Sunday Mail - Australia
Being under siege in a prison is the governor's worst nightmare ... except when it's your fans, writes Lynne Cairncross.
Bad Girls airs on Tuesdays, Channel 7, 9.30pm. NOT SINCE the heady days of the 80s when the inmates of Wentworth Detention Centre dominated the small screen on Prisoner have women behind bars become such a hot topic. Prisoner Cell Block H, as it is known in the UK, is still being aired, so it is no surprise that Bad Girls, the British update on the theme, has found a devoted following.
Scottish actress Simone Lahbib, has become something of a cult hero, too, since she began the role of Larkhall Women's Prison wing governor Helen Stewart. Bad Girls has been voted the most popular drama in Britain's National TV Awards and the fan mail has been pouring in. Internet fan club sites are springing up and Lahbib is constantly being asked go online and discuss her character and the show. Does she mind? Not a bit. Lahbib is entranced with the British fans' website (www.badgirls.co.uk).
"It's quite a phenomenal site. They have thousands and thousands of people that come in for a look. What's the technical term? Hits, that's it." And that sort of publicity is priceless.
"It is," she laughed.
"Last year I was in a play in the Leicester Haymarket Theatre. This theatre only manages to make money with musicals. "Any time it does a straight play they always make a loss. This time they made money because there were so many of the Bad Girls fans turning up.
" In the spirit of giving the fans what they want, Lahbib did agree to take part in an online chatroom for the fan club a few months ago.
One technical disaster followed another, but, fortified with a glass of wine or two, Lahbib stayed past midnight happily answering questions. Quite a refreshing and down-to-earth attitude towards the viewers.
"Audiences are now up around the 9.5 million mark," said Lahbib, who first rose to prominence in The Young Person's Guide To Becoming A Rock Star. "It has been incredible. Especially at the moment because the whole [British] television system is changing around now that we have so much cable television." Getting a new series up is an expensive gamble.
Brian Park (former Coronation Street producer) and three friends gave up their well-paid TV jobs, borrowed $13.5 million from the bank and set about writing scripts for Bad Girls. With the third series under way they can relax. The risk has finally paid off. "They are smiling and their bank managers are smiling," Lahbib said.
Serendipity helped her nail down the character of Helen Stewart. Shed Productions (the makers of Bad Girls) did considerable research into women's prisons and organised meetings with former prisoners. Then a friend said she had someone Lahbib had to meet: a young female prison governor. "She was perfect! In real life she went the same route as Helen Stewart, in that she went to university, was fast-tracked into the job and had become a governor grade four by age 24, the same as my character. She was very young, very pretty and worked in Holloway Prison in London.
It was great for me as she broke down my stereotypes of what such a woman would be like." Such fast-tracking has also made Helen Stewart very unpopular with the older, established prison officers so the character is often in conflict with her less fair-minded colleagues. This aspect seems to have appealed to many women, judging by the letters Lahbib has received. "There have been letters from women saying, 'Love the way your character is so feisty, you've given me confidence to take on challenges at work'."
There has also been mail in appreciation of the series' portrayal of gay women. "They were so fed up with the skinhead and dungarees bull dyke stereotypes," she said.
Top dog prisoner in Bad Girls is Nikki Wade, a strong but feminine lesbian, played by Mandana Jones. A few episodes down the track it becomes plain Wade thinks very highly of Governor Stewart. The kiss, when it happened, Lahbib found very easy to do. "I think the fact we were both straight made the whole thing easier in a way. If it's a male, good looking and you quite fancy him its a lot more difficult," she wryly confessed.
Like so many Scots, Lahbib is not afraid to travel.
Three years ago she made it to Australia exploring from Melbourne to Sydney to Byron Bay. "I even got as far as Nimbin," she said proudly. But when this confessed very, boringly normal person is overcome with the urge to get away from the claustrophobic Larkhall prison set and the concrete of London, she goes home.
"I come up to Scotland as often as I can," she said, the accent broadening noticeably. "My home is in Stirling, which is known as the gateway to the highlands. From my house you look across and there is a beautiful ridge of hills called the Orchil Hills. As you go further north it becomes more spikey and raggedy. It is just fantastic scenery. From my house you can also see the Wallace monument up on a hill. Yes, a great deal taller than Mel Gibson (who played William Wallace in Braveheart). "Whenever you're travelling to Stirling on the train or whatever, you see the Wallace monument, and there's a saying: 'You ken yer hame,' which is you know you're back home."
