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Originally Posted by jamie_leigh44  Jim and Coleen were in it for quite long stretches but aren't particularly remembered by the casual watcher. Joan and Vera were in it a lot less than Meg but remain a lot more memorable. the public usually just likes the darker side of humanity i guess. but Joyce was in the show almost as long as Meg, though she disappeared a lot for long stretches, and she was hardly given any storylines, my issue is why does one character have so many memorable moments, and the other almost none?
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But that's because villains like Joan will always be better remembered by the casual viewer. But you can't really have the evil without the good and I'm sure Wentworth would have been a far less interesting place without Meg if the Freak hadn't had anyone to do battle with within her own ranks.
Also, I would have thought it's far more difficult for an actress to play a nice or inherently good character like Meg and make them interesting to the viewer than it is to play an out and out villain like Ferguson - I'm sure any actress would kill to play a role like the Freak.
To that extent, I think Elspeth did a reasonably good job and I quite liked the character. The other issue of course is that longevity breeds contempt and it's inevitable that after 4 or 5 years into a role that the writers will begin to run out of storylines or to recycle story arcs for a particular character. Even the Joan Ferguson character was starting to look a little washed out and tired after about 3 years in the show. I'm not sure she'd be as fondly remember by viewers if she'd been in Prisoner for its full duration.
As for the character of Joyce Barry, although she was in it on and off from episodes 29 to 692 I don't think we can really draw any comparisions with Meg as she was only a 50 worder when she first came into it and her appearances in the early years were very sporadic.
It was only around late 1983 / early 1984 that the writers built the character up into a principal role.