Prisoner: Cell Block H is BACK!

[Fambo Number Mive]

Started watching this for the first time ever. It took a little time to get into the first episode but once you get to know the characters it become really interesting, there's a good mix. Now on episode 2. Not sure how realistic it is but that doesn't really matter. First time I've watched anything on Channel Five in a while. I rememmber all the excitment when Channel Five started up.

[studpuppet]

Monday nights, followed by the atrocious Let The Blood Run Free on YTV.

Famously, this was all over place on the regional schedules, with different companies beginning their runs at different times. Consequently my brother got three hits of it - first as a student in Leeds on YTV, then at home on Anglia and also on Thames when we were round at friends and family. We used to reckon it would have been bigger than Neighbours if everyone had shown it at the same time.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

LTBRF wasn't that bad.

[DrGreggles]

Famously, this was all over place on the regional schedules, with different companies beginning their runs at different times. Consequently my brother got three hits of it - first s a student in Leeds on YTV, then at home on Anglia and also on Thames when we were round at friends and family. We used to reckon it would have been bigger than Neighbours if everyone had shown it at the same time.

All over the place indeed!



Some regions never finished it.

[George White]

I think the Ulster information is wrong because I don't think Ulster finished it. A pal of mine was telling me his girlfriend was gutted when UTV pulled it.

[Rev+]

It's very wonky.  If Thames ever showed it, it was knocked on the head by 1990 at the latest.  I watched it on a small portable TV that picked up Anglia, when the main one in the room picked up Thames.

Amazing what they got away with in this, really.  The Friday the 13th riff culminating in decapitation via shovel.  I mean, what's not to like?

[shiftwork2]

I liked the episode where someone got murdered and they found the body in one of the big tumble dryers.

"Paul Reid".

There's a watchalong podcast about PCBH called No Lagging, I liked the first episode and need to catch up with them.

[George White]

 

Anyone seen this?

Apart from the shaky sets (because those were Channel 10 corridors painted, later used for Erinsborough High), it captures the look so perfectly, down to the slightly woozy almost-but-not-quite-NTSC look of Aussie PAL.

[DrGreggles]

Ta

[Mr_Simnock]

Tough and sexy, wow

[DrGreggles]

I liked the episode where someone got murdered and they found the body in one of the big tumble dryers.

She was actually

Spoiler alert

being chased and hid in there.
Vera closed the door on her accidentally and (I assume) she suffocated.

[close]

"Paul Reid".

Spoiler alert

PAUL REID

[close]

[Gulftastic]

In the modetn version one of the guards is played by a New Zealand actor which I love because he calls Bea 'Smuth' with his thick Kiwi accent.

[xxxx xxx x xxx]

Edit - ignore, I am rubbish at posting images using iPhone.  It was supposed to be an incredibly witty comparison between Dennis Cruickshank and Tim Gane from Stereolab.

[George White]

Anyone ever seen the official US remake Dangerous Women? It looks godawful, and was only ever shown on a few stations in the US (KCOP in LA and WWOR in NY)
I mentioned it earlier. Only shown on Central. Rather wonderfully, before cancellation, they retooled it, by having all the women leave prison and follow their lives afterwards.

Weirdly, Fox did a sitcom called Women in Prison, which seems to be basically Prisoner but done like Soap.

, down to the fact actress Antoinette Byron was in 3 eps in 1982 before moving to the US and playing a Cockney hooker, essentially Chrissie Latham.

[DrGreggles]

Dangerous Women was shite.
A group of women break out of prison and... start running a hotel!

[George White]

I've been trying to find the doomed 1980 pilot Willow B- Women in Prison (which weirdly has an Aussie cast member, Carry On Camping's Trisha Noble, formerly a Benny HILL duet partner). If only because the wonderful Susan Tyrrell seems to be playing Franky Doyle.

[Rev+]

Alright Block H Heads, I've got a question about a character.

There was one inmate who was there for only a few episodes but was absolutely NUTS.  She burned bright but ended up having a complete breakdown about all of the bad shit she'd been up to.  Could have been the one who put ground glass into everyone's shampoo, but I conflate actions with this lot.

[DrGreggles]

Alright Block H Heads, I've got a question about a character.

There was one inmate who was there for only a few episodes but was absolutely NUTS.  She burned bright but ended up having a complete breakdown about all of the bad shit she'd been up to.  Could have been the one who put ground glass into everyone's shampoo, but I conflate actions with this lot.

Was it

Spoiler alert

Bev Baker?
She was considered a bit too psychotic, so the network forced the show to kill her off.

[close]

[George White]

Anyone ever seen the official US remake Dangerous Women? It looks godawful, and was only ever shown on a few stations in the US (KCOP in LA and WWOR in NY)
I mentioned it earlier. Only shown on Central. Rather wonderfully, before cancellation, they retooled it, by having all the women leave prison and follow their lives afterwards.

Weirdly, Fox did a sitcom called Women in Prison, which seems to be basically Prisoner but done like Soap.

, down to the fact actress Antoinette Byron was in 3 eps in 1982 before moving to the US and playing a Cockney hooker, essentially Chrissie Latham.

just read an interview with CCH Pounder and she confirms: 'I would say that we were an attempt, a very, very feeble attempt, at Prisoner: Cell Block H. I always used to say, 'We tried to do Cell Block H, but in fact we were really Eight Is Enough.'

[DrGreggles]

From another thread, but clips of Priz Legends appearing elsewhere are always welcome.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Watching Prisoner, Neighbours, (Home & Away to a lesser extent) and Australian films it was fun to see the same people popping up all the time. Helen Daniels was in everything, Madge popping up in Prisoner, Harold popping up in Prisoner, I think there was even someone in Prisoner who played more than one character, popping up early on in a minor role then being cast as a bigger character later in the series.

Looking at that earlier post... it looks like Central TV ripped through it at 3 episodes a week, YTV showed it once a week if you were lucky, in reality we often only got 2 or 3 episodes a month with all the times it was cancelled because a gnat farted.  Because overnight programming hadn't started yet, when YTV closed for the night I was sometimes able to get Central and I got to see the one where the prison had a massive fire years before YTV showed it.

[xxxx xxx x xxx]

YTV showed it once a week if you were lucky, in reality we often only got 2 or 3 episodes a month with all the times it was cancelled because a gnat farted.

Yes, it was usually taken off for the snooker (a gnat farting would have been more understandable) - it got so annoying at one point that I wrote to YTV asking them what they were playing at (such innocent times).  Didn't get a reply.

[DrGreggles]

Watching Prisoner, Neighbours, (Home & Away to a lesser extent) and Australian films it was fun to see the same people popping up all the time. Helen Daniels* was in everything, Madge** popping up in Prisoner, Harold*** popping up in Prisoner, I think there was even someone in Prisoner who played more than one character, popping up early on in a minor role then being cast as a bigger character later in the series****.

*Doreen's mum
**twice - Mum's daughter and Reb's mum
***Ted Douglas from The Department
****LOADS - Paul Robinson appeared twice, Alf Stewart thrice

[George White]

There was at least one Irishman in Priz - Conor McDermottroe, who played the roles of Jay, Billy Vinton, and Teddy Penn. He was in Intermission, Pure Mule, and down under, QUIGLEY Down Under, Anzacs, the Henderson Kids, Shakin' Professionals the Special Squad and IRA Ozploiter Run Chrissy Run (starring Plain Jane Superbrain).He also directed that film Halal Daddy with Colm Meaney, that came and went.
He's the brother of Maria McDermottroe (Mrs. Gilhooley from Pat Shortt's Killinaskully and Molly Ivors in John Huston's the Dead, also the voice of Mammy in that weird necrophiliac 'mum's roast lamb' Tesco ad)

[grainger]

Alf Stewart was the show's main villain towards the end, wasn't he? Due to an administrative error (or something) he became head of the prison. He wore sunglasses all the time and I remember a scene where he just arbitrarily punched someone in the stomach.

[jobotic]

Lovely. Can just picture that

Oof! Take that ya flaming galah

[DrGreggles]

Alf Stewart was the show's main villain towards the end, wasn't he? Due to an administrative error (or something) he became head of the prison. He wore sunglasses all the time and I remember a scene where he just arbitrarily punched someone in the stomach.

Ernest Craven!

He wore shades so no one would realise he'd been in it twice before.

[jobotic]

Here's his best of!

Haven't watched it all so not seen the gut punch. Love the knife fight in front of the Queen's portrait.


https://youtu.be/YwZU6gkVS6k?si=ek3_klebzN-MfOIT

[Gulftastic]

Didn't half the cast show up in Sons and Daughters, too?

I think at that time there was only a small amount of actors in Oz or something

[George White]

Didn't half the cast show up in Sons and Daughters, too?

I think at that time there was only a small amount of actors in Oz or something

Loads appear in Ozploitation films of the era too. Just been watching the Jason Richards episodes and aside from the mighty Bill Hunter as 'George Lucas', Vera's boyfriend (thus someone who's been in Finding Nemo AND PCBH), Briony Behets (previously referred here as Shakin' Michele Dotrice), ,who Iknow from 1979 horror Long Weekend, plays Susan Rice, who believes that unconvincing pop star Jason Richards is her husband's lover, and not her actual husband himself, and as 'Melba Drummond' in the notorious Murder, She Wrote down under, 'Southern Double Cross', where Universal's western set is covered with Fosters tinnies to simulate the Queensland backwater of Kookaburra Downs.
Tony Martin's skewering is something.

Kerry Armstrong, aka Lynn was also in MSW as  a Soviet ballerina (she also played Prince Michael's arranged bride Elena, Duchess of Brana).