Prisoner: Cell Block H Classic Or Dud?

Pat the Rat is still alive and (not so) well, I think she does menopause commercials or something.

and wasn't the big fat lesbian really an american?!?

It was just called "Prisoner" here. I guess it was renamed in the UK to avoid confusion with "The Prisoner"?

Also Taking Sides: Vinegar Tits Vs The Freak.

The Freak – black gloves before a bashing.
I still haven't seen the final few episodes :(

They seemed a bit rushed as in they were told the show was ending so quickly add in a final story that didn't really have time to develop. But the freak finally got her comeuppance by rita and the authorities. Hurrah!

Damn ive seen way too much aussie tv.

Harold was 'The Man From The Department'

Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak, Freak....

Id like to watch it all again. I wish Channel 5 would show it .

"CONGRATULATIONS YOU DID IT!

This is for all you fans who took the time to contact various DVD
companies and begged them to release the whole series of Prisoner: Cell Block-H on DVD.

Don't spend another penny of your hard earned cash on pirated editions of uncertain quality, which are often not worth viewing.

I CAN AT LAST ANNOUNCE A GENUINE COMPANY WANTS TO RELEASE THE ENTIRE SERIES OF PRISONER: CELL BLOCK-H ON DVD.

They intend doing this in a sequential manner 16 episodes at a time, at a
very reasonable cost (approximately half the price of the previous sets).
In order to keep the cost down there would be no booklet or bonus material included - Just every episode in original condition. These releases would take place once a month, or once a fortnight, depending on what you say is most desirable.
The company is most concerned about keeping costs down, for everyone, and is prepared to offer a preferential special deal for TOP DOG CLUB MEMBERS! A member who wishes to purchase these DVD's on a regular basis would need to log onto to a special website where they enter their credit card details to become a subscriber. Credit Card details will be kept on a secure drive. There may be the opportunity to purchase individual volumes, if any are left after subscribers get theirs, but as a subscriber you would receive a 10% discount off the normal retail price of individual volumes. Once you become a subscriber, the company would then arrange for the sets to be sent direct to you every month or every fortnight (which ever choice proves to be the most popular). It is anticipated that after the first six to ten volumes are released the company would only press up enough copies for subscribers.

Exclusively for TOP DOG CLUB MEMBERS, each and every DVD slick will be signed by me. Shipping with the initial volume, and again - EXCLUSIVELY TO TOP DOG CLUB MEMBERS - will be an autographed photo of me as 'Bea Smith'.

Format will be PAL.

Prices (all in Australian dollars) are:
Each 16 episode volume - $45.00
Individual volumes (if available) - $50.00
Packing and postage: Australia: Normal post - $3.95, Express post - $7.50; New Zealand: Airmail -$8.95, UPS - $39.50; Europe: Airmail - $15.50, UPS - $44.95

You do not need to decide on how you want your DVD's delivered yet, just
whether you want to see Prisoner: Cell Block-H released on DVD. However, you DO need to move fast, and put you money where your mouth is. The company cannot embark on such a project unless they are sure there is a genuine interest. It's NOW or NEVER folks and if you're not a subscriber
you may never see these DVD's.

If enough people join the TOP DOG CLUB now, they just might get the first
editions out for Christmas! - So spread the word!

JOIN THE TOP DOG CLUB NOW at: http://www.val-lehman.com/bulletin.html"

Classic, by the way. Probably because it was the first thing on TV after the pubs had shut.

So incredibly classic. I wondered for a minute if I'd started this thread. I know I meant to at some point. Best acting=Erica Davidson.

The stage show was pretty dud, though.

1. Karen Travers, the show’s first posh heroine, inside for murdering her abusive, adulterous husband, tries to help fellow inmate Franky Doyle, a butch hyper-aggressive lesbian biker given to bouts of violent furniture-throwing rage, by teaching her to read. However, Franky falls in love with Karen, who promptly rebuffs her advances and an enraged Franky tries to throw herself off the roof. Thereafter, Franky escapes with her “bitch”, teddy-clutching chubby loser Doreen Anderson, and they are on the run for several weeks, at one point disguising themselves as nuns. But eventually the police catch up with the pair, and poor Franky finds herself on the way to the great detention centre in the sky. Sob, sob...

2. Anne Yates, a hated ex-screw, is brought inside on a drugs charge and top dog Bea Smith, whose back story involves the heroin-related death of her teenage daughter, is determined to get her. However, Anne stabs Bea with a knife stolen from the dining room and then goes missing. Her body is found in one of the laundry tumble-dryers. She accidentally locked herself in the dryer and suffocated!

3. A pair of amateurish guerrillas break into Wentworth to free their South American terrorist leader Janet Dominguez, who has a nice line in exotic headscarves. During this rescue attempt, the prison governor Erica "Lady Penelope" Davidson gets shot. Sawdust everywhere!

4. Nutty Nam vet Geoff Butler has a score to settle with the firm but fair token male Deputy Governor Jim Fletcher and makes up a deadly parcel bomb to finish him off. However, it is actually Jim’s estranged wife who picks up the parcel and takes it to the hotel where Jim is staying whilst bringing their sprogs to see their dad, and they cop it instead. This storyline was later repeated with the demise of Colleen Powell’s family – is being related to the deputy governor of a women’s prison really that risky in Australia? To lose one family in a car bomb is unfortunate, to lose two seems like carelessness!

5. Bea and new regular character Judy Bryant - a roly-poly token Yank lesbian with a pacemaker-powered heart of gold - organise a rooftop protest after Judy’s girlfriend, scheming strumpet Sharon Gilmour, is found dead after being pushed down the solitary staircase by Scottish screw Jock Stewart. Jock gets away with it and walks away scot free due to lack of evidence. As well as setting the long-running Judy Bryant-Jock Stewart vendetta storyline in motion, this mini-riot is full of various excellent moments – nasty officer Vera “Vinegar Tits” Bennett being stripped of her uniform and forced to admit that the prisoners are human beings and not “animals”, nice officer Meg Jackson held hostage at fork-point and antagonistic Noeline Burke’s equally surly daughter Leanne falling off the roof - splat!

6. To cope with the strain of it all, head screw Vera “Vinegar Tits” Bennett takes to the bottle and is soon a fully-fledged alcoholic. She comes to work drunk on duty and victimises several of the women. After she has carelessly dropped her keys, Bea decides to teach her a lesson and with the help of some of the others, ambushes her in the staff room and forces her to down the governor’s sherry, leaving her completely sozzled.

7. Bea, Lizzie and Doreen are trapped in an underground tunnel when a mass breakout - staged during a performance of the prisoners' annual panto - goes seriously awry. Not only does the tunnel collapse, but the women are buried alive by emotionally disturbed prisoner Anne Griffin (a.k.a. Pat The Rat from Sons And Daughters), who dumps a pile of rocks onto the manhole cover. The panto in question is Cinderella – look at all those ugly sisters!

8. The arrival of Evelyn Randall, a herbalist inside for poisoning and with a manner curiously reminiscent of Joyce Grenfell’s schoolmarm act, coincides with Wentworth bring gripped by a mysterious illness and placed in quarantine.

9. Margo Gaffney, who runs the book in the prison, is released and sets up home with her criminal boyfriend. But going straight is tough, and soon Margo lets herself be persuaded to drive the getaway car for a robbery that her boyfriend is planning with a pal. The raid is a total disaster, and Margo and her two accomplices seek refuge in a haberdashery store and hold two old dears hostage in a siege situation with the cops surrounding the building. One of the old bags is delighted that her shop is getting so much publicity with the siege all over the TV news and happily makes cups of tea for everyone. But Margo’s two pals are losing it and getting trigger-happy, and decide to shoot their way out….

10. After being briefly transferred to Barnhurst - Wentworth's sister prison out in the sticks - the van bringing Bea back to Wentworth crashes and she loses her memory. Recaptured, everyone thinks she's faking but Bea genuinely has no memory of ever being in prison and is appalled when told of her past – that her beloved daughter died from a heroin overdose and that she murdered her husband.

11. A militant student arrives inside having organised a demo outside the prison and to secure her release, her followers kidnap Erica Davidson, take her to an old beach house, and horror of horrors, make her change into an old boiler suit.

12. Bea is found to be seriously ill and needs a kidney transplant. While she is whisked off to hospital for the operation, gangster’s moll Sandy Edwards takes over as top dog only to be manipulated by the dope-peddling hardened con Marie Winter, recently transferred from Barnhurst, into starting a massive riot when the women are increasingly riled about the oppressive new regime being enforced by the officers. Armed with a forged set of keys and Molotov cocktails, the women soon have control of the prison and a siege situation soon begins in earnest. Handsome male officer Steve Faulkner, a new addition to the staff, is trapped in the building when the riot takes place. He is soon taken hostage and forced to strip down to his Y-fronts in an eye-popping scene.

13. Young Susie Driscoll is brought inside after escaping from all the juvenile institutions she’s been placed in. She is determined to break out, and comes up with a Black Adder-esque Cunning Plan that involves her climbing through the air ventilation ducts to get out. However, Susie gets trapped in the shaft, sending the temperature inside soaring. Large ladies are soon melting all over the place.

14. Kate Peterson, a former doctor who has murdered her lover, is hated by the other prisoners for being a "lagger" i.e. an informer. A few attempts are made on her life – one by Sandy Edwards, who ends up killed by the crushing mechanism of a garbage truck while everyone thinks she’s escaped. Kate survives but slowly goes insane and is carted off to a hospital after trying to strangle Judy. An excellent performance from the actress involved as Kate finally “looses it” in solitary.

15. Lizzie makes some home-brew and hides the hooch in all the fire extinguishers. Then, there is a fire in one of the cells...

16. Nice warder Meg Morris is brought to Wentworth as a prisoner after being charged with contempt of court. Amazingly, she isn’t lynched within five minutes…

17. Bea has a score to settle with new evil warder Joan "The Freak" Ferguson, and has a fire started elsewhere in the prison as a diversion while she plans to bash her. As Bea and Ferguson slug it out on the top floor, the fire gets out of control and burns through the riot alarm circuit, locking all the security gates in the prison and leaving several inmates and officers trapped inside…

18. The Freak tries to get Bea committed to an asylum with the help of the equally evil Nola McKenzie and a fake medium called Zara Moonbeam. The plan involves voices from beyond the grave, ouija board sessions and a nasty homemade gun…

19. A woman arrives inside for killing her husband after he caused an accident that left her confined to a wheelchair. The Freak believes that her disability is all in her mind, and adopts an unusual method of therapy – donning her black gloves to carry out an intimate body search. Before you can say “Sapphist sexual harassment”, sure enough the woman is soon back on her feet.

20. Meg thinks she has seen a new inmate before and she's right. Laura Gardiner is a shy, retiring librarian by day and slatternly streetwalker Brandy Carter by night. She arrives inside for soliciting, antagonises everyone with her surly attitude and deliberately sabotages prison equipment in order to be "serviced" by a visiting repairman and receive booze and other luxuries. However, it isn't just a case of a dull, frumpy woman living an exciting double life, Laura/Brandy has multiple personality disorder....

21. Tart with a heart Helen Smart arranges to have her teenage sister kidnapped to save her from the clutches of a dangerous religious cult. This storyline is worth watching solely for the scene when Helen and her sister meet on the street and have a Mrs. Merton-style “heated debate” on cults, with passing bystanders chipping with their opinions!

22. Dotty little old lady Minnie Donovan decked out in tweedy cardigans and calling everyone “dear” arrives inside for running a shoplifting racket and incredibly replacing the recently departed Bea Smith as top dog and custodian of the laundry steam press - the ultimate symbol of prison power - with the help of Cass Parker, a country bumpkin with a murderous bad temper (a character very similar to Lennie from “Of Mice And Men”), managing to keep the mean and moody Freak and equally mean vice queen Sonia Stevens in their places.

23. A new male officer, David Bridges, arrives at Wentworth and proves to be a big hit with the women, regaling them with his theories about penal reform and how they shouldn’t be locked up in prison. Coincidentally, some of the inmates vanish without trace and it is assumed that they have escaped via some unknown route. Some of the women cotton on is David is willing to help him be “free” and are only too happy to co-operate with him. However, the shocking twist is that David is a psychotic serial killer who is systemically murdering the prisoners and hiding the corpses all over the prison grounds! It all builds to a gruesome climax when old Lizzie, hoping to be released and go to live with her long-lost son, has a coronary after discovering some of the bodies littering the premises, and David decides to set the old girl free, regardless of the Parole Board’s verdict….

24. A blind woman is inducted into the prison (played by the actress who now plays Kath in Kath & Kim) just as accidents start to happen to Sonia Stevens, who ran a prostitution/protection racket on the outside. It turns out that the woman is a former prostitute who was blinded after being bashed by Sonia’s accomplice, and now she wants revenge. It all ends up with a confrontation in the prison library, where a desperate Sonia tries to fend off her attacker with, wait for it, a feather duster….

25. A Jewish Holocaust survivor, Hannah, arrives inside and is targeted by a neo-Nazi extremist who poses as a visitor in order to kill her. Soon Hannah is running for her life along the prison corridors screaming “Nazi! Nazi!” in broken English. Somehow it got sorted out. Another very tasteful storyline.

26. Jonathan Edmonds, a psychologist whose field is hypnosis is allowed to conduct research in the prison but unfortunately he’s a fairly twisted chap who does a Paul McKenna on Cass Parker, "programming" her into trying to kill her best friend Bobbie Mitchell (in reference to The Manchurian Candidate)just for a laugh. Nice.

27. New Top Dog Myra Desmond is anxious to help her drug-addled daughter on the outside and decides to escape during a charity fete, casually walking out of the prison gates wearing a dress and tres chic lime green lampshade hat fashioned from a designer cast-off belonging to incarcerated fashion model Leigh Templar (played by the actress who later appeared as the blue bald woman in Farscape).

28. Evil Marie Winter blackmails the Freak into arranging a pretty spectacular breakout. An unfeasibly athletic Marie climbs over the barbed wire fence, runs at top speed through the prison grounds and is picked up by a low-flying helicopter, giving hope to all fat, chain-smoking, big-bottomed 40+ women everywhere.

29. Wentworth gets its own Hannibal Lector when serial murderess Bev “The Beast” Baker arrives inside for dismembering some poor chap and feeding his head to the rats in her pantry. Surprisingly, a genuinely chilling character and a suspenseful storyline as Bev decides to continue her antics on the other inmates.

30. A young girl, Angela Adams, nicknamed Angel, arrives inside and her timid nature makes all the women take her under their wing. However, Angel is a devious psychopath who turns homicidally inclined when she doesn’t get her own way, She arranges for Meg Morris to be raped by a masked burglar when she becomes jealous of her friendship with a male social worker she fancies and it later turns out that she murdered her parents when she was 12 by soaking her dolls’ clothes with petrol and burning down the family home with them in it. The storyline is a very funny panto rerun of plot themes from The Omen and The Bad Seed.

31. Governor Ann Reynolds receives poison-pen letters and it all ends up with her and Meg being kidnapped, tied up and left to rot in a deserted warehouse filled with lethal trip-wires and explosives. Dreadful acting from the actress playing Meg here, but nice self-referential humour when Ann unties her with a broken bottle: “Splinters! Bloody splinters!”

32. The Freak has a rival when a vicious, homophobic, murderous male counterpart, Len Murphy, arrives as a new officer. They instantly clash and their mutual hatred soon turns into a bent screw’s turf war as each seek to gain control over everything that happens at Wentworth. The women seek to exploit their antagonism and cheer on whilst locked in their cells, when Joan and Len’s night shift together ends up in a brawl and the two officers of the crown proceed to beat the crap out of each other on government property.

33. Male prisoners arrive at Wentworth after stopping a riot in their prison, and incredibly are allowed to mix with the women, even though one of them is a convicted rapist! Guess what happens…. Oh, and later on, Myra gets it on with the men’s top dog Geoff and there’s also a nice wedding in the grounds…

34. The Freak starts having blackouts after having a prison library bookcase dropped on her by a mystery assailant. Myra plans to get rid of her by framing her for assault, but another inmate, Anita, decides to tell the truth. The twist is that Anita is a nun, who has to confess. Meanwhile, Ferguson is carted off for emergency brain surgery – cue scenes of a neuro-surgeon having his brow mopped and saying dramatically “We’re losing her!”

35. Ruth Ballinger, the wife of a powerful sub-Noriega South American drug baron, arrives inside as a police witness and Dynasty-style superbitch who demands (and gets) special privileges in return for her co-operation. She lounges around wearing appalling mid-80’s designer gear, sipping Bucks Fizz in a luxury cell complete with TV, fridge, telephone (yes, that’s right, a telephone) and gaudy red satin bed linen. Ruth is pure sick evil, who runs her own paedophile racket on the outside, gets poor Myra off her face on acid for her own amusement and then casually watches a couple of her fellow inmates brutally shot dead when her hubby sends a crack team of armed mercenaries to get her out. A gloriously silly storyline, culminating in the fabulous three-episode-long siege, which features Myra’s heroic last stand, some risibly bad acting from the actors playing the terrorists and future top dog Nora Flynn grabbing a gun and running about thinking she’s Sigourney Weaver.

36. Gorgeous “It girl” Eve Wilder is on remand charged with murdering her sugar daddy and is guilty as hell, fooling almost everyone inside with her “little girl lost” act and shagging her solicitor in the visitors’ room to get rid of incriminating evidence. However, the commendably ineffectual bespectacled officer Joyce Barry finds out the truth and Eve tries to silence her by viciously bashing her half to death, ending in a poignant shot of Joyce’s smashed specs. But she walked into a door honest!

37. Tomboyish punkette psychopath Lou Kelly is finally top dog after coveting the laundry press for years, but immediately clashes with new Vietnam vet governor Bob Moran and biker chick Rita Connors, a six feet tall strapping sheila in for GBH. All this makes poor Lou somewhat unhinged and she incites the women to riot, lynches one prisoner and forces Rita and the Freak to have a “fight to the death” in the laundry as she completely loses whatever fragile grip she had on her sanity. Oo-er!

38. Rita is top dog, and gains popularity by smuggling in some cocaine in a remote-controlled car with the help of her biker friends on the outside. However, prison handyman Steve Ryan finds Rita’s stash and pours it all down the sink, much to Rita’s chagrin who knocks him out with one punch. The next day, Steve gives Rita a pamphlet on the evils of drug abuse and, lo and behold, she sees the light and is a changed woman. Just say no, folks!

39. Meg’s son Marty, last seen in the very early episodes as a spotty teenager, returns to the series having decided to follow his mum’s example and become a screw. He comes up with a wizard wheeze to impress the authorities – a work release programme where the women work on a boat out at sea! No chance of an escape happening at all then, and of course Rita sees the project as an ideal chance to get the Freak…

40. The Freak gets one up on Rita when she sneakily arranges for her to be transferred to Blackmoor, PCBH’s answer to Alcatraz, otherwise known as “The Black Hole” where several past inmates have gone and never returned. Rita of course doesn’t take the corrupt institution full of murderous screws and nasty prisoners lying down and immediately clashes with the evil governor Ernest Craven (we know he’s evil because he wears dark glasses indoors), played by Alf from Home And Away. “Connors, you flamin’ galah…"

Do I even need to write the word "Classic"?

* * * IT'S OFFICIAL!! ~ PRISONER TO BE RELEASED ON DVD!!! * * *

"At long last the below statement has been released by 'the Company in question' to us with regards to the DVD's. We're sure you'll all be breathing a HUGE sigh of relief upon reading the content!:

Shock DVD is pleased to announce the imminent release of the entire 692 episode series PRISONER.

This groundbreaking series, set in a women's prison, shattered many taboos about what could and could not be shown on our TV screens and introduced the world to outrageous characters such as Bea "Queen Bea" Smith, Lizzie Birdsworth, Joan "The Freak" Ferguson and Franky Doyle.

The series will be available as a series of 4 DVD sets to subscribers and initial volumes will also be available through Australian and New Zealand DVD retailers. The first two volumes, each containing 16 episodes, will be released in Australia in October 2006 with two more volumes available the following month. It is anticipated the retail price for these volumes will be (Australian) $50.00 each.

Even better, early 2007 will see the release of the entire 692 episodes in one box set.

Stay tuned for more news."

"reb keane was the one who had some sort of strange fascination with combing her hair? she was great. I am trying to get this show somehow."

That's right. Played by Janet Andrewartha, who now plays Lyn Scully in Neighbours. And now you can get this show on DVD - all of it. The mind positively boggles....

Dear Prisoner Top Dog Club member ,

As you are aware, Shock Records has been working with Val Lehman to release Prisoner (Cell Block H) in it's entirety on DVD.

We are pleased to say that the first two Volumes of 4 DVDs each will be available in October but even more exciting is that for fans that subscribe, the DVDs will be rolling out at a rate of 2 Volumes a month (though we may occasionally take a break). That's 32 episodes a month!

Also, we are now taking preorders for the Prisoner Cell Block H box set which will be available in June 2007. Pre-ordered copies will be numbered and as of today it's still possible to get a number lower than 100 but you really need to get your pre-order in soon. Numbers are allocated in order of order receipt.

For more information and to place your orders, visit http://www.val-lehman.com and click on one of the links on the bottom of the front page or on the Bulletin Board page.

All the best wishes

Tania Hulme

Never could talk my mum into buying these heh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK1iAwlhsnQ

i don't know if they showed the later seasons over here in the USA -- i remember two seasons (three at most). and they have a very disappointingly thin CD compilation available on Netflix.

Classsssic

Is there a thread on the remake? Enjoyed watching the first episode. http://www.channel5.com/shows/wentworth-prison/episodes/no-place-like-home

wtf a remake??

Not sure if I ever saw the beginning of the original, but as Bea is shown entering as a nervous young woman & Vera is the nice, soft-hearted warder I'm thinking Prequel.

...rather than remake.

nah i believe it's being touted as a reboot

in context wouldn't that just mean to kick again

SO AWESOME

For comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm7CspGznnE

There is some considerable passion in people who love Prisoner Cell Block H and Wentworth. My wife is one of them and to her they are both beyond criticism.