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!
