A scene from Wentworth in
which the character Bea is arrested. Picture: Foxtel Source: Supplied
Holly Byrnes, The Daily Telegraph, reports
It’s the fear in the eyes of Bea Smith,
formerly known to Australian TV audiences as the terrifying top dog of Cell
Block H on Prisoner, that acts like a marker between that series and its new
"reimagining,'' Wentworth, coming soon to Foxtel.
The Bea of old was seemingly fearless, ruling the fictional women's
detention centre with an iron fist and animal instincts.
This new Bea (played by Underbelly Razor's Danielle Cormack) who is only
just beginning her life at Wentworth as scared as a rabbit, a battered wife
unaware what easy prey she could become on "the inside".
Her terror, as she sits in the back of paddy wagon is utterly palpable,
the moral bankruptcy of some of the inmates, made clear from the first graphic
scenes of episode one, screened for media this week and to air on the SoHo
channel from May 1.
Since Foxtel first flagged it was reinventing Prisoner about the
same time Channel 10 began its run on retro programming (to mixed success), the
water cooler chatter about Wentworth has bubbled away like no other
program in recent memory.
Prepare now for it to boil over once it premieres, Underbelly like we
haven't seen before.
Make no mistake, this is no Vaseline-lensed nostalgia trip but a
thoroughly modern new take on the gritty goings-on of a women's prison today.
From the flashes of harsh neon lighting straight out of a Kings Cross
shooting gallery, to the clever echo of the iconic Prisoner theme song,
this brilliant retelling picks up where the pioneering series left off and then
takes the kind of shocking plot detours contemporary TV viewers would expect
from award-winning US dramas like Breaking Bad or Sons Of Anarchy.
The old razorwire gang are all back and there's not a weak actor among
them: Doreen (played by Shareena Clanton), Lizzie Birdsworth (Celia Ireland),
Franky Doyle (Nicole da Silva) and crime matriarch Jacs Holt (Kris McQuade).
The casting of this FremantleMedia production is masterful, especially
McQuade, who has the uncanny look of someone who should have been cast in Prisoner.
The screws aren't half bad either, with Logie-winning actress Catherine
McClements as Governor Meg Jackson, Underbelly Badness bad arse Aaron Jeffrey
(Officer Matthew Fletcher), Looking For Alibrandi's Leeanna Walsman
(lawyer Erica Davidson) and Samoan-born star of NZ television Robbie Magasiva
(playing Clements' on-screen husband Will Jackson).
Cormack, for one, ought to start writing her Logies speech and bracing
for a call from Harvey Weinstein et al as this performance will win her all the
plaudits and plum jobs she obviously so richly deserves.
Wentworth premieres on Foxtel's SoHo channel from May 1.
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