TV Week
7th May 1994
Silver Logie winner Gary Sweet breaks all the rules in his new role … but he might have met his match.
GARY SWEET may well have met his match.
In his new role, as a tough guy detective in Cody, he’s all set to go head-to-head with his sophisticated and beautiful female boss.
While, once again, there is sexual chemistry between Gary’s character and Det-Insp. Genevieve Sim- monds (Heather Mitchell), viewers will just have to wait and see if it’s ever consummated.
Cody may be just another policeman role for the triple TV WEEK Silver Logie winner, but Gary says there’s a world of difference between Cody and his Police Rescue character, Micky McLin- tock.
“Cody’s just much harder, he’s got no sense of fair play. He bends the rules … in fact, he just doesn’t care about the rules,” Gary tells TV WEEK on the Cody set.
“He takes the shortest route to wherever he’s going and it doesn’t matter who’s in the way, if he breaks rules, if people get hurt, as long as he achieves what he’s set out to do.
“Micky’s character is kind of gregarious and affable and a kind of larrikin whereas Cody is more like … playing with a funnel-web!
“Cody is dangerous. Micky wasn’t dangerous at all. Micky was very safe and you feel very comfortable around him. When you’re with Cody, you feel very edgy.
“I think, you know, there’s an attraction between Cody and Simmo and it’s difficult. There’s a vibe because Cody really respects Simmo. He finds her attractive on an intellectual plane. He’s not had to deal before with a woman who is as articulate or intelligent or who has the ability to top him. as Simmo seems to do every time.
“The only two women in his life are the little girl next door and his mother. That’s why he’s so aggressive and so cold. When Micky got angry he got heated. But when Cody gets angry, he just withdraws, goes cold.”
Gary is busy at least until the end of the year. The fourth series of Police Rescue starts filming on June 20 and he has just two weeks off before he starts shooting for that.
In between he hopes to see his kids, who still live in Adelaide, and to squeeze in extra time with the new woman in his life, Sydney accountant Gabrielle Carlsson.
On that topic, the usually garrulous actor is giving little away.
“It’s fine,” he says of the relationship, but adds, “I don’t know” when asked whether he is in love. “What is love? You tell me.”
But he adds that one of Gabrielle’s major attractions is her cooking. “She makes nice nachos,” he says, with a grin.
Cody will screen on the Seven Network as separate movie-length stories.
In the one on which TV WEEK caught up with Gary, Cody is investigating the abduction of a wealthy, but shady, car dealer’s daughter. Cody is mid-way through an inquiry into a diamond racket when the daughter is kidnapped.
Story: Fiona Wingett
Pictures: Andrew Jacob and Phil Blatch
Original content copyright TV Week.