Prisoner of Melbourne: Prisoner Queens

Jude Kuring as Noeline Burke. Because of its great gay following, Prisoner fans were long ago dubbed “Prisoner Queens.” By the mid-’90s, by which time Prisoner was a UK sensation and had even been reimagined as a West End musical starring drag artist Lily Savage (Paul O’Grady), I don’t see how anyone could argue with the appellation. While it’s easy to attribute Prisoner’s gay following to camp, which it certainly is, I think a greater factor is the fact that gays feel great empathy for people who, condemned by society, band together in a tribe of friendship.

“Prisoner Queen” (2003) is an independent film from writer-director Timothy Spanos that takes the concept one step further. Tim Burns plays Prisoner Queen Alex, who lives his entire life through Prisoner. Meanwhile his Mum, an actress who was in the show and is played by real-life Prisoner cast member Jude Kuring, is dying of cancer.

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Federation Square, Flinders Street, Melbourne) honored Jude Kuring with a retrospective in February, 2009.

The crude, sneering Noeline Burke, who refuses to accept welfare so long as someone else has a purse for her to rifle through, is one of Prisoner’s most memorable characters because of Kuring’s no-holds barred portrayal.

Barbara Jungwirth is Lorna Young. Jeff and I embraced the title and decided to be Kings of the Prisoner Queens. Since any good PQ sees Wentworth through the eyes of a favorite inmate, we chose Lorna Young and Tina Murray, two background prisoners who served for the entire series. At a past Prisoner event, Jungwirth told fans she used Roald Dahl’s story “Lamb to Slaughter” as the source for Lorna’s never seen, never mentioned backstory. In Dahl’s piece, a woman kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb then serves the murder weapon to the cops. (It was famously filmed as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1958). Lorna has just a handful of lines during her stay at Wentworth. In some of these episodes she places a bet on a cockroach race, serves Bea a meal in solitary, fights over the television, and builds a booby trap.

Hazel Henley is Tina Murray. Heard once or twice through the din, Henley’s body of work in her series-long sentence as a backgrounder at Wentworth appears to be the word “Drunk!” Tina hangs out mostly with her mate, Lorna.