Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995), Monday 26 September 1994, page 29


TV, VIDEO, RADIO, HOME ENTERTAINMENT

Week beginning Monday, September 26, 1994

Gary Sweet tells Nicole Leedham his new

character, Cody, is fairly ruthless.

I'M NOT a hunk. I'm a dag."

The voice down the phone line is that of Gary Sweet. 37. who has regularly been voted the sexi-est man alive in a number of women's magazines.

It's this label that makes inter-viewing Sweet interesting. Not only is he a hunk, he's also a flirt and makes no secret of this.

This means that it is difficult to get any actual facts from him. He's far too interested in flirting — finding-out how old the inter-viewer is, what she looks like and whether he can doss at her house when he visits Canberra are much more important questions to him than giving details on Cod,. a se-ries of telemovies premiering on Prime at 8.30pm on Sunday night.

Cody (Sweet) is an unconven-tional cop, who grew up on the wrong side or the law and who counts many crooks among his

friends.

He's not afraid to break a few rules: he wants justice and he doesn't flinch at using unconven-tional means to get there.

His sidekick is Fiorelli (Rohert Mammone), a far more down the line cop who balks as some of Cody's ideas.

Heather Mitchell is inspector Genevieve Simmonds. who reluc-tantly lets Cody get away with his method of policing.

Cody is very different to Mick-cy. Sweet's character in the ABC series. Police Rescue.

"1 loved playing Cody." Sweet

said.

"It's great to play someone

that immoral — but this time everyone can see it, that's what I'm worried about. Mickey makes decisions from his heart and Co-dy makes them straight from his head. He doesn't have any moral dilemma about shooting people. He gets the job done as quick as he can, the shortest way possi-

ble."

"I enjoyed it very much, he's kind of risky and dangerous and

pretty ruthless.

"Mickey's good fun. he's a much nicer guy. Cody ain't that much fun, 1 mean he's fun to play but he's not that much fun as a guy. He's not your barrel of laughs."

Cody is produced by Southern

Star, the production company which Sweet works for and which produced Police Rescue. There are three movies in the can with an expected three films each year for five years.

' I HOPE they're successful. 1

think the stories are really good 1 don't think Cody's obviously as likeable a character as Mickey but there's something

watchable about him."

And besides that, isn't it star-ring the sexiest man on the planet or something. '

"Oh yeah right. Robert Mam-mone. No it's got this old boiler

in it."

The character was developed for Sweet, who has helped devel-op the script but says he can't

take credit for it.

"I had a say in who was going to play Cody," he said. "I also had a fairly clear idea of how Cody would be played,"

One thing that's great about

Cody is that it shows areas of Sydney that most people can re-cognise — Kings Cross, Whale Beach and various other suburbs.

"I think the thing about Cody is that we shot Sydney in a dif-ferent way." Sweet said.

"Sydney's often shot around the icons", around the bridge and the opera house. We've captured it's kind of underbelly, the seedier side of Sydney. Certainly as inter-esting as the icon's."

In the first episode. Cody and Fiorelli are on the trail of a dia-mond smuggling ring but Cody has nothing to go on. except a

rumour of South African connec-tion.

Somehow there is a link with a

missing teenager, but will Cody unravel the mystery before it's

too late?

Cody and Police Rescue have kept Sweet so busy he's had no time for a private life, and doesn't mind talking about it.

"I'm very appealing to women under six and over 60. There's nothing in between, it's driving me absolutely nuts." he admitted.

"Girls? I haven't got one at the moment, I'm single. I just don't have time for a relationship. It's

hard to make time for it."

Sweet is renowned for letting screen relationships spill over into real life, and makes no excuses.

"It's very hard to have an inti-mate relationship on screen and go home alone."

And after Cody and Police Res-

cue?

"I will be old enough to play inspected Adams in Rescue then lose my hair and play the King

and I. "