Reviews

Prisoner. Truly one of the greatest drama's ever made. At the time the first episode was made it was groundbreaking television, and viewed all these years later it still is. Perhaps only a culture as young as the Australian one could have come up with such a fresh approach to the subject of Prison on screen. Yes it's derided and laughed about in many quarters, but mistakenly so and it's millions of viewers world wide are testiment to this.

Tour de Force performances from Maggie Kirkpatrick as tragic evil warder Joan Ferguson, Gerda Nicholson as the liberal Governor Anne Reynolds and Val Lehman as Top Dog supremo Bea Smith. Riots, fires,blackmails,fraud , kidnappings, vice and murder were all served up on an alarmingly regular basis. And that's just the officers storylines. I'm not joking, if you can last the course of all 692 episodes you will have watched every possible crime story , it's possible to think of! Very memorable notables include the fantastic British born actress Amanda Muggleton as Chrissy Latham, Tina Bursill's ice Queen Sonia Stevens, Judith McGrath's brilliant performance as complex officer Colleen Powell and the late Sheila Florence's unforgettable creation of Lizzie Birdsworth ( an astonishing performance that has to be seen). Notable storylines include Bea Smith's amnesia, the three episode terrorist seige in which Myra Desmond bows out, Franky Doyle's story and the story of misunderstood Kath Maxwell. Any story involving final Top Dog Rita Conners was worth it's salt including her harrowing experience in Blackmoor prison. The writing was as diverse as the acting could be but Ian Smith's episodes were always exciting and meaty. And although the show finally closed it's gates after seven years it's last year was considered by many to be the best, thanks to some excellent scripts and compelling charactors like Kath Maxwell and fiery Biker Goddess Rita Conners , played with such relish by Kate Hood and Glenda Linscott that it was impossible not to watch! Too many storylines too mention, too many charactors to review! Prisoner will be truly missed. Long live the reruns......

Knots Landing was many things over an extraordinary amount of television years....14 seasons is an astonishing feat for any television primetime show. It was the best of shows and at times the most frustrating of shows....Executive Producers Jacobs and Filerman pushed and tested the boundaries and constraints of serial drama by daring to be mundane where other shows were exciting and changing the fundamental landscape of the show three times.It is also worth noting that this show focused largely on it's female charactors and gave rise to one of the most popular women on television Karen Fairgate Mackenzie, played by the multi talented Michele Lee.

The first four seasons of the show were an attempt to look at the lives of five family units in a suburban cul de sac in Southern California. There were great strengths of performances, notably from the stellar female performances of Michele Lee, Joan Van Ark,Donna Mills, the brilliant Constance McCashin and Julie Harris. Some of the episodes were gentle some of them were harder and gave the promise of what was to come in later years, but there is no doubt that without the early, subtle and largely ignored first years of the show it could not have garnered the huge audiences it did later in it's run.

And so as the eighties swept in, so Knots Landing changed. Subtley and slowly over the fifth season, the producers changed the focus of the show from the cul de sac to the larger town. And while they changed the look of it, they didn't actually make it different. The sweeping dramatic music, the pathos, the drama and the humour all remained intact so that by it's sixth season when the writers came up with a bizarre and heartwrenching story, whereby Valene Ewing 's babies are stolen and secretly adopted, the show finally jumped into the top ten ratings and held it's time slot, beating off Hill Street Blues and later LA Law. In fact the show was the only primetime show around this time that didn't suffer a drop in ratings the next season.

Many would argue that by it's eight and ninth year things were wearing thin and when budget cuts forced producers to loose some of it's core cast Julie Harris and Constance McCashin, writers and producers again shifted the emphasis of Knots toward a new set of characters. Looking back, with hindsight it's easy to see that this was a big mistake and one that the show never fully recovered from, although the 10th season is regarded as one of it's finest years.And as always there was a fine performance from the supporting new female lead Lynne Moody.

And so it sailed into the sunset as quietly as it had begun. The later years had brought some fine performances from William Devane and Kevin Dobson, thanks to some terrific writing and a touching story involving child abuse. Other notables include the outrageous Anne Matheson character, played with glee by ex Mamas and Papas Michele Philips....Don Murray's gentle Sid Fairgate and Lar Park Lincoln's wickedly good performance as Linda Fairgate.

But when all is said and done, and the re runs keep fans old and new tuned into this shows many facets, it's a credit to Jacobs and Filerman, Lee, Shackelford, Van Ark, Mills, Harris , McCashin and Dobson that this legacy of quality entertainment is still so fondly remembered.

Knots Landing. Noises Everywhere. We will never see it's kind again.