Prisoner Cell Block H, Set 1 (25th Anniversary Collector's Edition)
Prisoner: Cell Block H, a drama set in a women's prison called Wentworth Detention Centre, ran for eight seasons on Australian television, from 1979 to 1986, resulting in an astonishing 692 hourlong episodes. Among these were 12 choice segments included in this DVD sampler set, selected to give a strong impression of the series' accomplishments and many changes over passing years. During its run, the show was also a big hit in the United Kingdom and, for a time, had a cult following in America. U.S. fans didn't get to see much of the ratcheted-up intensity, darker characters, and added violence that evolved duringPrisoner's middle years and beyond. Now that's possible with this anthology.Curious newcomers, too, will find much to discover in the25th Anniversary Collector's Edition.Prisonerconcerns the lives and dramas of sundry inmates, guards, and prison officials at Wentworth. The earliest episode here, from season 3, serves as a useful introduction to the program's cast and tone. The story entails a prison break gone horribly wrong for several women trapped inside a sewer; meanwhile, authorities jostle over control of Wentworth and fend off rising dissatisfaction from the guards' union over working conditions. The episode makes clear thatPrisoneris about varieties of power among and between authorities and incarcerated women, about small acts of kindness, sadness, frustration, and unbearable displays of ego and corruption. Those themes extend to the other, scattered episodes in this box set, all of which involvePrisoner's most colorful and memorable character (introduced in season 4), a sadistic, lesbian guard named Joan "the Freak" Ferguson (Maggie Kirkpatrick). As the years go by, Joan appears to have a brutal, conniving, thieving hand in everything, encountering resistance only from the strongest of the inmates, and surviving assaults, terrorist attacks, and much else until receiving her comeuppance in the series finale. If this collection, which quickly grows on a viewer, is a fair representation of the legacy ofPrisoner: Cell Block H, one can only hope to see more in the future.--Tom Keogh