Prisoner

This is certainly the best prison show ever, and probably the best soap opera/melodrama ever, too. It's humor and lack of pretension make it 100 times better than "Oz" will ever be. Of course, setting it in a women's prison gave the creators a lot more freedom in dealing with characters. We have fewer preconceptions so they couldn't rely on stereotypes like they do on "Oz". It would be neat, in a way, if they could have Vera (aka Vinegar Tits) guest star as a guard on Oz. She'd straighten that place up in short order! Somebody please bring this back to American TV!!

Excellent, gripping, funny and over the top. Inside the gates of Wentworth Detention Centre are housed the most dangerous criminals in H Block. From the camp style of true English upper class snobbery of Erica Davidson, who is Govenor, to the evil, sadistic, cruel ways of the "Freak" Joan Ferguson.

From episode one the main story line has you gripped, and through out all 692 episodes you will be a fanatic. Riots, fires, murders, LSD trips, bashings - everything you could ask for in a prison drama and more.

Well worth renting or buying, you will NOT be sorry! 12 out of 10! A+++

I first came across Prisoner on TV and i watched the first 2 episodes and i was hooked from there. I went online and started ordering the DVDs of the whole series and since acquiring the complete series on DVD i have watched the complete series. Well let me tell you "wow" what a great show, never a dull moment and action packed with great story lines.

I can't recommend this show enough, if you haven't seen it and you are interested, watch it you won't be disappointed I promise you. Its one of the best Australian television shows ever.

Watch it 5 stars

If you live in Sweden and were to say "I watch 'Prisoner'" to one of your friends, you would get a big laugh. You would probably be mocked for eternity. I too was one of the mockers, one of the bullies. My brother once told me he watched Prisoner, I laughed hard and long but then realised that he didn't have much choice since he didn't have cable and hence nothing to watch late at night. The summer of 2003 things changed. I shared an apartment with him during this summer and he forced me to watch it. O boy, it didn't take long to understand what I had missed during these long years.

The show is really dramatic and even though some of the actors/actresses aren't the best (and damn right ugly!) or the visual dramatic effects are pretty poor. The storyline and the plot are really well thought of and every episode is really packed with action and drama. If you were to compare it to another long running show like Days of Our Lives, DoOL wouldn't stand a chance. If you miss a week of episodes of Prisoner you miss A LOT, and when you come back to watch you wouldn't know what's going on. However if you miss a month of DoOL and come back to watch, you're still in the game and know exactly what's going on since one single small event can last for a week of episodes. They story advances really fast in Prisoner and that's what makes it so different from all the modern soap operas which are advancing DoOL style; slow as hell.

The only thing I fear now is whether I'll be able to find the time to watch all the upcoming episodes of Prisoner - I really don't want to miss one single episode!

My name is stekflott and I am a Prisoner addict.

I have a unique affection for "Prisoner: Cell Block H". It was first shown on English TV in 1984 (Yorkshire Region only), directly after the olympic games of that year had ended. In previous weeks to stop people watching said games, ITV put on sci-fi show 'V' for the first time, and it was my love of 'V' which made me tune in to see its mysterious replacement, cryptically called : 'Prisoner' in the one line programme listings ITV served up after midnight in lieu of 24 hour programming. Within weeks I was hooked and from '84 - '87 I saw it once a week. Then I moved to Stoke (Central TV region) and was overjoyed to find Prisoner beginning its first showing in that region, what's more it was on three times a week! Two years of bliss till I returned to Yorkshire region and had to put up with a miserly 2 episodes a week. The up-shot of my moving locations in Britain being that I was probably the only person in England to have watched the majority of episodes twice! When by the mid to late nineties Yorkshire finally showed the last episode I had been avidly watching it for 10 years. Ahh, bless!

The reason it works so well is because it solves 2 of the many soap-opera's trickiest problems. WHY DO THE CHARACTERS KEEP MEETING EACH OTHER? No silly pub, postbox or neighbours been good friends, simply because they have no choice. They've all got to be together all of the time! WHY DO THE CHARACTERS HAVE SUCH MELODRAMATIC LIVES/WHY DO SO MANY OF THEM DIE? Prison offers us a uniquely brutal demographic, 1000s of ways to leave the series. Anyone could be killed off, and the joy of it been a 5 year old series by the time it reached England was that there were no spoilers in the press, only me and a cat in Durham watched it - or so it seemed!

To top it all, the machinations of the dreaded 'department' were very like 'Hill Street Blues' in showing the politics of the workplace and the corruption of the state - gave a sinister sense of panic while you were watching, no one, from the minister down to the new inmate could ever be completely trusted.

OTT Storylines ruled: terrorism, mafia, serial killers (at least two), deranged hypnotherapists, bomb disposal experts blowing up... those were the days! 'Bad Girls' never really has that escapist excess!