Prisoner Cellblock H TV jailbird tells how show worked wonders for women
When gritty Australian soap Prisoner: Cell Block H first aired 45 years ago today, no one could have predicted the cult status it would achieve worldwide.
Set in a women’s jail, it became one of Australia’s most successful TV dramas of all time, after being exported to over 80 countries. Five years after its 1979 launch, Yorkshire Television bought the British rights and millions here tuned in to weekly late-night episodes, which even sparked a trend for Prisoner parties.
It spawned multiple spin-offs, including the 2013 series Wentworth, a male version called Punishment, starring Mel Gibson, and a camp West End show starring the late Paul O’Grady’s alter ego Lily Savage. Re-runs of Prisoner still air on My5 today. Throughout its 692-episode, eight-year run, the show was famous for its outrageous plots and characters, including twisted warden “The Freak” and formidable lag “Queen” Bea Smith.
But the show also tackled serious issues, such as drug abuse and sexual assault. Set in the fictional Wentworth Detention Centre, it revolved around the lives of the female inmates and the often corrupt prison officers. For former Neighbours star Colette Mann – who played inmate Doreen Burns from the very first episode – the show’s legacy still burns brightly.
Prisoner first aired in 1979 and went on for eight seasons (Fremantle Media/REX/Shutterstock)Colette, 74, says: “The show changed my life and I have the fans to thank for that. Never in a million years did I imagine I’d be in England now, still going to Prisoner conventions, still getting fan mail and still being recognised as Doreen on the London Underground. Clearly I haven’t aged a bit!”
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Childlike Doreen – famed for her phrase “What are we going to do now, Bea?” and for carrying a teddy bear – experienced lesbian affairs, fell pregnant by a rapist and tried to take her own life.
Fans often wrote to Colette at the Grundy studios in Melbourne, where the show was filmed. She says: “I used to get letters from women who were feeding their babies late at night and were watching Prisoner in the UK, saying: ‘You have saved my life because I’m sitting here with the baby and it won’t go to sleep…’ I also had British fans send me koala bears dressed in Doreen’s prison denims.”
When Doreen was raped and then attempted suicide, real-life victims also wrote in. She says: “After Doreen was raped, I had quite a few letters from women who’d also gone through that. The letters would say that they understood how Doreen felt. It was the same when Doreen tried to take her own life. The show was very much ahead of its time for tackling these issues.”
Colette Mann says the show’s legacy still burns brightly (© Fremantle Media)And Colette believes Prisoner worked wonders for women’s lib. She says: “Even before it aired, every woman and her dog wanted to be in it because it was so unusual back then to have 13 women’s roles. Women were only ever sidekicks before.”
Many of the soap’s most famous storylines, such as the 1982 Wentworth fire and the great escape – in which inmates were trapped in a tunnel – are still discussed in fan forums today.
Meanwhile, meeting fans was always a memorable experience for Colette. She laughs: “Men would greet me with teddy bears and ask me to hold them for photos.
“We’d be taken to a shopping centre in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and there’d be 30,000 or so fans screaming at us and trying to rip our Prisoner uniforms off.”
After a storyline in which Doreen and Frieda “Franky” Doyle (Carol Burns) escaped from Wentworth dressed as nuns, Colette’s real-life neighbours called the police when they realised Carol was staying with her. She laughs: “Our storyline was playing at the same time as two genuine women prisoners really escaped and, after seeing us on TV, my neighbours called police thinking we were real prisoners, too. They turned up at my house!”
Colette made great friends on Cell Block H – especially Sheila Florance, who played Lizzie Birdsworth and died in 1991. Her senior by 36 years, she was Colette’s mentor.
Describing Sheila as her “TV mama”, Colette says: “I was 28 when I started. She took me under her wing, which I needed because I’d never trained professionally. I knew nothing about working in series television, but she would just, ever so sweetly, guide me.”
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Acting on the show was not without its unscripted dramas, according to Colette. She laughs: “Some of the fight scenes were a free-for-all.
The show was set in a fictional correctional facility called Wentworth (Network Ten)“There was lots of hair pulled out and broken nails. I remember Val Lehman, who played Bea, accidentally giving Amanda Muggleton, who played Chrissie Latham, a bloody nose when a bookcase fell on her.”
Kissing scenes with Kerry Armstrong, who played Lynn Warner, sparked “lots of giggles”.
But Colette was more embarrassed about kissing her on-screen husband, Kevin Burns (played by Ian Gilmore), admitting: “I felt more awkward about kissing him because I thought he was gorgeous.”
Her one gripe is that, like most of the cast, she did not receive any royalties – although she did get some from the Wentworth spin-off, even though her cameo role remains on the cutting room floor. But prison dramas are only part of the mum-of-two’s repertoire. She has worked extensively in theatre and played matriarch Sheila Canning for a decade in Neighbours.
Now in England, having finished a panto run as well as starring in a Norwegian crime drama, due to air on BBC iPlayer later this year, she is eyeing up London theatre roles or British TV parts next. She says: “Hopefully, some of the original Prisoner fans will be TV producers now and will have a great role for me.”
But Colette admits that her less glamorous roles have also been some of her most rewarding.
She laughs: “In Prisoner, we didn’t wear make-up and we got so excited when they changed our prison yellow and green shirts into checked versions. But it’s still winning audiences today and we always felt we were making a really good show.”
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