Prisoner

Forget the awful set, cheap production, this show had great writing & characters.

It also tackled hard issues no other show from its time did. All in all a great show with laughs, memorable characters and some shocking moments.

This is a real cult classic.

I must admit, Prisoner scared me as a kid when it was on Channel 10 at 8:30pm. I watch it now, and it's quite funny to watch.

I am very thankful that ALL 692 episodes have been put on DVD. So far I am up to episode 320 and I'm loving it. Sets that shake when a character gets roughed up against the brick walls of Wentworth. It is just classic. Locks on security doors that probably don't work, but characters spend time making noise with the keys.

Lovable characters, such as Bea Smith, Old Lizzie, Sandy Edwards, Meg Jackson/Morrison, Vera Bennett, Steve Falkner, Smart, Jim Fletcher, and many many others.

Based on what I have seen so far, Vera Bennett and The Freak Furgesson would not have played well together. They really are two very different types of characters who would have clashed at all levels. Vera may have been hard towards the prisoners, but she was brutally honest. As for the Freak, as the most bent officer so far, she causes a lot of the problems faced by Wentworth. Vera would not have stood for it.

It is good to see the camera work and lighting has improved over the years, in some scenes the lighting is actually quite bad. Sometimes it is actually hard to see what is going on in the dark scenes.

From time to time some of the same actors re-appear as different characters, but thats a soap opera for you.

If you have not had a chance to watch Prisoner yet, give it a shot. As badly made as it is, it is also addictive to watch. I plan on watching all episodes of Prisoner. I recommend you give it a shot too.

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!

By the time prisoner graced our screens in 1988 it had already been canceled in its native Australia after a seven-year run (ending in 1986). In the UK it was not aired on prime time but found itself relegated to the post 11.00pm watershed probably because of it's risky and controversial story lines. Depending on what region you lived in, could be found any time after midnight.(In fact quite often Thames would screen it from 11.00 -12-00 and if you could pick up Anglia TV they would show it from 12.00 - 01.00 but a couple of seasons ahead.) Fortunately for prisoner by 1986 the four terrestrial channels had finally entered the 20thC and began broadcasting all through the night, therefore, shows such as prisoner became the ideal type of television to fill these new slots.

Needless to say this Aussie import like all the others soon developed it's own cult following. Unlike most of the other goody-goody Auzzie soaps that were located in middle class locations with spoiled teenagers and dopey grown ups working in coffee shops, prisoner by contrast was mostly broadcast in a windowless claustrophobic environment of a correctional facility.

Wentworth prison as with most prison TV shows had all the stereotypes. Those included were the heartless senior members of the staff who were totally committed to punishment and discipline who were of course held in check by the jelly-spined social workers and the well intentioned Governess who not surprising clung to the hope that these women could be rehabilitated. The inmates too had there's, the 'Top Dog', 'the dike', the gang leaders with their 'wenchmen', the hard cases, the old timer the whiner, the non conformist and last but not least the 'nark' or 'snitch'.

The main theme of the prisoner story lines broadly focused on the inmates standing up to the seemingly petty and inflexible rules of the prison system, (i.e. don't let the bastards grind you down scenarios). Yet prisoner also grappled with some of the every day problems that many of the women were forced to come to terms with, lesbianism, bullying, sadistic guards, prison gangs, and drugs.

For some viewers this no doubt provided a refreshing alternative to the bland political news shows that were broadcast after the pubs closed. Having said that, a few pints of lager was probably the order of the day as the Wentworth inmates at best were not easy on the eye and at worst just plain scary! As any warm-blooded male with tell you after alcohol consumption a lot of homely women begin to look respectable. In all fairness without a decent hairdresser or make up, denim overalls and dungarees are never going bring the best out of any woman, so perhaps that's what made many of the actors believable, no Charlie's angels here.

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!!