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The Ballinger Siege gets under way! After Joyce was grabbed in reception by the oversized Action Men, we saw her being pushed along the corridors as she whimpered in fear and stumbled about - reminding me that it wasn't all that long ago she did almost the same scene with Lou Kelly. Poor old thing.
Before long, we had exciting 'military' type music, sirens blaring, lights flashing, and the women wandering around the corridor in a state of fear and confusion. And you just knew this was going to be a very exciting and tense episode indeed. Myra told the women they should "stay calm and quiet until we know which way the wind blows". And I bet there was a lot of wind blowing at that time.
I loved the way that everyone initially assumed that someone had broken out of the prison (the women, the firemen, etc), rather than broken in. "They got both the guards," said Inspector Grace, not looking at all surprised that a high security prison would be guarded by two not-particularly-observant men working separately to each other.
Loved the very wicked cameraman, who got an unfortunate close-up profile shot of the policeman with the big nose talking into his radio.
Possibly far more shocking and disturbing than the gun men was the horribly gratuitous scene of Meg and Dennis snogging on the sofa. After a few minutes of fumbling and groping, Dennis jumped up, just as the television mentioned a water mains bursting.
Ann was having a ponytail-type evening when she was asked to come to the prison, and Pippa (in yet another scarlet kimono and full make-up, presumably ready for bed) told her to be careful. But disappointingly, didn't offer her services to the plot as a human shield.
Ruth snapped at one of the gun men, "You've got 30 hostages in there." Don't know if having an over-inflated ego gives you an over-inflated perception of numbers, but I couldn't find more than 20 potential hostages in the rec room, including the officers.
Obviously the police had been caught unawares by all this action. Inspector Grace didn't seem to have had time to get his trademark scruffy jacket with leather elbow patches, and instead appeared in a green zip-up bomber jacket, which looked very odd on him. And the curly-haired "Fed Cop" Fraser obviously hadn't had time to do up all the buttons on his shirt. The other odd thing was that, in most of the scenes featuring Inspector Grace, Ann, the cops etc., it was filmed from floor level. I have no idea what this was supposed to suggest to the viewer, apart from a very short cameraman.
Those in the rec room were really tense, of course. Loved the way Joan snapped at Joycie "Don't you start snivelling, Barry!" And the way one of the terrorists shouted at Lou, "Shut up dog face!" Tammy had more lines this episode than in the whole of her time in the series.. as if we're supposed to think of her as a main character. But most enjoyable of all was when Jenny Hartley started wailing, "We're going to die! We're going to die!", interrupted by an enormous and very satisfying SLAP by Auntie May.
After an attempt to run out of the prison (though I'm amazed the so-called "professional" terrorists thought it would be so simple), we saw the police had got their best marksmen on the job, who did shoot one or two of the baddies, but seemed to use up an awful lot of bullets in doing so. In return, the baddies showed us they weren't particularly good shots either when it came to hitting people, but could kill a tiny search light bulb with pretty good precision.
Meg and Dennis' TV was making reference to "the woman escapee", which I thought was a little premature, as nobody had actually escaped yet. And the gruesome twosome were left to look after Ann, after her very stressful and tense evening. "Get stuck into this," said Dennis, offering something on a plate that looked like part of a leg, with an awful cheerfulness that made me hope he didn't say that to Meg when he felt frisky. I presume it was a sandwich or something. Anyway, no doubt a cheese and pickle sandwich was just what Ann needed after finding out her prison had been taken over by dangerous terrorists and people's lives were in jeopardy.
I thought the final scenes were amazing this episode, especially with the main gun man drawing a cross on Jenny's forehead, raising the gun to it, then letting it 'click' with no bullet. I thought the tension was built up and maintained very well indeed throughout the prison scenes, and even though I'd seen these episodes before and knew more-or-less what was coming, I was still transfixed to the television throughout!
Excellent stuff, which shows Prisoner can be a very effective drama sometimes, and must put this episode, along with the two Great Fire episodes, as one of the classics of the series.
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