Prisoner: Cell Block H, if you’re unfamiliar with it, was an Australian soap opera set in a women’s prison and ran for 692 episodes between 1979 and 1986. I never watched it myself, not really, but my mom did. She’s deaf, and the show aired before closed captioners were available in the United States. She tried to follow the plot by lip-reading the characters, but that’s quite difficult from TV. I was usually in the room, but the volume would have been turned down if I was doing homework or reading. If the volume was up, she would sometimes ask me what the characters were saying. We bought one of the first closed captioners available (Sears was the only outlet that carried them), but P:CBH wasn’t captioned.
For years, decades, I kept my eyes peeled for a captioned video tape, but although VHS tapes of some of the episodes were available, they weren’t close captioned. I recently found a set of DVDs on clearance at Half Price Books, and although those weren’t captioned, either (and my mom doesn’t have a DVD if they had been), the set was so cheap I bought it just for kicks. Tracy and I started watching it and we are HOOKED!
The entire series is not available in the U.S., but it is available through Amazon.co.uk so we ordered the first couple of sets. Yeah, it’s kinda cheesy, but it fills the same niche other cult shows such as Dark Shadows and Doctor Who do. Another similarity it has to DW is that P:CBH was originally conceived as a 16-part mini-series!
I’ve pretty much given up on finding a closed captioned version in any format for my mom, but last week I mentioned to her for the first time ever that I’ve been looking for one 30 years now, and she doesn’t even remember the show!
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I remember that show; it used to air on late night TV, on whatever station that wasn't carrying The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Orange Is the New Black has got nothing on Prisoner: Cell Block H.
I had some preconceived notions of this show but after watching just one episode, I was completely vested in it.
Oh, man, I remember that show! I never was able to watch it -- was I too young? Was it on too late? Did it run against a show I liked more (or someone else in my family liked more)? -- but one of our UHF stations carried it for a while, and I remember the ads on TV and in TV Week, the listings magazine that came with the newspaper. Didn't know it was Australian!
And now I see a whole bunch of episodes are available to watch on YouTube!
One of the local stations carried it in my market (St. Louis) at 10:30P, right after the news. There are quite a few bits that must have been snipped (for language, mostly, but some nudity as well). The two main "screws" for example, are Meg ("good cop") and Vera ("bad cop"), and the inmates' nickname for Vera is "Vinegar Tits."
I remember a series of original paperbacks based on P:CBH, too. I bought two of them for my mom, but although she was a voracious reader, I don't know whether or not she ever read them. I didn't, but I wish now I still had them. I frequent used bookstores, and I have never seen any of them turn up.
$483.53 for a paperback book!?
http://www.amazon.com/Karen-Travers-Story-Prisoner-Block/dp/0523411...
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA...
From Behind the Bars: The Unofficial Prisoner Cell Block H Companion:
“An attempt at novelizing the series for the American following backfired in a big way for Grundy Productions. Pinnacle Books obtained the rights to the storylines and characters and issued a series of novels written by Murray Sinclair, Michael Kerr, Henry Clement and Maggie O’Shell. These started off as being based on the television series but quickly descended into free-for-all plotting and characterization.
“Titles such as The Frustrations of Vera referred to the 33-year-old Officer Bennett as being hated by the inmates and ruling with an iron fist. Quite accurate until it started delving into Vera’s private life and apparent craving for a man—‘She stood there in his embrace, naked except for her shoes and stockings’. A surprise change in direction from the old Vinegar Tits that viewers knew and by now, had loved to hate, it appeared that the whole series of books had been written simply to sensationalize the series and bring it some inappropriate profit from the familiar Prisoner Brand.
“It came to the notice of the cast, and in particular union rep Val Lehman, that the depictions of the characters were bordering on the pornographic, a far cry from the carefully crafted personas and behavior on the screen. Val was certainly not amused:
“Our American fans alerted us the grubby tone of these books. Due to the actions of the cast, led by me, they were withdrawn from sale. Only to appear again suddenly when the show was airing in the UK, and disappear just as suddenly when I got involved!”
As I said above, I didn’t read the two I had (only the “dirty bits”), but I’ve been buying them online. That brief excerpt above doesn’t do it justice, believe me. That particular scene goes on for about three pages, and it reads like a “Penthouse Forum” column (or so I’ve heard). Here’s a list of all six written.
#1 – Prisoner: Cell Block H
#2 – The Franky Doyle Story
#3 – The Karen Travers Story
#4 – The Frustrations of Vera
#5 – The Reign of Queen Bea
#6 – The Trials of Erica
I now have 1, 2, 4 and 6. Plan to start reading them soon.
If there's one with the Freak in, I don't want to know about it.
Heh. Sadly, no.
"Plan to start reading them soon."
When I posted about "Prisoner:Cell block H" to the "What Are You Reading These Days?" discussion last week I had completely forgotten I had already started a dedicated thread to discuss these books ("soon" became nearly six and a half years later, though). Now I have 1-4 and #6.
PRISONER: CELL BLOCK H: This is a series of six paperbacks, all written by different writers, based on the popular Australian soap opera about life in a women's prison. My mom used to watch this show (it aired in out market from 1030-11:00P, immediately following the news or Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, depending on which channel was on), but I never did. I was in the room, but the sound was turned down on the TV because my mother was deaf. (This was before "closed captioning" was a thing.) In more recent years, I tried to find captioned episodes on VHS so she could know what they were saying at last, but I never had any luck. By the time I found them on DVD, they weren't captioned. I mentioned them to her at the time, but she didn't even remember the show.
The paperbacks weren't very well-received by fans, I understand, because certain chapters border on the pornographic. I went through a phase of reading "lurid" pulp novels of the '50s (this would have been in the early 2Ks), but the ones I read were pretty tame by today's any standards. When Tracy and I started watching the entire series six years ago, I decided to track down those six paperbacks, eventually fining five of them. I didn't want to read them at the time, though, as I didn't know how closely they mirrored TV continuity.
I just finished the first one, though, and it hues pretty closely to the early episodes of the TV series. the sex scenes were a bit more explicit than one was permitted on 1980s Australian daytime television, but not more explicit than one would expect. I suspect that all six of the books were doled out to their respective writers at the same time, each concentrating on a different character. The first one is more generic, but later books in the series include The Franky Doyle Story, The Karen Travers Story, The Frustrations of Vera, The Reign of Queen Bea and The Trials of Erica. I hesitate to use the term "hack work" (because even the worst of the "hacks" is capable of doing something I cannot), but that's more or less what they are.
This book has put me in the mood to re-watch some of the TV series... not all 692 episodes, but the first dozen or so, at least. There is one bit I remember differently (the details of the crime "Mum" was in for), but it's not significant. I will likely read a few more books in this series in the near future.