flynn, Crime Time, The Final Stage, The Lucky Country, and their most recent collaboration is the award winning film Remembering Nigel, which also stars Tommy's wife Joan and son Kole. He was married to Australian actress Joan Brockenshire.
Known For

Blue Heelers was one of Australia's longest running weekly television drama series. Blue Heelers is a police drama series set in the fictional country town of Mount Thomas. Under the watchful eye of Tom Croydon (John Wood), the men and women of Mount Thomas Police Station fight crime, resolve disputes and tackle the social issues of the day. We watch their successes and their failures and learn to grow with them and their loved ones as the heart of the series develops.
Blue Heelers

Prisoner is an Australian soap opera that is set in the Wentworth Detention Centre, a fictional women's prison.
Prisioner

The Flying Doctors is an Australian drama series produced by Crawford Productions that revolved around the everyday lifesaving efforts of the real Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. It was initially a 1985 mini-series based in the fictional outback town of Cooper's Crossing starring Andrew McFarlane as the newly arrived Dr. Tom Callaghan. The success of the mini series led to its return the following year as an on-going series with McFarlane being joined by a new doctor, Chris Randall, played by Liz Burch. McFarlane left during the first season and actor Robert Grubb came in as new doctor Geoff Standish. The series' episodes were mostly self-contained but also featured ongoing storylines, such as Dr. Standish's romance with Sister Kate Wellings. Other major characters included pilot Sam Patterson, mechanic Emma Plimpton, local policeman Sgt. Jack Carruthers and Vic and Nancy Buckley, who ran the local pub/hotel, The Majestic. Andrew McFarlane also later returned to the series, resuming his role as Dr. Callaghan. The popular series ran for nine seasons and was successfully screened internationally.
The Flying Doctors

Homicide was an Australian television police drama series The series dealt with the homicide squad of the Victorian Police force and the various crimes and cases the detectives are called upon to investigate. Many episodes were based on real life crime cases.
Homicide

The Man from Snowy River is an Australian television series based on Banjo Paterson's poem "The Man from Snowy River". Released in Australia as Banjo Paterson's The Man from Snowy River, the series was subsequently released in both the United States and the United Kingdom as Snowy River: The McGregor Saga. The television series has no relationship to the 1982 film The Man from Snowy River or the 1988 sequel The Man from Snowy River II. Instead, the series follows the adventures of Matt McGregor, a successful squatter, and his family. Matt is the hero immortalized in Banjo Paterson's poem "The Man from Snowy River", and the series is set 25 years after his famous ride.
The Man from Snowy River

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo is an Australian television series telling the adventures of a young boy and his intelligent pet kangaroo, and the various visitors to the fictional Waratah National Park in Duffys Forest, near Sydney, New South Wales.
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo

Round the Twist is a Logie Award-winning Australian children's television series about three children and their father who live in a lighthouse and become involved in many bizarre magical adventures.
Round the Twist

Follows a family who live at Melbourne Zoo in Victoria, Australia. Doctor David Mitchell is the zoo's veterinarian. His children Nick and Susie love being with all the animals.
Zoo Family

Good Guys, Bad Guys was an Australian crime TV series that screened on the Nine Network between 1997 and 1998, with a telemovie and twenty-six episodes produced. A comedy/drama set in Melbourne. The program was written for, and starred, Marcus Graham as Elvis Maginnis. A disgraced former cop, tainted by his criminal family and framed for corruption, Elvis owns "K for Kleen" drycleaning, managed by the eminently more sensible Stella Kinsella and sweetheart Reuben Zeus who has Tourette syndrome. Elvis's attempts at a straight life are constantly compromised by the demands of his eccentric family, while Stella's attempts at making "K-for-Kleen" turn a profit are frustrated by Elvis's penchant for damsels in distress and a hard-luck story. He may not have a white stallion, but Elvis has a beautiful Charger. The program was filmed in Melbourne, predominantly around the inner-city "bohemian" suburbs of St. Kilda, Fitzroy and Carlton. The film style incorporated local colour - Melbourne trams, landmarks like Smith Street's Cobra cane furniture shop, and the Builder's Arms Hotel as Elvis's local - and a soundtrack of the then-latest Australian music, matched to the action. The Good Guys, Bad Guys soundtrack CD features Regurgitator, The Fauves, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Whitlams, The Avalanches, Spiderbait, The Cruel Sea and The Mavis's among others.
Good Guys, Bad Guys
All Together Now was an Australian sitcom that was broadcast on Nine Network between 1991 and 1993. The premise involved an ageing rocker trying to maintain his music career while living with his son and daughter. For an undetermined number of initial episodes filmed prior to public broadcast, the show title was "Rhythm and Blues" and had a different theme song.
All Together Now

The Games was an Australian mockumentary television series about the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. The series was originally broadcast on the ABC and had two seasons of 13 episodes each, the first in 1998 and the second in 2000. 'The Games' starred satirists John Clarke and Bryan Dawe along with Australian comedian Gina Riley and actor Nicholas Bell. It was written by John Clarke and Ross Stevenson. The series centred on the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and satirised corruption and cronyism in the Olympic movement, bureaucratic ineptness in the New South Wales public service, and unethical behaviour within politics and the media. An unusual feature of the show was that the characters shared the same name as the actors who played them, to enhance the illusion of a documentary on the Sydney Games.
The Games

Water Under the Bridge is a 1980 mini series based on the 1977 novel by Sumner Locke Elliott.
Water Under the Bridge

Kelly is a Australian children's television series that first screened on Network Ten in 1991. The series was produced by Jonathan M. Shiff Productions and featured the adventures of a former highly trained German Shepherd police dog called Kelly.
Kelly

An unmistakable Australian icon - a smoking revolver, two piercing eyes behind a makeshift mask of armour. But beyond the armour, behind the eyes was a man both ruthless and gentle, rugged and kind - the infamous last outlaw, Ned Kelly was his name. Both revered and reviled throughout the ages Ned Kelly was an Irish-Australian battler-cum-bushranger, fiercely independent and pushed into action by the repressive colonial authorities of the time. The Last Outlaw examines the life of Ned Kelly, and expounds the legend from early indiscretions and the formation of his gang through to the violent killings at Stringy Bark Creek, culminating in his explosive last stand and shoot out at Glenrowan. The Last Outlaw is a remarkable four-part miniseries presentation that deflects historical judgement and allows the legend to live on.
The Last Outlaw

Jim Craig has lived his first 18 years in the mountains of Australia on his father's farm. The death of his father forces him to go to the lowlands to earn enough money to get the farm back on its feet.
The Man from Snowy River

Eureka Stockade is a 1984 Australian miniseries based on the battle of Eureka Stockade. It reunited the producer, writer, director and star of A Town Like Alice.
Eureka Stockade

Follows the lives and struggles of four generations Australian Aboriginal women from the 1820s to the 1980s.
Women of the Sun

Residents of peaceful Pebbles Court, Homesville, are being used unknowingly as test experiments for a new 'Body Drug' that causes rapid body decomposition (melting skin etc.) and painful death.
Body Melt

Air force Lieutenant Harris starts for a flight to Boa Boa, on board Reverend Mitchell with a box containing a part of a top-secret extraterrestrial key. They get lost in a supernatural storm and find themselves after an emergency landing in kind of a Bermuda triangle, 5,000 miles off their course. Home again, no one believes Harris' story, and his crew suspiciously denies it too. Harris is thrown in jail, but manages to escape. Together with Mitchell's daughter he seeks the lost part of the key and its secret.
Sky Pirates

After Linda inherits a retirement home, she witnesses a series of strange events which seem connected to a dark and unspeakable evil.