"[5] Australian drama was relatively rare on television at the time, although there had been a TV play called Ned Kelly (1959) produced.

[6] The story of Ned Kelly which made him out to be "a dangerous embryo dictator, murderously vindictive and swaggeringly brutal in his hour of power."

I suppose the basic thing is we look into Ned's motives and how he gets further into his career he loses sight of the original reasons for his grudge against the police.

Bell said before the taping that, "I'll be wearing the usual Ned Kelly headpiece but it will be cut away to show most of my face.

[5] The advertising said "Ned Kelly - a betrayed Robin Hood or a thug meeting a well deserved fate.

"[10] The TV critic for Sydney Morning Herald thought there was an uneasy co-existence between the depiction of the Ned Kelly gang "as young hoodlums of today in a dream-setting" and "conventional and "Patriot" type inserts of the haughty, high-cravatted police official Captain Standish" and the "slapstick" bank holdup scene.

[5] The Sunday Sydney Morning Herald called it "a beautifully written superbly produced piece of confusion... Technically it was a magnificent achievement... [with] the brilliance of some of those American workshop dramas screened by the ABC last year.