The wanderer returns! I’ve been away for such a long time that I can hardly remember who I am, never mind where I am and what I’m supposed to be doing! I’m sure I’ve forgotten how to do this so please bear with me as I pull out my tickling stick (how outrageous - avert your gaze, ladies and gentlemen!) and buff off the months of dust that has settled on Queen Erica’s encyclopaedia during my prolonged absence!
*Cough, splutter!* Golly, after all that hard work I think I shall now help myself to a medicinal glass of sherry from her crystal decanter now to steady my nerves! Well she does tipple on special occasions, as our Queen once memorably remarked to dandy old Andrew Reynolds in one of my favourite subplots! There now, that’s better! I always like to think I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth but it fell out!
Oh my, what a Sons and Daughters theme tune of a year it has been in Prisonerland! All those tears and sadness and but also great happiness too! There’s so much I’ve been straining at my chains to chat about with you as the months have winged their way from my fabulous OTI calendar from last year and how typical that I’ve been even more of a jumbly mess and had even less time than usual to get down to it!
I really do apologise for my elongated radio silence and I know there’s much to be mentioned in the way of happenings since I last spluttered into life on here, but I thought I’d judder this rusty old blog into life on the first day of a shiny new year by having a look at the very first episode of our beloved show, plus it’s very environmentally sound given that I’m recycling a posting I cobbled together on the old Recroom forum many moons ago! I must write myself a strongly worded letter of complaint for plagiarising myself so shamelessly!
A few years ago I had a grand and glorious idea of working my way through all 692 episodes in this fashion but much like the original NTV VHS release of Prisoner (now there’s a blast from the past for you!) I never made it past the twelfth episode! It really did take an insanely long amount of time and after the Recroom closed I just haven’t found the time to find a new home for them, so they’ve been a bit like poor old Edie Wharton and her friend Horrie, abandoned to their fate all unloved and uncared for, with only Erica’s Very Well-o-meter (would you believe we’d only reached a total of five very wells after a dozen episodes?!) to keep them company! Awwwww!
I’m not going to hijack this blog now with a big old review-a-thon, because there’s heaps of other stuff to be nattering about on here, but I just thought I’d dig out episode one again for today!
I’m a bit of a fan of The X Files too (The X Files and Prisoner…now there’s something you don’t hear too often said in the same breath!). Bear with me…there is a Prisoner point to this! The other year I picked up the full set of that and have been thoroughly enjoying working my way through that (YAY! Let’s hear it for box sets and getting to play at being your very own TV scheduler!), especially as most of the episodes I’m either watching for the very first time (excitingness!) or haven’t seen since they were first shown on TV back in the day!
Anyway, this year Santa brought me The X Files Essentials compilation DVD from one of my lovely friends, where the director and producer picked out eight episodes from across the series and explained why they chose them. Some of them were fab but even though I wouldn’t claim to be a hardcore fan with an inside out knowledge of the series, I’m thinking that out of those 201 episodes they had to choose from I’d have swapped some of their selections for ones I’d consider were more definitive if anyone had asked me, not that anybody was going to ask a madwoman like me wittering away on a Prisoner blog!
But I do reckon it was quite a cool premise though, and led me to thinking if you were going to pick out eight episodes of Prisoner as defining ones, which ones would you choose and why? Hmmm... The more I thought about it the more I realised that it’s actually really hard to do when you’re as demented about Prisoner as I am, because in my mind all 692 episodes are defining in their own way!
But here goes anyway! I’ll start with episode one on the first day of the brand spanking new year and share my others with you in between gibbering away about this, that and whatever else falls into my head as usual as time goes by! I do apologise that you wouldn’t really have to be Zara Moonbeam to predict any of my choices and that knowing me we’ll all be as old as Lizzie by the time I get around to finishing this!
So episode one then…where it all began and how the series exploded onto our screens! I get all of a quiver with excitement even just thinking about it, as I do with so many of my favourite episodes and never ever tire of immersing myself in the atmosphere of those early ones in particular!
In saying that, when I sat down a couple of years ago to take an in depth look at this for my review-a-thon, I still surprised myself at just how much I still enjoyed this opener, at how it still managed to grip and enthral me almost as much as the first time I laid eyes on it. But then that really is the joy of Prisoner!
Here we go then! Woo! I liked the opening frames and how they intercut Karen, Lynn and Bea on the outside with their mugshots, creating a dramatic hook for the viewer as to how these women came to end up in prison.
Nice pelting down corridors at breakneck speed action from Vera, Meg and Sally in our first glimpse of Wentworth itself! Indeed, if pelting down corridors were an Olympic sport, that would be another one Australia would have in the bag!!! Of course this comes to a juddering halt as Franky elbows Sally, uttering those immortal first words, “She bumped into me!”
Meanwhile, Wentworth’s two newest arrivals-to-be were on their way in the paddywagon, with Lynn assuming the angst ridden pose that she would largely be required to sustain for the next 44 episodes (Kerry Armstrong must’ve been exhausted by the end of it!). Mind you, the poor girl was given much to be overwrought about during her time in the show and to be honest I thought she carried it off more convincingly and perhaps less annoyingly than many characters of a similar ilk that followed in her footsteps.
I loved Karen’s sad reply when Lynn asked her what she’d done, “I made a mistake…” I’d say the angst of Lynn and the detachment of Karen provided a nice counterpoint here, and I thought introducing us to the world of Wentworth through their eyes, as unfamiliar to that world as most of the viewers would be, was a clever device.
Meg gets a line I’ve always loved as Karen hesitates after stepping out of the paddywagon, “Young woman, are we to have the pleasure of your company or not?!”
I have to say I thought the induction was filmed at a bit of an awkward angle. Meg asked Karen and Lynn to stand on the white line as usual but because of the position of the camera they don’t actually stand on the line, they stand at an angle from it. Another thing I found unusual about the induction was that Meg asked Lynn and Karen for their names, instead of reading out their names and asking them to confirm if it was correct.
Vera was on her mettle and certainly made sure Karen was in no uncertainty about her place when Karen questioned her order to strip off her clothes, “Do as you’re told and don’t ask questions!!!!”
Marilyn’s hormones were in overdrive in the doctor’s surgery as she was merrily cheating her way through the eye test, seductively pouting, “I’d do anything to get rid of these headaches, doctor, anything…” as she grabbed for his famously well-trousered trousers! Matron!
Meg wins the prize for most unfortunate choice of words of the episode when Greg asked her about her problems sleeping, “I’ll kill that husband of mine!” A little infelicitous given that’s what Karen had just been brought in for and indeed what half her inmates were serving time for! Anyway, be careful of what you wish for, Meg, somebody might get in first!!!
Poor Karen, being ordered to take a shower prompting her to flashback to her original fateful, fatal deed, as the enormity of her predicament is hammered home to her.
The next surprise in an episode full of shocks and surprises is revealed when it materialises that Greg and Karen knew each other on the outside and he evidently has more than a professional interest in her wellbeing.
I did feel sorry for Karen though. As if she didn’t have enough to cope with coming to terms with her crime and its consequences for her as she adjusted to her harsh new life, she also had to handle an old flame who clearly still held a torch for her prying into her personal business, apart from anything else serving a constant reminder of how much she’d stuffed up by ending up with Wayne instead of him in the first place! As she said herself, what a nightmare!
Although in saying that, at least it gave her a familiar face to turn to in that harsh foreign world that she knew and could trust, as Greg pointed out to her.
I was surprised when Doreen asked Lynn what she was in for, because usually that’s a taboo, but loved Bea’s retort when she said she was innocent, “Gawd, aren’t we all? The only thing any of ever did wrong was getting caught!”
Interesting how Vera referred to the cell she was taking Karen to as a dormitory. Very un-Vera like, but then again, she was always saying the place was run like a finishing school! This led on to another great scene, this time between Karen and Franky with Franky putting the hard word on her and Karen knocking back her advances. I loved it when Franky asked her what she’d done (see, there we go again, I thought you weren’t supposed to ask that!!), Karen, trying to act tough replies, “I stabbed someone…to death,” and Franky responds, “Always like a challenge…”
This follows on to our first fabulous sighting of Erica in the Governor’s office, resplendent in her luminous green two-piece number! That’s a very brave colour to wear and only Erica could carry it off so well! She even got some classic telephone action in when her phone rang and the person at the other end of the telephone had a nanosecond between Erica’s, “Yes?” and “Very well!” (YAY! The first one, and in her first scene too! Deep joy!) to tell her that they were ready for photographs.
Now, unless they were speaking at an incredible rate of knots, they would just about have had enough time to say that without so much as a “hello”, “by your leave” or “excuse me Mrs Davidson”!!! Abrupt or what?!
The officer fingerprinting Lynn made a bit of an arse of it, not only bizarrely doing it side on, but also splatting Lynn’s thumb down on the paper instead of gently rolling it so all we got was a finger shaped blob! Not incredibly useful to the police unless she was wearing gloves at the time she committed her crime!
What I thought was interesting about Sally begging to see Vera was that if you didn’t know Vera’s character from later on in the show, the implication was there that Vera might have had something directly to do with Sally’s state, and this is continued later on in the episode in a scene in the laundry with Doreen’s loaded inference and Bea fuming about finding the person responsible, right in front of Vera.
And so to the next big set piece scene in such a busy episode, with Franky going into her first meltdown and trashing the rec room after being told by Vera that Doreen was being moved out of her cell. There’s that tale of how one of the extras was so scared when Franky flew into one of her rages that she was found cowering under a table!
This was followed by another big shock with Meg and Karen finding Sally hanging in her cell. The shot of Karen, Greg and Meg reflected in the cabinet mirror as Meg discovered that Karen and Greg knew each other reminded me of just how many different camera angles and televisual tricks and gizmos they packed into this opening episode.
Funnily enough, on this watching, all the way through the episode I was distracted by Meg’s squeaky shoes, obviously because they were brand new!!!! It’s funny the detail you pick up on when you’ve seen something so many times, because I can’t remember ever noticing that before! Just for one example, check out her scene with Karen where she’s in usual Meg mode trying to give Karen a bit of hope when Karen’s starting to think that maybe Sally was lucky in ending it all. Every couple of steps she takes her shoes squeak!
The eye-level window in this cell puzzled me as well. In most of the cells they have to climb up on the bed and stand on tiptoes, craning their neck to catch a glimpse out of the window, although that might have been a bit of an undignified pose for an officer, so probably just as well not then for the purposes of this scene, as Meg and Karen were looking out at Mum in the garden! Also, it must have been Baltic in those cells in the middle of the Melbourne winter without any glass in the windows and no obvious source of heat! Brrrrr!
I adore the next scene with Mum and Lynn in the garden, with Mum sporting a very fetching pink sunhat, not to mention incredibly pristine overalls for one who has been toiling away out there! Mind you, some people are like that in real life! I used to work in a hotel and at the end of our shift most of us would look like we’d been dragged through a hedge backwards but my boss would still be as immaculate as she was at the beginning of the day with not a hair out of place!
Mum says I think my favourite line of the episode, encapsulating as it does such a healthy, pragmatic outlook on life, “Life’s what you make it, my dear. There’s not much point in hating the prison or the screws is there? After all, they didn’t put us in here, did they?”
What a refreshing change and such a contrast to Lynn’s anguish at her plight, although in saying that I am sympathetic towards Lynn and her predicament. You can’t imagine how awful it would be to be locked up for something you didn’t do, not to mention not have anyone believe you.
I liked how this scene was framed by being shot through the fence at its opening and close, especially effective how Lynn reached for the rose to the strains of a sad flute version of the theme after learning of Sally’s demise.
Another unusual and effective shot switching from the almost overhead angle to a floor level one of Franky emphasising the claustrophobia of solitary. Honestly, the effort and thought they put into the production at this stage! So Franky bestows Vera with her eponymous “Vinegar Tits” epithet which will be associated with her for as long as people remember Prisoner! Legendary stuff!
This leads to yet another fantastic scene in the rec room with Vera in a rage about her new nickname, probably my favourite bit of dialogue in the middle of a glorious exchange being:
Lizzie: What she call you, Miss Bennett?
Vera: Get out Lizzie! You’re only making the place even more of a mess!!!!
I loved how Marilyn’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree at the first sight of Steady Eddie the electrician! After innocently commenting that they’d be able to see more of each other while he was working in the prison, it’s a wonder he didn’t blow a fuse at Marilyn’s salacious reply, “How much more of me would you like to see?!”
Next up, we have that legendary scene where Lynn gets to experience Bea’s summary justice when she brings the steam press down on her hand. It’s hard to remember, because it’s been repeated so many times in so many retrospectives on Prisoner, not to mention how many times I’ve seen the episode myself, but if you hadn’t seen it before and you didn’t know it was coming, it is a genuinely shocking and brutal moment, the brutality of Bea’s retribution mirroring the brutality of the crime that Lynn had been convicted of.
Following on from this, more of Karen’s backstory is revealed as she thinks back to the circumstances surrounding her crime, being bullied and cajoled by her husband into having an abortion (and as if that wasn’t horrific enough, the doctor at the clinic was Lionel Fellowes!!!), only to return home to find him cavorting with another woman, causing her to snap and do away with him in the shower, in that subversion of the classic scene from Psycho, with the woman doing the stabbing this time!
Honestly, no wonder so many great actresses in Australia were apparently falling over themselves to get a role in the show, offering as it did such a uniquely meaty change for them from the usual staples of housewives/mothers chained to the kitchen sink, which unfortunately still abound to this day.
I’m digressing (now that’s not like me!) but I remember Linda Hartley in the Neighbours 1000th episode celebration special complaining about how she’d be given pages and pages of dialogue for a whole scene which solely involved her interacting with a toddler and Bouncer the dog! No wonder so many of them were clamouring for parts in Prisoner!
Veering back on topic to the Prisoner episode one action, Karen is very effectively shocked out of her unpleasant reveries and back to her present reality by Lynn grabbing her shoulder and showing her what Bea had done to her hand. Something unusual about Karen’s flashback sequence was that her house appeared to be a real house rather than a studio set, which I thought was interesting, and obviously added to the realism of it.
There’s a smashing bit of light relief as a leavening all the grimness in the scene following on from this, where Vera comes looking for Steady Eddie, who’s busy in the loft wiring into Marilyn! I’ve always thought Cheryl, the extra in this scene, is fantastic and I wish we’d seen more of her than the couple of episodes she appears in. I love it when Eddie leans through the hatch and says to Vera, “Be a doll and tell him I’ll phone him back in a few minutes, will ya?”
Imagine having the temerity to call Vinegar Vera a doll! And I love the saucy wink that Cheryl gives them too after Vera’s gone!
Meanwhile, Erica is in full authority mode in another bit of campery in the Governor’s office, where she tells Lynn in no uncertain terms as to what she thinks of her claim that she is innocent, treating us to another “Young woman…” and “very well”! Although in saying that, was there ever a scene in the Governor’s office with Erica that wasn’t camp?!
I loved Mum’s wise words of advice to Lynn in the surgery after she told her what Bea had done to her, “Lynn, sometimes we have to agree that things are accidents in here. If we don’t, accidents seem to keep happening…”
Great line from Vera as she’s taking Karen to her new cell when Karen complains that Sally was in there, “Well, she’s not there now!” Nicely delivered by Fiona Spence too!
Next up, Meg squeaked across Erica’s office in her nice new shoes to let Lynn in to make her telephone call to ‘Larry the gardener’. Larry’s so pivotal to this subplot that he’s given the Madonna-like accolade of only having one name!!! He’s such a legend that he doesn’t need a surname! Of course his surname might be The Gardener!!!!
I love his shiny wheelbarrow too! It’s a wonder he has any time to do any gardening what with having to keep his barrow so shiny! Oh, and not only do I want Mrs Bentley’s palatial home (surely one of the most sumptuous locations they ever used in Prisoner!), I want her fabulous gold telephone!!!!
I loved the theatrical way she pulled back the curtain revealing her marvellously manicured ruby red fingernails, perfectly co-ordinating with the ruby red drape (that woman knows how to team with a theme!!!), and also ‘Larry The Gardener’ working away, just as she’s telling Erica that he’s no longer in their employ! Boo! This cues quite possibly the campest, most hilarious, but also quite scary moment in the whole of Prisoner, as she leers demonically into baby Richie’s crib, “Now stop that, stop it, or I’ll put you back in that big hole!!!” Hiss!
A more mundane point about all this is how strange it is that Lynn is making her telephone call from the Governor’s office rather than reception, and that Erica makes the call for her. You’d think that she would have better things to do!
Since the first time I ever saw this episode I have always loved the next sequence, as the instrumental theme strikes up to Lynn sobbing on her bed followed by Vera doing her rounds. Very atmospheric. Honestly, how can you not love Prisoner when it’s as good as this?!
Another nice bit of use of the medium of television leading on from this as Franky calls out for Doreen, “across the void of Nunawading,” as Carol Burns put it. I love the look on Doreen’s face as she’s serving tea to Bea, because apparently Carol Burns was supposed to call out Doreen to cue Doreen’s reaction as they were filming this, but she’d fallen asleep, so what we get is Colette Mann wondering when she’s going to get her cue, instead of genuinely reacting to Franky calling her, but it does kind of work so I’ll let the director off for that one!
Finally, we’ve got the build up to the cliffhanger at the end of the episode, with the officer leading Bea to Lynn’s cell to put the frighteners on her. Interesting that the way those first frames are shot you could think it was Vera, although of course for anybody who’s seen the latter part of Prisoner first, you’d know Kirsty Child’s gait from anywhere! A good suspenseful ending to such a busy first episode with Bea clamping her hand to Lynn’s mouth, “Shut up, understand? Shut up!” Gasp! What’s going to happen next?!
And there we have it. How it all began, with a breathless pace, twists and turns and shocks abound, a well cast company of experienced performers who knew what they were doing, thoughtful use of the medium of television, no sense in any way of it being churned out. In essence a great ensemble effort!
I find the rawness, the freshness of these early episodes lends such a compelling immediacy to the proceedings, especially coming to them as I originally did from much later on in the show. In my mind at any rate, television rarely gets any better than this!
No comments:
Post a Comment