Was 'Bad Girls' or 'Prisoner Cell Block H' the better show?

Prisoner Cell Block H.

They managed to keep it going for two hours a week, for seven years, and with the exception of the mercifully short Nora Flynn era, it was almost always gripping. In fact, it was well written enough that storylines that were first used by Prisoner have been almost endlessly recycled by Oz, Wentworth, Bad Girls, and pretty much all prison-set drama series.

Aside from that, it should get credit for casting actresses that wouldn't ordinarily have been cast in lead roles, as well as dealing with quite strong subjects that affected women and weren't shown on TV at the time - incest, rape, domestic violence, etc. It also featured sympathetic lesbian characters literally decades before non-weird gay characters were commonplace. For the most part, it was also well acted.

While every criticism of its production values is true, they worked with the budget they had available and produced a show which transcended its limitations and owns its well deserved place in popular culture.

Loved Prisoner Cell Block H when I was a kid.

Wentworth is a really, really great show (link about Wentworth is below if anyone is interested in chatting it up)

Growing up, I stuck with PCBH for as long as it aired in my area. It was up to about the time Karen and Lynn left.

The mortality rate in that place was pretty high. I remember the drug dealing guard (Ann Yates) who was arrested and kept there in the prison she worked in. Had a hard time with the prisoners, fought Bea and ended up dying in the industrial dryer she got stuck in when she tried to hide there.

Doyle would murder Wade without compunction and probably without a drop of sweat, but the wholesome tears of lesbians across Albion would resurrect Wade from the dead and she would rise again like King Arthur to righteously avenge herself and all other British women, bringing penal equality at last.

Wow, I loved Bad Girks season 1. Never thought I'd hear it mentioned here. I just started Wentworth. OITNB feels cheap in comparison.

Bad Girls was the greatest!

I'm rewatching Bad Girls S4 and I can't believe how compelling the Yvonne vs. Fenner storyline became. Both Linda Henry and Jack Ellis embody their roles and their fight becomes almost biblical.

I don't think I've seen another TV show where such an evil, twisted man meets his match in a woman who is every bit as antagonistic as he is, and with no hint of a Hetero romance or sexual overtone. Just enmity. It's so refreshing and there should be more character set-ups like this on TV now. Ahead of its time.

Tenko

PCBH had it all beat. It had great stories (though not consistently some were boring) but it was basically a soap opera set in a prison.

It had a few eras.

The first 16 episodes were noticeably different as they were wrote and mostly shot before the show was a continuing series. It was originally suppose to have ended with Franky getting killed. When it was announced it would be a regular show, the actresses playing Mum, Marilyn and Franky bowed out.

From that time till the about episode 90 it was very mixed as writers were getting their feel experimenting with different ways. Then entered Betty Bobbitt as Judy, (the original choice for Bea, but it was decided she couldn't play Bea tough enough) and it totally changed the dynamic. After Judy got paroled around 250, she went to run a halfway house, and the show would've died because it became a "cause of the week" show, if not for the new evil warder Joan Ferguson.

It basically became the "Joan Show" after that, but it was very entertaining anyway.

Until this thread, I never heard of 'Bad Girls' .........is it available for streaming or DVD ?? I'll have to look it up on Wikipedia ............ when I check Amazon, there is some shit show called Bad Girls Of Something Or Other'

Wikipedia says only season one of Bad Girls is available on US DVD, but I have the region 1 player from when I watched the epic single season of 'Return To Eden', so maybe I'll buy the UK eight season boxed set.

R11 Dynasty with crocodiles!

I vote for 'Within These Walls'. Fab British drama set in a women's prison. Ran for 4 seasons in the 70s iirc.

Isn't Joan Ferguson the warden in Wentworth? She's great.

I was obsessed with Linda Henry in BG, R7. Such a tough nut, and her chemistry with everyone on that show was peak. She looks and sounds like a natural fit for prison.

Yvonne's survival instinct and guts inspire me...and she does it all in great puppy! She doesn't really have a counterpart in Wentworth as far as I can tell.

Henry is in Eastenders now, but I don't like her character as much in that.

Ugh...'lippy' not 'puppy' lmao

Sorry, R13! Forgot to include 'Within...' in my poll (tbh I've not seen it, but intend to).

Prisoner was more gratuitously violent. It's an eye opener when you watch the uncut episodes how much they cut from TV screenings. Eve Wilder was one of the better evil characters of the last year or so.

And in the infamous 600th episode they hang the character of Eve for being a "lagger" at 22:40.

Everyone cheers for "Prisoner Cell Block H", even now they are a bit on in years.

The acting in Bad Girls was much better, as were the lesbian story lines. Prisoner had some shite actresses (see Bea’s daughter). More importantly, Bad Girls had the epic Helen and Nikki lesbian love story (copied shamelessly by Wentworth). Mandana Jones (Nikki Wade) was an amazing actress, unfortunately she hasn’t done anything noteworthy since. Simone Lahbib (Helen Stewart) went on to do Wire In The Blood, among other things.

Some trivia: actress Lynda Stoner (who played Eve Wilder) was married to the original Star Wars actor Peter Sumner... Lynda was also the star of another 70s Australian crime show "Cop Shop", which was kind of the sister show to Prisoner and was seen as the more respectable and less trashy version of the two. Back in the 70s no one had any idea Prisoner would have any kind of lasting impact while the slightly more upmarket sister show has been completely forgotten.

Bad Girls by far. It was quality production, enough reality to be believeable. Pretty great Lesbian plot lines. I agree with the above poster that BG really made OITNB look like a cheap imitation, in fact I avoided OITNB for the first 2 seasons. BG had more than 3 principles - cast members were all strong.

I discovered BG as I traveled through Europe and could purchase the DVD’s to play on my Laptop. There were a couple of genuinely terrifying scenes, worse than OITNB - then again the plots were better.

R20 is that Harold Bishop from Neighbours!?

Was PCBH shown in the US? My neighbour who babysat in the eighties chained smoked her way through that show. It is a fond memory of mine. Coronation Street, PCBH, and Days of Our Lives.

Bless her heart. Bitch gave me asthma. Rest In Peace, Eva.

Everyone wants to be Bea.

I really liked the Ann Reynolds as Governor of Wentworth era of Prisoner. Following in the footsteps of the stern Erica. Behind her buttoned up facade, Ann is something of a free spirit who liked to let her hair down (we later find out her boyfriend is a bikie)!

Could the Bad Girls UK crowd make a disco number rip like the Cell Block H's?

There was a musical in the UK in the mid 90s starring Lily Savage and Miss Ferguson, but there aren't any clips of it online.

It still runs in the UK on occasion, R28. It’s at the Unity Liverpool next month.

I remember threads about Bad Girls on DL.

R30 I wonder if that counts as a peripheral, honorary Dark Lesbians.

I picked the last option because I thought it said "I have NEVER seen OITNB".

[quote] Prisoner had some shite actresses (see Bea’s daughter)

Bea's daughter "Debbie" was best spoken of and never heard. Catalyst for some good drama though, here Bea visits Debbie's Grave and brings along a present for her vile ex-husband.

Another UK drama that had a feel similar to the original PCBH was the sequel to "Widows I" and "Widows II", titled "She's Out".

La Plante's Widows even had an Prisoner style "He used to bring me roses..." theme song at 50m30s.

Bea's daughter was played by Val Lehman's daughter.

Muriel's Mom (Jeanie Drynan) once appeared on Prisoner, as Karen's friend and solicitor Angela.

Nola McKenzie was the most evil and scary out of all the Prisoner inmates. The actress who plays her Carol Skinner usually excelled at playing sweet, simple and quirky women on screen, but could also play bad really well. Her Nola is terrifying. A former abattoir worker and death row escapee who is also intelligent and cunning, as well as sadistic and amoral.

I watched a few episodes of Orange Is The New Black a while back and thought it was pretty good. I think because I've seen so many reality US based prison shows the impact might have been lessened for me slightly.

PCBH is a classic that can't be beat.

Free Frankie Doyle!!

There has been a big budget remake of 'Bad Girls' on the horizon for several years from both HBO and NBC making them for US audiences, with some big names attached. Pilots were filmed but nothing has materialized from them so far.

There was at least one direct US remake of 'Prisoner Cell Block H' for US TV in 1980 which did have a pretty great cast including Sally Kirkland, Carol Lynley and Susan Tyrrell called 'Willow B: Women in Prison'...

An 80s sitcom called 'Woman in Prison' seemed to take a few cues from PCBH as well.

There actually was a full American version of 'Prisoner: Cell Block H' called 'Dangerous Woman'. Filmed in 1991 and credited to the original PCBH creator Weg Watson. It actually captures the soapy, melodramatic feel of the original show quite well. The main character Holly is obviously based on Lynn and the babysitter kidnapper storyline.

Weird. 'Dangerous Women' starts out exactly like Prisoner but then quickly diverges to become something more like Silk Stalkings, but with Prisoner characters and even the sound effects. 'Rita' (Bea Smith) is terrible, 'Cissie' (Mum Brooks) is just okay. No Vinegar Tits!!!! I can see why they went upmarket but the squalid and unwholesome side of Prisoner is sorely missed.

Prisoner: German version.

Turkish:

R38 yes Nola had no redeeming features! Frightening. Bea was very good in the storyline where she got amnesia, the actress said she tried to act Bea how she would have been 10 years previously. No swagger, no bravado, no cunning. Until she recovered her memory!

Felt so sorry for Vera, especially when she drank too much or when she exited the show alone, still sad.

Didn't care for Jim Fletcher but he grew on me overtime.

Loved Marilyn and Pixie. Until she was brutally raped. That was a hard storyline.

Love the theme too, I was a little kid in the early 90s but mum let me stay up with her to watch this and Golden Girls (repeats in the UK) hehe

Bea gets her memory back!

The Great Fire. Still one of the best episodes ever.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

R38 When Carol Skinner is acting she works as a secretary to my parent's chiropractor. in the late 1990s. She also gave massages and provided very entertaining conversations. I would like to stress legitimate massage not any of that hanky panky stuff. I always remember Carol from the Phil Noyce film Heat Wave with Judy Davis where she played an activities against building developers who goes missing.

My favourite character from Prisoner Cell Block H was Vera 'Vinegar Tits' Bennet played by Fiona Spence. In real life Fiona Spence is a lesbian and it was very sad to read a few years ago that her long term partner had passed away. I've attached an obituary of her partner published in The Sydney Morning Herald.

R50 Thanks for posting. Very sad news. Loved her in both Prisoner and The Young Doctors.

Was there ever any beefcake shown on these shows?

R53 some, but you'll need to remember there is a 1970s aesthetic in place. There is some 70s hunkiness, but no buff bods or twinks. But watch the episode of Dangerous Woman posted at R43, there is an array of hot looking 90s guys on that show.

Like Prisoner CBH, Dangerous Women seemed to develop a massively fevered cult audience in its day. There were network protests when it was cancelled.

For my money, it’s Broads Behind Bars all the way!

There were protests around the UK when Prisoner aired its last episode and angry lesbians picketed the stations.

I saw the Lily Savage, Prisoner musical in Brighton back in the 90s. It was a hoot. Joan Fergason was in it and a Nolan sister. If I remember correctly Lily was sentenced to Wentworth after some crime as a convict.

I have vague memories of H, recalling that in college I really loved the show when I caught it and was very upset when the cable channel stopped showing it. I didn't catch every single episode, but maybe someone can help me here about some specifics. I thought I read once where Bea died in a fire, yet in the footage above, she's shown advocating for more episodes, or replays anyway. How exactly did the show end? Also, why did Vera "Vinegar Tits" leave the show?

Vera is romanced by a crooked prison guard Terry Harrison and starts to lose a few of her harder edges towards her final time as a Prison officer. She becomes involved in some of his mob dealings and we see that during her home life she has become more independent and willing to take some risks. One Terry dies Vera resigns from her position and applies to be the governor of Barnhurst jail. Vera is then replaced by the much worse Joan Ferguson.

Though Bea was by far the shows most popular character she is transferred without warning to Barnhust, where she dies in a fire and riot (off camera) and is mentioned in passing only a few times after.

The series final episode sees Ferguson falling victim to an elaborate double-cross.

Thanks, R60!

Notice in that other cheaply made Reg Watson soap opera "Sons and Daughters" he recycles the same music from the Prisoner finale, where Patricia "Pat the rat" (aka Pamela) confronts her doppelganger Allison Carr. The two shows were only shown weeks apart.

Sons and Daughters regularly recycled Prisoner music.

Frankie was a great character and it's a shame Cellblock H killed her off early. Probably the first real and honest portrayal of a lesbian character on a tv show. And Vinegar tits! Every single episode is up on youtube btw.

R65 Frankie was killed off because Carol Burns who played her didn't want to stay on the show. Frankie was incredibly popular with viewers, so had Carol Burns wanted to stay I have no doubt Frankie would not have been killed off.

1st episode with producer commentary.

R59 the actress who played Vera was exhausted after 224 episodes and needed a break. She said in one of the Dvd commentaries that nowadays it's easier to tame a break and return but back then it meant having to quit.

Vera leaves on a sad note, alone. The actress says she doubts Vera would ever try romance again given how badly it had gone for her.

Bea had a very swift exit in ep400 when she's transferred to Barnhurst (where Vera is govenor). Joan organises it as Bea keeps causing trouble and mucking up her schemes. I can't imagine Val Lehman like the exit very much as it was so low key. I don't think the camera even finished on her in thst episode - it was Lizzie in tears at Bea going.

For some senseless reason they killed her off a while later off-screen.

Wentworth is better than any of these.

You may be interested in the first couple of posts on this page, they're titbits from the actors'/directors' commentary on the DVDs.

There's a good interview with Ann Phelan here.

Preferred BAD GIRLS. I’m rewatching the first couple of seasons at the moment.

How great is Lara Cazalet, the actress who played Zandra? Compelling to watch. When she debates having her abortion then tears off to confront her spineless ex, I am glued to the screen every time. Her arc was so heartbreaking. Seems like she doesn’t really act anymore, which is a shame.

Denny Blood is the best, all hail Denny. I love that she was unapologetically a messy fucked-up lesbian icon from the start, and that she got so much unforced character growth. Hearing her chew people out for annoying her is always a joy. I find the relationship Denny slowly develops with Yvonne a real delight, as well - the fact that a grubby little butch baby could find solace in a bond with a sharply-dressed straight matriarch is a very cool dynamic. Plus Alicya Eyo is really cute, and apparently a lesbian in real life too. I didn’t know until recently that she did a stint in Emmerdale; apparently her character died in a helicopter crash stunt or something stupid like that.

Shell on the other hand is the perfect panto villain who just never gets better and lives to do baaaaaaad. I love to hate her. She’s every ruthless stone-cold bitch you’ve ever met, and then some. I bet Debra Stephenson had such a laugh playing her. In the episode I just finished, she threatens to kill Rachel’s baby by scratching up a photo of it with a biro, and it looks so nasty.

What was it with Nikki and befriending much older women? Don’t get me wrong, I actually liked it as a characterisation choice, but it was never explained in-plot. Outside of prison Nikki had younger girlfriends and ran a club plus she gladly estranged herself from her posh old-fashioned family due to homophobia, but on the inside she hung out mostly with sexagenarians like Babs & Monica or grizzled middle-aged sorts like Yvonne. Maybe she was seeking a replacement mother figure of sorts. The Helen & Nikki romance is amazingly subtle and plays in the background of the first two seasons, which I really like because it draws out the tension and builds the characters separately (this is where OITNB fucked up with Piper & Vause imo - they took over the show, and their relationship was too foregrounded).

I actually like Bodybag and some of the lesser screws much more this time around. When you know how mad and sadistic Fenner gets later on, the early wardens seem like harmless puppies. I imagine real guards in womens’ prisons aren’t that lenient.

Forgot how many EastEnders alum got their start in this; not just the indomitable Linda Henry, but also Luisa Bradshaw-White and Kellie Bright (though sadly the latter didn’t arrive until season four). Sid Owen, aka RICKAAYYYY, also shows up in a few BG episodes as a clueless hunky guard.

The way BG wrote Yvonne’s botched ending was so fucking stupid. She was the best character, the Top Dog, and the lynchpin of the last seasons, but then the writers decided that wasn’t worth bothering with. Still bitter about it tbh.

Yvonne's exit was cruel and grisly

If Yvonne’s end had to be that way, then she should have at least been the one to fatally take out Fenner, and maybe a few deserving prisoners I.e. Snowball & Shell. Her last episode was so bathetic and ignoble, not to mention out of character.

Honestly, though I’m a huge lifelong fan of BG, one thing the show fell down after the tightly-plotted Series 1 is endings. Characters that weren’t originals got written out in the most insipid and pointless ways all the time, and even a few of the O.Gs didn’t escape - I’m thinking not ony of Yvonne, but Crystal’s dishwater-dull happy ending with her fella, Denny’s boring video-chat and love of painting, Monica’s tearful hanky-wave goodbye a la Angela Lansbury. All so gawky and silly for an otherwise violent and grotty show.

If you ignore the age difference and the context of the relationship, Denny & Shell were really hot together.

Love how they would make out in front of bible-bashing Crystal to shut her up about Hell & damnation.

One of you must have written the ‘All Banged Up’ number from the Bad Girls musical.