| Director: | James Upshaw |
| Country: | Australia |
| Language: | English |
| Runtime: | 75 mins |
| Company: | ABC |
| Network: | ABC |
| Released: | (Sydney) |
| Released2: | (Melbourne)[1] |
| Released3: | (Brisbane)[2] |
The Big Client is a 1961 Australian television play. It was directed by James Upshaw.[3] It screened "live" on the ABC on 19 July 1961 and was recorded in Sydney[4] Australian TV drama was relatively rare at the time.[5]
In London, Henderson is an American millionaire launching a brand of tranquillisers. Fred Cooper, head of a London advertising firm JCB, tries to get Henderson to sign with them. Fred is ruthless, more so than three directors of JCB, Sam Bloomberg, Philip Comely and Peter Jones.
The play by British writers Eric Paice and Michael Hulke had been filmed on British TV in 1959 directed by Ted Kotcheff.[6] Geoffrey Wedlock did the sets.[2]
The TV critic from the Sydney Morning Herald thought an advertising executive would have.been hard put to clarify the curious dramatic direction—embracing shifts of meaning and emphasis" in the play, adding "it was a fault of the play_, not, generally speaking, of the actors or of James Upshaw's compact though not very imaginative production."[7]