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Apparently, the little pile of magazines and chairlegs was indeed enough to completely destroy the whole of Blackmoor Prison, which must have been built using a lot of wood and paper I guess. The women of Wentworth were eagerly watching a full report on the news, and later mentioned it being "all over the papers". Oops, looks like the officers forgot to censor papers and confiscate televisions again.
The inmates were not the only thing transferred to Wentworth after the devastating blaze. Craven was walking around with his comedy dark sunglasses (indoors of course), chewing gum and puffing on extremely smoky cigarettes. He really does create a sinister and instantly dislikeable presence, who makes you want to boo and hiss loudly at the screen every time he appears, even if the improbability of his smoking on duty and sunglasses in a dimly-lit prison are more likely to raise a smirk than a shudder. Brutal, corrupt, sexist, lecherous, and in a position of power.. never has Wentworth seen such a baddie! Well.. not since Len Murphy. Or Jock Stewart. Later we saw Craven making improper suggestions to Meg, which she seemed shocked about. Obviously she hadn't remembered when he was Geoff Butler, and took a fancy to her before completely terrorising her. Nice to see the actor is given the opportunity to show a variety of widely different characters. Here as Ernest Craven, a thoroughly evil and sadistic prison governor with dark sunglasses; earlier as Kurt Renner, a thoroughly evil and sadistic crime boss with dark sunglasses; and earlier still as Geoff Butler, a thoroughly evil and sadistic friend of Jim Fletcher who probably had dark sunglasses too, I can't remember.
Despite all this, there were some good scenes and performances around Craven. I particularly liked the Pamela Madigan 'slap' scene, which was genuinely scary. ("Your nigger mates are gonna be sorry you did that..") The sad thing about this was that it lead to the immediate transfer of Sarah (and the other invisible Aboriginals) to Barnhurst, just as the character was starting to develop and become interesting. Especially when it took the writers until almost the end of the series to finally introducing a strong black character, and keeping her there for only ten episodes. I felt it was a bit of a shame.
I might find Craven a bit of a cardboard-cutout baddie, and hard to swallow at times, but the writing has definitely picked up to full speed again, with some very cracking episodes. Prisoner's a lot of fun again, and exciting viewing. Nora Flynn's council and the work experience boat trip are merely bad memories now, thank goodness.
There was an interesting sequence, with the women chanting "Rita..! Rita..!", cutting to Kath sitting in her bed, then later cutting to Rita in her cell. Quite an effective and atmospheric bit of editing, had it not been abruptly and prematurely cut in the version I saw, presumably where a commercial break had been edited out.
Even Joan was getting into the oppressive atmosphere, and wearing her trousers (rather than uniform skirt) for effect. Thankfully she didn't feel the need to wear black sunglasses or chain-smoke, but a reappearance of the leather gloves wouldn't have surprised me.
Craven made a few comments about "security here's slack enough as it is," and broke Merle's highly dangerous weapon (bull-roarer) when it almost knocked him out. He also couldn't see the sense in Ann allowing the women to mix with the male "rapists" and "murderers", etc. When Joyce took Lisa and Merle to the men's block, Lisa was almost raped, Merle was jeered at and humiliated, and Joyce was clearly terrified by the men, obviously unable to control them. Ann's reaction to this friction? "Letting them get to know each other should put a stop to that". Er, right..
Marty was preoccupied with new inmate Spike, who he had known from school. Meg was trying to help him understand. "People do change, that was a long time ago." True. Marty's changed at least two times since then.
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