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Ah, the great Maggie May Kennedy, who seems to represent all the worst kind of reasons for enjoying. In my opinion, an annoying character, with a tedious storyline, played with one of the series’ most classic examples of unintentionally amusing acting.
One evening, the inmates were watching television just at the exact moment a news item came on about a 72 year old drug runner being sentenced to 20 years in prison. Well what a surprise, she promptly arrived at Wentworth, and began her reign of pseudo-Mae West mannerisms and what seemed a total inability to do accents convincingly. (It would appear she was supposed to be American, though the bizarre jumble of Australian, posh English and Irish accents didn’t seem to support that. The assumption comes more from her habit of sticking “may-am” or “hur-nee” at the end of every sentence.)
She was made to share a cell with Lizzie Birdsworth, and it turned out they knew each other 40 years earlier. After reminiscing about the old days, Maggie told Lizzie she’d suspected drugs were involved in the smuggling, but the pay was so good she didn’t care.
In the laundry, all the women except Bea were impressed by Maggie’s tall stories, and agreed that she should continue her fight to be tried in the USA rather than Australia. But when Bea tried to get her to talk about the drug running, Lizzie said Maggie claimed she’d been set up.
Bea (being the country’s most listened-to media columnist at the time, it seems) decided to help Maggie get her extradition by writing a letter to the newspaper, which would be smuggled out by Maggie’s solicitor.
One evening, Maggie faked a coughing fit, asking for a particular brand of (presumably alcohol-laced) cough medicine. Having the supermarket style pharmacy that it did, Wentworth was able to provide it for her just like that, and a whole bottle of the illicit tipple was left to herself and her alcoholic cellmate. (Don’t they usually just give the dosage, and watch them take it, rather than just leave a bottle of medicine?) After the two old ladies emerged with hangovers in the morning, and the empty bottle was found, Maggie was reprimanded for the incident, but blamed Lizzie for it all.
Lizzie happened to overhear all this, and let Maggie know, changing her attitude towards her and contradicting her in front of the others. Maxine started to feel sympathy towards the bizarre old woman, saying she did what she had to, which made Lizzie worse.
Meanwhile, media interest was inexplicably booming, with newspapers clambering for the story and telephoning Ann Reynolds for news and quotes (clearly there were not many cats being rescued from trees that week.) When Bea’s article appeared in The Despatch (where else?) Ted Douglas informed Bea that despite what she’d been told, Maggie was guilty as charged. Cue the usual rowdy throng of protesters at the prison gates (or rather, the usual handful of bored looking people waving daft placards like “Let Mag Out” and occasionally remembering to shout a comment).
Bea was annoyed at Lizzie for not being honest, and with her anti-drug dealer head firmly on, told the women the truth about Maggie, saying she should really be inside for murder. And one ‘what-if’ comment about Maggie’s grandchildren using dope was enough to completely transform Maggie’s whole attitude towards drug dealing on its head, quicker than it would have taken to wave a magic fairy wand. Convincing realism, that’s what we love.
Maggie was eventually told she’d be extradited but would serve her full sentence. This provided the only interesting bit of her whole storyline, in a little bit of pathos when she realised she’d never see her grandchildren again, and would spent the rest of her life in prison. As a final gesture, she left Lizzie some money and a photo of her, to remember her by. (Which curiously, I don’t ever remember seeing afterwards.)
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