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Within These Walls: Series Two (TV)
R2 - United Kingdom - Network Review written by and copyright: Paul Lewis (10th April 2009). |
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The Show
 
This second series of LWT’s prison-based drama Within These Walls was broadcast in 1975. Googie Withers returns as Faye Boswell, the governor of Stone Park women’s prison. Through the episodes in this second series, Boswell once again pushes her agenda of reform, sometimes working against the system in order to ensure the welfare of the prisoners in her care and reframe Stone Park prison as a place of rehabilitation rather than restitution. In her work, Boswell is sometimes aided and, more often than not, challenged by both the other prison staff and the prisoners themselves. Having said that, the conflicts delineated in the first series are ‘softened’ here: in the first series, the newly-appointed Boswell was almost constantly in conflict with her deputy Mrs Armitage (Mona Bruce), who represents the ‘old guard’ of prison officers for whom prison is a place of punishment rather than rehabilitation. The conflict between Boswell and Armitage was also essentially class-based. However, in this second series the conflict between Armitage and Boswell is less pronounced: throughout the first series, the relationship between the two women saw an organic development from mutual distrust to a realisation that both women had qualities that the other lacked, and by the end of the series the two women recognised that in order to run the prison effectively they needed to cooperate. Like other women’s prison-set films such as The Weak and the Wicked (J. Lee Thompson, 1954), the first series of Within These Walls established the necessity for cross-class co-operation and foregrounded the need for people to overcome their prejudices (O’Sullivan & Wilson, 2004: 40). (See our review of the first series of the show here.) Armitage and Boswell still come into conflict in this second series, although their spats lack the bitter edge that was in evidence throughout the first series. 
Due to its issue-led focus, with each episode focusing on a different socially relevant issue, Within These Walls largely avoids the sensationalistic and ‘soapy’ dimension of later shows such as Bad Girls (Shed Productions, 1999-2006). In this second series, Boswell is forced to negotiate many different issues, including a protest demonstration that follows the accidental death of a prisoner at Stone Park (‘Protest’), the relationships between women prisoners and their fatherless children (‘When the Door Opens’) and the ethics of housing teenaged girls amongst the prison’s general population (‘Remand Wing’). Boswell’s sense of ethics are delineated in the first episode, with her assertion during a meeting that there can be no advancement at Stone Park until a new prison complex is built ‘and designed for the 20th Century instead of the 19th’. However, she is reminded of the reality that ‘it all comes back to money, and no government can afford to consider the prison service as one of its first priorities’. Despite the differences among the staff, there is a consensus that ‘the problems are all really symptoms of the same disease: lack of facilities and overcrowding’. As the above exchange suggests, the series sometimes verges on the didactic; but this issue-led focus is one of the series’ strengths, preventing it from becoming riddled with sensationalism. The ‘revolving door’ of cast members seems more evident here than it did during the first series; Within These Walls has a core cast of prison officers and long-term prisoners, but there is an equal focus on short-term prisoners or characters who form the focus of a single episode and then fade into the background. For example, one of the strongest episodes in series two is ‘The Slap’. In this episode, Boswell and her staff must deal with a prisoner, Aileen Cruddley (the great Geraldine Moffat), who has been incarcerated for the brutal murder of a young boy. However, Cruddley is the worst kind of inmate: not only is she a child murderer, but she is also media savvy and has exploited the newspapers, selling her diaries in exchange for ten thousand pounds. Cruddley’s arrival sparks debate amongst both the prisoners and the prison officers, who are split as to how they feel Cruddley should be treated: during one scene, two prison officers debate whether or not Cruddley should have been subjected to some form of capital punishment, with one prison officer asserting that ‘any kind of physical punishment […] is bloody degrading’. 
Cruddley taunts the prison officers with the fact that she has been paid handsomely by the newspapers in exchange for her diaries, and she claims that she committed her crime out of a twisted form of aspiration, ‘to know that I wanted something better than factories and fish and chips’. In response to this, one of the prison officers asserts that ‘When you get out, nobody will remember you – it’s going to be so long’. Cruddley sees this exchange as a declaration of war, and continues to deliberately goad the prison officer to a point where she slaps Cruddley. Boswell must then deal with the fallout from this incident. Meanwhile, Boswell has also been debating the issue of elderly prisoners who have been, to use modern parlance, ‘institutionalised’ to a life within the prison system, seemingly unable (or unwilling) to function in the outside world. As the above brief synopsis of ‘The Slap’ might suggest, the series is often morally complex and details then-topical issues which are as relevant today as they were in the mid-1970s. Held together by strong performances from the central members of the cast and a series of narratives about socially relevant issues, Within These Walls is a commendable drama that is well worth revisiting. 
Disc Breakdown – Disc One: 1. ‘When the Door Opens’ (52:04) 2. ‘Remand Wing’ (52:39) 3. ‘The Slap’ (50:13) Disc Two: 4. ‘Playground’ (51:56) 5. ‘The Truth Game’ (51:43) 6. ‘Debate’ (50:19) Disc Three: 8. ‘Protest’ (51:04) 9. ‘Let the People See’ (50:35) 10. ‘Skivers’ (51:13) Disc Four: 11. ‘Coming Home’ (52:04) 12. ‘The Good Life’ (52:11) 13. ‘For Life’ (51:38)
Video
Shot mostly in-studio on videotape (with some filmed location work), the second series gets a very good presentation on this DVD release from Network. There is strikingly little wear and tear present on these episodes. 
The episodes are presented in their original broadcast screen ratio of 1.33:1, and the original break bumpers are intact. There do not appear to be any edits.
Audio
Audio is presented via a 2-channel mono track, which is clear. There are no subtitles.
Extras
A script for episode two – originating from the LWT archives – is included as a ‘PDF’ file on disc one. The script is title ‘Nowhere for the Kids’, which makes more sense than the finished episode’s title ‘Remand Wing’, considering the episode’s focus on young women prisoners who are little more than children. Hopefully, Network will pull together some form of filmed contextual material for a later series, as they have with Hadleigh. There is strikingly little published material on Within These Walls, so some form of contextualisation would be more than welcome.
Overall
Within These Walls is a solid prison-set drama, possibly the best of the small group of television dramas set within women’s prisons. This set should appeal to fans of classic British television drama. Hopefully, Network will release all five series of the show. References: O’Sullivan, Sean & Wilson, David, 2004: Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Hampshire: Waterside Press For more information, please visit the homepage of Network DVD.
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