Porridge

1 9 7 4 - 1 9 7 7 (UK)
21 x 30 minute episodes

This superb British comedy from the pens of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais was set inside the walls of HMP Slade, an isolated prison in deepest Cumbria, and centred on Norman Stanley Fletcher - a habitual criminal who accepted imprisonment as an occupational hazard. So it was that this Muswell Hill wide-boy with a heart of gold was sentenced to a five year term at Her Majesty's pleasure.

Against his wishes, 2215 Fletcher was forced to share a cell with young 3470 Lennie Godber, a first-time offender from Birmingham, embarking on a two year stretch for breaking and entering. Fletch became a father-like figure to the amiable but naive Godber, helping him to weather his first period of confinement, showing him the tricks of survival and leading him through the vagaries of prison etiquette.

Fletcher's considerable experience in incarceration brought him respect from most of the criminals around him, the likes of 'Bunny' Warren, illiterate and easily led; decrepit Blanco; 'Black Jock' McLaren, the Glaswegian heavy; and Lukewarm, the gay cook.

But there were also less agreeable inmates like 'Orrible' Ives, the slimy Harris and 'genial' Harry Grout, the wing's Mr Big, who ran all the rackets and enjoyed life's little luxuries in his own comfortably appointed private room. On the other side of the fence was the chief warder, Mr Mackay (a wonderfully stiff Fulton Mackay), whose exaggerated speech patterns and neck twisting created one of the few likable fascists on television: "I am firm but fair. Remember I treat you all with equal contempt". 

Despairing of the ineffective Governor, Mr Venables, Mackay longed to regiment the prisoners and rule the prison with iron jackboots. But like his easily conned, hen-pecked, stuttering assistant, Mr Barraclough, he was never a match for our hero. Laced together with Fletcher's sparkling wit and skilful repartee, Porridge extolled the ironies and paradoxes of prison life, never glorifying life inside but cleverly commenting on the difficulties and pressures endured by convicted criminals.

The series - which grew out of a play entitled Prisoner and Escort (seen as part of Ronnie Barker's Seven Of One anthology in 1973) - became a firm favourite in jails across Britain. Unfortunately, a short-lived sequel, Going Straight (1978), featuring Fletch's life back on the outside, failed to reach the heights of the original series. A cinema version of Porridge was released in 1979.

TRIVIA NOTE
At the height of its UK success, Clement and La Frenais instigated an American adaptation of Porridge, entitled On The Rocks, which was screened by ABC.  After weathering initial criticism from the US National Association For Justice, which worried it painted too rosy a picture of prison life, the series - set in Alamese Minimum Security Prison - enjoyed some success, especially with its employment of real-life inmates as extras and walk-ons (The UK series had done likewise). Running to 22 episodes in 1975 and 1976, the US version starred José Perez as the scheming Hector Fuentes, and Mel Stewart as his adversary, the stern prison officer Gibson.