Friday Flashback: Chances
In the early 1990s Jeremy Sims' bare buttocks were more famous than the show he appeared on.
- Published by David Knox
- on
Back in 1991 Nine ran a primetime drama Chances which was set around a family winning the lottery.
The cast included John Sheerin, Brenda Addie, Jeremy Sims, Deborah Kennedy, Michael Caton, Rhys Muldoon and Cathy Godbold.
The project had originally been a telemovie pilot which sat on the shelf for several years before being dusted off and sexed up with nudity. Jeremy Sims’ bare buttocks became more widely recognised than the show itself. Along the way, as Nine tried to spice things up amid struggling ratings, cast members were cut, Abigail was added, and storylines became more over the top.
Eventually Nine cut the show from two to one hour a week, trimming cast and moving to a late slot. The writers went all out, incorporating Asian Triads, ghosts, an angel on a Harley Davidson motorcycle, an Egyptian Sun Goddess, laser-wielding vampires, man-eating plants, and neo-Nazis hunting valuable Third Reich artifacts.
Sims once said of the show, “The tail wagged the dog with Chances.”
126 episodes were produced by Beyond Productions.
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6 Responses
Can someone [David?] identify all the female and male actors in that clip?
A strange period in TV history. Andrew Denton featured an interview with a totally naked bodybuilder, and Doug Mulray on his show had the man behind the bar on set walk out in the nude. Then there was the educational sex education series called Sex hosted by Sophie Lee. When Bruce Gyngell was appointed head of Nine by Kerry Packer he (Gyngell) axed both Chances and Sex, and I have heard that the tapes of every episode of Sex were immediately destroyed.
Totti Goldsmith replaced Sophie as host in later seasons and it was available on commercial VHS tapes…
I watched perhaps the first 6 eps when it premiered – it was utter rubbish. And maybe that’s being too kind.
Ditto. Unbelievable there were 126 in total.
I remember several years ago when Kate Langbroek (who appears topless in one episode) was talking about it on radio and all the DVDs were cleared off the shelves in Melbourne (according to a staff member at a JBHIFI that had called) the day they talked about it. Truly a so-bad-it’s-bad show.