The broadcast schedule was later changed to five nights a week airing at midnight. Season 8 began broadcasting Sjuan in September 2017 at 3:00 pm. On June 18, 2021, producer Matt Batten created the Talking Prisoner podcast and YouTube channel. Batten's co-host Ken Mulholland served as head cameraman on Prisoner from the series debut until episode 692. Mulholland and Batten interview cast and crew from Prisoner in depth. The podcast however also features interviews with cast and crew from other popular Australian internationally successful series like Sons and Daughters and Neighbours, and also featured interviews from staff at actual prisons including a 2023 interview with a warder from Ireland and a Prison Chaplin from San Quentin. In 2023 Mulholland departed [21] the podcast to focus on his art and it was announced that Tim Burns had joined as the new co-host of the podcast. The show would move to Tuesdays at 9 p.m. in the fall of 1980, continuing with the Caged Women title. [46] The show would be off the schedule by the 1981–1982 television season, [47] but by the fall of 1982, Global would reintroduce the show to the schedule, still as Caged Women, in the half-hour format, weeknights at midnight and 12:30am. [48] The program would be off the schedule by the start of the 1983–1984 season. [49]

The series gained a positive reception. Initially conceived as a standalone miniseries of 16 episodes, its popularity meant it was developed into an ongoing series. It has since endured worldwide, acquiring cult classic status, particularly for its somewhat outrageous acting and plotlines. Don Battye and Peter Pinne were employed by the Grundy Organisation, Battye wrote and produced scripts for Neighbours, The Restless Years and Sons and Daughters, Pinne worked on The Young Doctors, Sons and Daughters and Neighbours and oversaw the overseas productions of Grundy works in North and South America. Both were also Composers, they would write the Theme for Sons and Daughters and two songs for Neighbours. Both had worked on Stage Musicals, both Adult and Children based, so in the 90's they wrote the Book Music and Lyrics to what was then called The Wild, Wild Women of Wentworth, a stage musical using a faithful retelling of the 692 episodes with a mixture of different styles of music from Country to Pop. Betty was born in Manhattan, New York, the daughter of Elizabeth (nee Sprout), a nurse, and Hubert Bobbitt, who worked in a steel mill when the family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She enjoyed drama while attending Norristown high school and, on leaving aged 18, moved to Los Angeles, where she showed her acting talent playing Agnes Gooch in a stage production of Auntie Mame. The series, produced by the Grundy Organisation, was conceived by Reg Watson and filmed at the then Network Ten Melbourne Studios at Nunawading and on location.Other series to have featured Prisoner spoofs included The Paul Hogan Show, Let the Blood Run Free, Naked Video and The Krypton Factor. The actor was more concerned about the soap’s violence. “One week you’d be raped and the next you’d be at someone with a bit of lead pipe,” she said. Inspired by the British television drama Within These Walls, the show was initially conceived as a 16-episode series, with a pilot episode bearing the working title "Women Behind Bars". [nb 2] Its storylines focused on the lives of the prisoners and, to a lesser extent, the officers and other prison staff. When the initial episodes met an enthusiastic reception, it was felt that Prisoner could be developed into an ongoing soap opera. The early storylines were developed and expanded, with assistance from the Victorian Corrective Services Department. [5] Bobbitt’s 1963 marriage to Robin Hill, an Australian artist, ended in divorce after three years. She is survived by their son, Chris, and her son Oliver from another relationship, as well as Meg “Mig” Dann, her partner of 31 years.

The second rerun began in May 2014, by station TV4 Guld and again airing Monday through to Thursdays, and screening at 10:00pm, with episode 32 on July 3.Lily Savage' star takes over as Chitty Childcatcher – News". whatsonstage.com. Archived from the original on 5 May 2013 . Retrieved 10 April 2012. Peta Toppano's first name was spelled in the closing credits as "Peita", her actual spelling. Both "Peta" and "Peita" are used in other television programs, movies, and magazine articles. A TV producer spotted Bobbitt and hired her to appear on the Australian TV show Daly at Night (1962-63), hosted by the American comedian Jonathan Daly. She had comedy spots as, in her words, “a female Victor Borge, singing off-key” and was known as “the dizzy brunette from Big Bear in Pennsylvania”. The series was first aired in the United States on KTLA in Los Angeles on 8 August 1979, initially under the original name, Prisoner. [35] Shown Wednesdays at 8pm, it was the first Australian series broadcast in prime time in the United States. [ citation needed] The series, whose first two episodes were screened as a two-hour special, was viewed by a quarter of all television viewers in the Los Angeles market and was in second place for the night, beaten only by ABC's Charlie's Angels. [36]

During the spring and summer of 1985, the series was screened nationally on USA Network, [25] weekdays at 11 a.m. ET, also in a half-hour format. It is unknown which episodes were televised. [43] Canada [ edit ] Although Bobbitt semi-retired in 1998 to run a novelty shop in the Blue Mountains north of Sydney, she appeared alongside other Prisoner stars to celebrate its 40th anniversary with cameos in a 2019 episode of Neighbours. Alongside some outlandish storylines, it featured serious issues, dealing with feminism, homosexuality, social reform and how women responded to prison. In New Zealand, Prisoner was first shown on TV2 on Monday 2 March 1981 and aired up to four afternoons a week, Monday to Thursday, at 2:30p.m. before moving to twice a week, Mondays and Tuesdays, in the same timeslot by October 1985. On Monday 9 February 1987, the series was moved to TV One and continued to air Mondays and Tuesdays at around 2:30p.m. until Thursday 23 July 1987 when it aired only on Thursdays in that slot. The final episode of Prisoner was broadcast on Friday 16 September 1988 at 2:35p.m. The series was rerun on Orange and, later, Sky 1. [25] Sheila Florance biography titled "On the Inside" was published in 2016 by Helen Martineau, which details her career as an actress and performer, including her role as Lizzie Birdsworth on Prisoner.

Recommendations

Network Ten began rerunning Prisoner on 8 May 1995; the series was cancelled, despite promises that it would return after the 1996 Christmas break. BBC UKTV began airing it from the beginning on 30 November 1997, at 12:15am on Tuesday and Thursday and 11:30pm on Saturday and Sunday. A repeat was broadcast at 2pm on Monday. From March 2022, the show is available for streaming at 10play. [52] [ citation needed]