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Why I’d Swap My Entire Adult Life for One More Night Of Prisoner: Cell Block H
Reality can just… rack off
There is one TV show that sends me back in time.
A glimpse (or thought) of Prisoner: Cell Block H and I’m transported back to the late 1980s, fumbling with my front door key at 1am, knowing exactly what awaited me on ITV.
Prisoner: Cell Block H wasn’t supposed to be appointment television. Hell, it wasn’t even supposed to be good television.
Back in the late 1980s this low-budget Australian women’s prison drama was dumped into the graveyard shift on UK TV channels between midnight and 2am, two or three nights a week.
It should have been the kind of thing you stumbled past while channel-hopping to find something better.
Instead, it became the most cultish viewing experience of my late teenage years — and perhaps the most formative.
And I cannot think of it now without experiencing a great, wrenching sadness.
Non-members can read this article here.
I was in my late teens back then — that golden age when nights out stretched until the early hours, and coming home meant tiptoeing so as not to wake sleeping parents.
