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Beginning with Rosie in the advanced stages of labour, in a surprisingly dark and gloomy infirmary where you’d be lucky to find the patient, let alone a cure. Meanwhile, the nurse was elsewhere, tending to Bill Jackson and wiggling the scissors that were poking out dangerously from the gap between his arm and his side. She said the weapon would “have to come out before you can be moved,” which I seem to remember from various first aid courses, is precisely what you do if you want your patient to bleed to death. Hmm - E.R. this probably ain’t.
Vera was suspicious that Eddie and Marilyn had been having “a high old time together”, which was impressively spot-on considering their secret attic-room frolics. Marilyn was returned to her cell with Bea and Doreen, which I was intrigued to notice had a shelving unit full of books.
Meanwhile in reception Bill Jackson’s death was confirmed, almost immediately after the announcement of the birth of Rosie’s baby. Quite a nice bit of irony. Bill’s death brought an interesting reaction from Meg, with her feelings of loss and anger, and a surprisingly good performance from the actress. “Oh Bill!” she cried, holding her hand up to her face, displaying her wedding ring full-on to the camera.
Nice acidic line from Vera, when Karen protested at Vera’s implication that she could have been Bill’s murderer. “Wouldn’t be the first time you’d stabbed someone,” she replied.
The police interviews were held in the murder victim’s own office, to unsettle the guilty person apparently (and save money on a short-term set I guess). It was interesting to get a closer look at the books on the prison psychologist’s shelves. “Merton’s compendium of morbid conditions”, “Gregorii Syntax”, “Cases and Courts”, “Justice of the Peace”, and so on. (Which looked better than Erica’s prized Encyclopaedia Britannica, which seemed to have several volumes upside down.) Ok, I can understand books on sociology and law, but isn’t that a Latin book in there? (Perhaps useful if a woman from the roman period is inadvertently transported through a time warp and ends up inside.) Legal books might have seemed a nice detail by the props department, however with the law changing constantly, I’m not sure some of the ancient looking tomes would be all that useful to anyone. Also, I loved how the brick walled corridor outside Bill Jackson’s office had a solitary oil painting stuck on one wall, and a rubber plant plonked in the corridor. Very Changing Rooms.
The police were suspicious about Eddie, because they’d checked the fuses he was supposed to have been fixing. Not something I would have expected them to be looking at, obviously an unusually thorough investigation.
Interesting comment about the vague, shape-shifting Wentworth layout – Erica mentioned that Eddie had not been with the rioters (in the corridor by the dining room) but was in “a different wing” at the time, in the rec room.
Back at Meg’s house she was in her sitting room, clashing horribly with her green sofa, in a chocolate brown quilted dressing gown with ample frilly lace sprouting from it. Her miserable composure was actually nothing to do with the wardrobe department’s cruel sense of humour. Marty came home and mumbled something and pouted a lot, while Meg told him he had to go to school, even though his father had been murdered the day before. Meg naturally would do a Joan Ferguson (“We’re short staffed enough as it is”) and turn up for work too, where her superiors would obviously recognise her emotional state as a dangerous liability in a high risk working environment and send her home instantly. Er, no actually nobody seemed to think anything of the sort.
In the laundry, things were getting very exciting, with Bill’s killer revealed, leading to a very tense sequence where the women ran after Chrissie Latham. As if that wasn’t excitement enough, I also noticed the Pink Thing was still there, unused and folded on the shelves by the driers. Chrissie ran to the cell door containing Franky, where some words were clearly scratched on the spyhold door (“Loosh”, “Woosh” and something else). “Hey, Bea! There she is!” came the cry as the rampaging women rounded the corner like a herd of stampeding wilderbeest and espied Chrissie, and all sprinted past while something remarkably similar to Dolly Parton’s “Nine To Five” was heard over the action. This led to the partial “scalping” of Chrissie and her reluctant confession about the murder, which was a nice, grim touch.
In Chrissie’s subsequent police interview, Meg was unable to stay calm, again making me wonder why she hadn’t been ordered home hours ago. “That’s enough Meg!” barked Erica, though I don’t think I could really blame Meg for reacting – it isn’t every day the police allow the victim’s widow to be present during the police interview with the killer!
At the grotty boarding house, Mum was suffering the horrors of more darkness and dampness, and a landlord and wife who could have stepped out of Les Miserables. “Slaying in women’s prison,” read the headline on the front page of the newspaper, and the next few lines went on to mention Bill’s full name was “William James Jackson”, he was a “psychologist” and had “died in an ambulance” (though I’d got the impression earlier that he’d actually died in hospital). Mum attended the funeral, where Meg wore the most bizarrely inappropriate electric blue outfit with a blue Pirates-of-Penzance headscarf, accompanied by Erica in an ill-advised hat perched at an angle, poo-brown matching suit, and a frilly brolly, and looked like she could be appearing in an amateur production of My Fair Lady. Meg saw Mum and snubbed her, which was a very sad little scene, and very poignant with both women having much in common (feelings of loss and loneliness). As if this weren’t enough for poor Mum, she later had a fall in her room, and had her handbag rummaged through by the beetroot-haired landlady.
As if being forced to go to school weren’t enough for Marty Jackson, he also had to wear trousers that were clearly too tight and finished half way up his calves.
Another great high camp sequence, featuring Erica shouting sternly and marching around her office, followed immediately by Lynn Warner flailing and screaming as she ran off down the corridors. Excellent stuff.
The final scene focussed on Meg walking down the corridor, not noticing the prisoners passing her, looking very alone and sad as the credits rolled. Very effective and poignant. Though I was intrigued by the odd office type room at the end of a corridor, which I think is promptly forgotten in future set design.
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