The core gang from 'The Aunty Jack Show' are back in this, their next Australian TV comedy series. Backed by another infectious Bond/O'Donaghue theme song, it ran for just a handful of episodes during 1974.
Taking a break from their surreal vision of 70's Australia, Bond, O'donaghue and McDonald this time appear in a rural 19th century bushranger sitcom - almost certainly inspired by the enormously successful goldrush drama series 'Rush' which aired on the same network the same year (though curiously, two preview episodes of 'Flash Nick' were apparently screened in 1973, so perhaps the inspiration was the other way around.)
In any event there is what you might call a distinct difference between the shows. In 'Rush', John Waters plays a serious, darkly sexy colonial police officer. In 'Flash Nick', Grahame Bond plays a bushranger whose exploits include trying to rob a mail train disguised as a roller-skating emu, and attempting to steal a black opal disguised as a harem girl, at a Country Women's Association Kung-Fu tournament. Nick is pursued by Captain Magpie, played by McDonald. One image I recall from the series was Magpie hobbling around after being crushed after attempting to apprehend Nick. Nick was riding a stallion, Magpie was on a mare. You work it out...
It's hard to imagine that this series will ever see the light of day again, thirty years on, and given the apparently chronic legal impasse between Bond and the ABC over copyright on all of this material, but at the time it was another enjoyable installment in Bond and O'Donaghue's domination of mid 70's Oz TV comedy.
