Lives of grime
By Sean O Donaile.
- Bad Girls (UTV)
- The Emergency (Radio One)
- A Life of Grime (BBC)
I was advised to review Ally McBeal and Friends but life is difficult
enough without suffering the utterly vacuous George `screw' Clooney and his
cronies [surely that's ER? - Ed.] rabbiting on about ``relationships'' and
``love'' on trite TV, so I've decided to plump for the 23rd time for a
programme about life in a women's prison cluttered with `bent' screws and
`misguided' loudmouth inmates, Bad Girls was touted as a ``gritty new drama''
but if anything it was overhyped.
Rachel (of Zoë fame from Corrie Street) is a recovering drug addict
unjustly sentenced to three years on the slab for possession of three
Ecstasy tabs, where her evil vinyl-clad miniskirted cellmate robs her
`smokes', only for her to be rescued by a caring middle-aged screw, up to
his neck in dirty deeds, swopping favours with inmates for sexual
dalliances.
His workmate, Sylvia, is portrayed as your typical beer-bellied , burnt out
cynical screw who ignores the pleas of Carol, a pregnant inmate, who
subsequently suffers an horrific life-threatening miscarriage alone in her
cell.
Guv'nor Mary is a new wave Ma'am, determined to be fair to the women (as
all governors in these programmes are), only to be undermined by the
efforts of her corrupt staff - ``I hate these graduate types... trying to
suck up to the prisoners.''
Her attempts to quell dissent among the women fail and she subsequently
attempts to cancel the `Prison Fashion Show', which backfires on her badly
- ``Shove your stupid Fashion Show up yer arse Ma'am''. The women are
portrayed as a bunch of St. Trinian's girls screaming for their supper, led
by the clichéd butch boss, determined to stir it up.
Give me the brilliantly tacky Australian Seventies soap Prisoner Cell Block
H, complete with cardboard walls. Prison life is a serious theme and
deserves to be treated with a somewhat honest portrayal, not this claptrap,
which there was a lot of when World War II broke out and Ireland was filled
with rumours of the local shopkeeper being a German spy , with radio
transmitters under his bed and paratroopers descending on the shores of
Youghal, on the south coast of Cork, which is where the excellent Radio One
histo-documentary The Emergency was set.
Led by a coalition of middle-aged former British Army and IRA veterans, the
LSF (Local Security Forces) was a patchy attempt by de Valera's government
to keep the invading hordes at bay.
Tim, Mick and Johnny are refreshingly honest and witty in their reminiscing
- ``Sure we were never prepared and didn't even know how to walk straight.''
Uniforms were initially comprised of brown boiler suits, earning these
local `volunteers' the nickname `chocolate soldiers'.''Christ they were
bloody awful.''
Fortunately for Dad's Army, trendier green jackets, Glengarry caps and
shiny boots were issued for Christmas and Springfield rifles, ``big Yankee
guns'', added the professional touch - ``Boy, were we the lads, walking up
the main street with the rifles as big as ourselves. Don't talk to me about
Gary Cooper.''
Ammunition was tightly guarded lest it fell into the wrong hands (I wonder
who that might be?!) but gun oil was somewhat more plentiful, so much so
that it substituted for hair oil of a Saturday night, ``but of a summer's
night it would be running down your face and that was the end of the
courting!''
Manouevres consisted of trips to the seaside to look out at the horizon and
hikes across muddy streams at six in the morning followed by pints of
porter and wedges of brown bread with strawberry jam in the nearest
hostelry.
Summer camps were more threatening, however, with embarrassed teenagers
being forced to expose their privates for inspection and being lectured on
the dangers of VD and crabs - ``Sure I thought they were the things we
caught down the beach in Youghal.''
y few Germans that up to then had peacefully coexisted with their
neighbours suddenly became spies and were promptly ostracised. Fortunately
for the people of Cork, the submarines, ( ``I wished they had've landed and
bought us an effing pint''), never came, as ``our boys would have been
decimated - half of us would have run off or gone home I supposeî but sure
they were the best days of our lives.''
Also on the trail of crabs, rats and other nasties were the environmental
health officers of London's Haringey Council, featured on A Life of Grime
last week - sure there's worse ways of making a living, although I don't
recall anyone stating that they loved their job.
The cameras took us to the house of 80-year-old Mr. Ondropolis, whose
preference to dump his waste and rubbish in his house over a 30-year period
irked his neighbours-''waste not, want not''.
Not so grimy, one might argue, as the Southern hordes who descend on the
Belfast Festival every August, armed only with a copy of An Phoblacht, a
rusty toothbrush and one pair of socks , only to be discovered abandoned
beside a Poleglass bonfire at week's end.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)