For U.S. fans of Bad Girls, the wait is over. After a summer-long hiatus, the third of eight seasons of the hit British prison drama begins airing on Logo (AfterEllen.com’s parent company) tonight at 10 p.m. ET.
Fans who already watched the show’s first two seasons know why tonight’s episode is so important. A dizzying array of Season 2 cliffhangers left us aching for answers: Will Helen turn Nikki in? Will she give in to Nikki’s reckless passion and join her at the corner of Haight and Ashbury? Will Shell take the plunge (so to speak)? Will Bodybag recover her dignity and Di her sanity?
That’s plenty of motivation for the show’s loyal fans, but those who’ve never seen the show may still wonder what all the fuss is about. Why should you tune into a half-decade-old prison show with actors you’ve never heard of, sporting accents you can barely understand?
Especially for those Bad Girls virgins (and as a reminder for the rest of us), here then is a handy rundown of 10 reasons to watch Season 3 of Bad Girls. 10. WWLD?
I think we know what straight male writers and producers might do with the Nikki and Helen story line:
Realizing the folly of her lesbian dalliances, Helen succumbs to the sexual tension between her and evil prison guard Jim Fenner.
Suddenly and with no foreshadowing, Nikki becomes a crazed stalker. Also, possibly a vampire.
Nikki hangs herself when she discovers Helen’s pregnant.
The more interesting – and too rarely answered – question is What Would Lesbians Do? How might they handle the culmination of the first of several lesbian romances, a love story they placed front and center for nearly 40 episodes? Season 3 of Bad Girls gives us a chance to find out. We discover what a team of creators and a talented pair of lead writers – all lesbians – would do with an ample budget, two engaging actresses and three full seasons to tell a classic love story. It is, simply, must-see television.
9. Loads of Fun – and Politics Too
Writing about the upcoming musical version of Bad Girls, Kath Gotts, the composer and lyricist (and co-creator Maureen Chadwick’s partner) said, “The marketing will tell you that it’s loads of fun – and it is – but it’s also an indictment of our penal system.”
Fun and an indictment – there’s a pairing you don’t see every day. That dichotomy pretty much sums up the underlying complexity of the small-screen version of Bad Girls, which slides with ease from silliness to serious drama and social commentary. In Season 3, the show depicts sexual abuse and harassment in the workplace, and the woefully inadequate treatment of prisoners with psychological issues. The struggles of a 16-year-old inmate who cuts herself and a Nigerian inmate who doesn’t speak English are particularly revealing. And yet the season is, as usual, also filled with more than its share of lighter moments and gallows humor.
Chadwick told AfterEllen.com that female viewers have been particularly adept at understanding the complexities the show presents. “One of the interesting things that has emerged, really, is how it seems that women are generally better at emotionally multitasking and don’t have a problem with a show that is simultaneously – and sometimes within the same scene – both serious and funny.”
8. What Helen Wants
Oh, Helen. You poor, confused soul. In Season 1, you nearly married a pale, long-faced bore. In Season 2, you made progress, scrapping those pesky professional ethics right along with your drab twin sets so you could be with the world’s sexiest female inmate.
But you never make it easy, do you? In the Season 2 cliffhanger, you pick up the phone to turn Nikki in, dialing three numbers that may extend her sentence from life to one of those absurd multiple-life sentences. Not the way to impress a woman, Helen.
Much of Season 3 hinges on the difficult choices our beloved Scotswoman has to make, personally and professionally. Is Helen a straight woman who succumbed temporarily to a lesbian’s advances? Will she fall for the next handsome guy who walks inside the prison walls? Will she give up her career to be with Nikki? Will she ever figure out what she wants? Chadwick, a self-described “proselytizing feminist,” said the writers wanted to make Nikki and Helen’s romance about more than “amor vincit omnia“(love conquers all), so they show the women, especially Helen, struggling with and ultimately “overthrowing all the inhibitions and prejudices that obstruct and distort the natural course of our emotional development in a heterosexist society.”
With all that inner turmoil going on, it’s no wonder one of the most poignant scenes in the entire series occurs in the first episode of Season 3, when Helen holds herself, tears falling, as she stands in the midst of the chaos of the prison and of her own life.
7. Learn British
Americans can be so stubborn. While people in much of the rest of the world learn two, three and more languages as a matter of course, we cling to our monolingual status as if it were the lone branch on the side of a cliff.
For those paralyzed with fear when their Starbucks cup comes with Spanish writing on its side, Bad Girls provides a safe, gentle movement away from our Copernican view of the linguistic universe. Here’s a handy glossary of key terms to guide you through Season 3:
ÔÇó Americans have “prison officers”; Brits have “screws.” ÔÇó Americans get “tired”; Brits get “knackered.” ÔÇó Americans “kiss” and have “sex”; Brits “snog” and “shag” (lovely terms that really ought to be adopted worldwide). ÔÇó Wealthy Americans are “rich”; wealthy Brits are “posh.” ÔÇó We’re “surprised”; Brits are “gobsmacked.” ÔÇó And — particularly handy for Bad Girls — we have crazy people, and they have “nutters.”Oh, and don’t forget the exclamations. The characters on Bad Girls share many of our curse words, but the Brits also manage to soften the blow with clever alternatives such as “Bollocks!” and — at least in Zandra’s case — “Twatting twat!”
6. “I think I shall rather miss being a criminal.”
Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other cult classics, Bad Girls offers up plenty of ambiguity, clever dialogue and layers of meaning to keep die-hard fans glued to message boards and their region-free DVDs.
You’ll have to watch Season 3 to hear many more of the show’s classic one-liners and exchanges, but here are a few reminders of how unexpectedly funny the show can be:
Shell: So what you in here for anyway? Nicking gob-stoppers? Shaz: Triple murder.5. BFFs Julie S. and Julie J.Hollamby: All right, let’s have you! Nikki: In your dreams, love!
Crystal: She didn’t deserve to live; she stole my hair-oil.
Hollamby: If there’s one job I loathe here, it’s visiting time. All that pawing and telling each other how much they’ll miss the other. Then afterwards, it’s back to the girlfriend for him, and the same for her.
Hollamby: Do you think I was born yesterday? Yvonne: Not by the look of you, no.
The court jesters of HMP Larkhall are locked up for all eight seasons of Bad Girls. Their humorous escapades and quick banter lighten the heaviest episodes, and over the years, they deliver a fair share of angst and sorrow of their own.
It’s easy to overlook the two Julies as laughable creatures, what with their bad hair, short/tall dynamic and overlapping one-liners. But there’s something more there, too. They share an unquestioned bond and display profound loyalty for one another, as well as for other weak and trod-upon inmates at Larkhall. It’s a rare thing — at least on-screen — to see two women stick together as they do, and their relationship is a continuing highlight of Bad Girls, from the first season to the last. In Season 3, Julie S. (the one with horrendous fashion sense … oh, wait … the short one with horrendous fashion sense) tastes freedom, while Julie J. remains behind bars, where she struggles to survive without her friend. When Julie S. reunites with the father of her son, she’s forced to choose between her partner in crime and a promising new life on the outside.
The choice she makes is dim-witted, funny and terribly sad — precisely the mix we expect from the two Julies.
4. Helen and Nikki’s Elemental Magic
“Math class is tough,” Barbie says. The only thing tougher is chemistry, where the level of difficulty rises — in order — from general chemistry to organic and quantum chemistry and, finally, to the pinnacle of impossibility: on-screen chemistry.
Mandana Jones (Nikki) and Simone Lahbib (Helen) have the sexually charged chemistry with each other that so many actors lack with their on-screen partners, and they have it in spades — at least on Bad Girls. Interestingly, the two actually appeared together in a soap called London Bridge before they made their way behind bars, as shown in this clip. Both actors have tried to explain why they clicked so well on Bad Girls, but you get the feeling Jones and Lahbib probably don’t know themselves all the reasons their on-screen romance worked so well. Heck, their chemistry is so good it even comes across in silly TV promos.
3. It’s a prison!
Portions of Bad Girls were filmed at a real prison, the former Oxford Prison, while interior scenes were filmed at an enormous, specially built soundstage. The somber setting, with its clanking doors, rusty bars and dim lighting, is an ideal backdrop for the stories Bad Girls tells — reining in the camp and humor and reinforcing the show’s darker elements.
The prison also keeps the drama churning. Prisoners are in perpetual conflict with prison officers, and every inmate wants out and can’t get out (at least not without a good wig). New inmates are always arriving to stir up trouble, and drugs, sex and violence are a part of everyday life. Prison is a constant pitched battle between good and bad, with viewers repeatedly challenged to figure out which is which. At its best, Bad Girls shows us that nobody, whether inside or outside of prison walls, can be categorized so easily. Mandana Jones summed it up nicely for AfterEllen.com: “Any stories to do with prison are always interesting. If you happen to get into a character or a story line, then you’re on your way. It becomes riveting viewing because the characters are constantly trying to overcome the conflict that is created by their physical incarceration.
“And,” she adds, wary of making the show sound more serious than it really is, “there are lots of saucy birds in it.”
2. That Bloody Jim Fenner
In the last episode of Season 2, evil prison guard Jim Fenner was about to get his due at the wrong end of some jagged glass. In tonight’s Season 3 premiere, will Shell Dockley have the guts to spill Fenner’s? Will she finally use her sociopathic tendencies to do some good in the world?
If Shell plunges that shard of glass into Fenner, viewers’ hearts will dance like Sylvia “Bodybag” Hollamby on ecstasy. But once the dancing ended (and to be fair it would last a long time), the reality would set in: Fenner’s death would leave a gaping hole in the show. That’s particularly true in Season 3, when he and Helen ramp up their feud, racing to see who can collect enough evidence to end the other’s career. For a drama to work, its villains need to be complex. Sure, Fenner rapes and assaults people. He’s the consummate kiss-up, kick-down guy who lies and connives his way to power and then uses that power to abuse every woman who crosses his path. But the real beauty of it? Sometimes Fenner’s in the right. Sometimes he knows his job better than our beloved Helen or anyone else.
And sometimes Fenner is almost, dare we say, likeable. He wins over inmates like the two Julies with his affable ways, and — lord help her — attracts fellow prison officer Karen Betts with his roguish charm. Because Fenner can be charming … sort of, at least. If you like the leering, sloppy-kissing, amoral, violent type.
1. The Last Scene
The British were fortunate to see Bad Girls before the rest of us, but they also suffered more than most of us. You remember those days before YouTube, before blogs and message boards? Before Google was a verb? That’s when the Brits were waiting from one long Tuesday to the next, never sure if Helen and Nikki would be in the next episode and what would happen if they were.
So you can perhaps understand why some British viewers were rabidly upset throughout Season 3, as Nikki and Helen’s relationship took unexpected twists and turns that made fans wonder if the writers would break their hearts (the fans’, that is) and separate the lovers forever. Now, of course, you can cheat. You can find out all you want to know on at least a dozen sites. Or you can wait, savoring every moment, suffering like the British (and haven’t you always wanted to do that?) until Helen and Nikki’s very last scene.
Because you won’t know until the final moments of Season 3 how one of television’s greatest lesbian romances ends.
