Return to Wentworth Detention Centre in Cell Block H remake

Australian media is reporting that Prisoner: Cell Block H is to be ‘re-imaged’ and remade for a new audience later this year.

Produced for Australia’s main subscription cable and satellite television provider, Foxtel, the series is to be entitled Wentworth after the name of the prison complex within the original series.

The reports, as yet unconfirmed on either Foxtel or Fremantle’s press sites, say that the re-imaging of Prisoner will be undertaken by Fremantle Media Australia who own the rights to the programme following their purchase of original production company Grundy Television.

The new series will be overseen by Jo Porter and is said to be focusing on the character of Bea Smith, the ‘top dog’ lead character in the shows early years. The series will see a new cast lined up, and as yet there are no details as to whether any original actors from the saga will appear in new roles to provide a link to the original. Bea was played originally by popular actress Val Lehman.

The original exterior for Prisoner: Cell Block H was the ATV10 studios in Nunawading which remain open – although under new ownership with Global Television now operating the facilities – and continue to produce soap opera such as Neighbours for Network 11 Australia and Channel 5 in the UK.

“I think it’s time to take a look at Prisoner and do a 2012 re-imagining of the show,” Brian Walsh, Foxtel’s director of television told Australia’s Encore news. “It’s going to be provocative in a way that it could never be on Channel Ten but certainly can on subscription television.”

Prisoner debuted in Australia in 1979 on Network 10 and ran for 692 episodes until its axe in 1986 following a decline in ratings and a departure of many popular characters. The series was devised by Reg Watson who began his television career in the UK back in the 1950s with ATV Network in Birmingham. He would in 1964 launch his first soap, Crossroads, which he oversaw for a decade before returning to his native Australia where he joined the Grundy Television independent production company as a drama executive. Other shows from the Grundy and Reg Watson fold include Sons and Daughters and Neighbours.

Reports in 2007 suggested that the Alan Coleman devised medical saga The Young Doctors, which Reg Watson also Executive Produced, was to be returned to television screens with a remake – however the project never took off the ground with Fremantle unable to find an Australian network to pick up the progamme..

The plans for Wentworth suggest the series will begin production in Melbourne later this year however it remains to be seen whether the original Wentworth Detention Centre exterior will be reused for the remake.

Cell Block Trivia

• ATV Network forced Grundy to re-name the programme Prisoner: Cell Block H for overseas sales when British executives suggested the name was too similar to Patrick McGoohan’s Prisoner series made by ATV a decade earlier.

• The theme tune ‘On The Inside’, sung by Lynne Hamilton, reached number one in the Australian charts and number three in the UK leading to Hamilton performing the theme on Top of the Pops.

• The soap was shown in the UK originally on ITV across the regional network on various days and varying times depending where in the country you lived. In 1997 Channel 5 networked the saga across the UK for the first time, while some ITV regions were still airing later episodes. The last episode aired on ITV in 1998 and the final episode aired on Channel 5 in 2001.

• The show supposedly suffers, like other Reg Watson sagas, from wobbly sets and ‘iffy’ props. Watson himself disputes this fact and says the myth of wobbly sets began when a drunk journalist visited the Crossroads studios in 1965 and said the whole place swayed, which was actually down to the intoxication, however it was picked up upon and rolled out to attack the soap opera format genre there after.

• Many cast members of Prisoner: Cell Block H have appeared in other Reg Watson sagas including Neighbours, The Young Doctors, Crossroads and Sons and Daughters.