ARTICLES

The Citizen

It was a first for our public. Stars from the British series Bad Girls, shown on M-Net every Tuesday night, flew to our shores to do interviews, party on down and fall in love with our wildlife.
"We've been spoilt here, I don't want to go back home," Lara Cazalet (drug addict Zandra Placket) beamed to the journalists gathered around her at the Press conference held at Caesar's Palace yesterday.
The prison series centres on a group of women and their warders, and raises questions about how mothers cope without their children while tackling homophobia, drug abuse and rehabilitation.
For a change, we met the writers, Brian Park (who worked on Prime Suspect which starred Helen Mirren), Ann MacManus (whose credits include the popular Coronation Street) and Maureen Chadwick (who cut her teeth on Eastenders).
As with Yizo Yizo, the team behind the show have done much research and say "everything shown has happened or could happen".
Relationships are formed between some women and the lesbian relationships have caught the imagination of the SA public.
The worldwide reaction has been "astonishing across the board," said Mandana Jones (feisty lesbian prisoner Nikki Wade). "We've been praised for showing three-dimensional characters."
Simone Lahbib (prison head Helen Stewart) said there had been thousands of positive reactions, but she had received one letter which quoted the Bible and warned that she was "being used by the gay liberal front."