Did you watch Prisoner in the Thames/LWT ITV days?
 

This and the other ITV regional threads are here so you can take a trip back down memory lane and let us know how you discovered Prisoner, how your local ITV company showed it (some were better than others in how they treated the show) and any other memories you associate from the time - all are welcome on this thread.

when I was about 11-12 (maybe) and used to stay over a mates we used to watch it, it was on about 1 in the morning!!!

Around the time ITV first went 24 hr.

Did you and your mates like it then? What I wonder is because the TV choice and other entertainment was so much more limited than now - kids at that age now wouldn't give Prisoner a second look - are we the last generation to discover and get into Prisoner in a major way.

Yeah, the only characters I can put names to faces nowadays would be Bea smith, Lizzie and Ferguson. We used to laugh when people like Harold from neighbours popped up in it ;D

He was proper slim in those days and somehow just couldn't do stern - you know he wrote some of the episodes?

I stared watching when I was about 13. My first ep was 121, when Leanne Bourke fell from the roof. Couldn't get a better introduction to a show than that! ;)

I started watching on a full-time basis in about 1989 and haven't stopped since! Bea was the character that reeled me into the soap and it was to continue to watch Bea that I turned in thereafter. I dreaded the day Bea would be written out, but by that time Joan had joined the show and I continued to tune in to see how far she would go. And she just got more and more dangerous as the show progressed. A really enjoyable journey and one I look back on with great joy.:)

Yeah, Ian Smith had a BIG part to play in the making of PCBH.

I too had big fears when Bea left but I think the team on the show responded well and a more maniacal Joan made for incredible viewing!

Joan seemed to slowly become ever-so-slightly more unhinged with each passing episode. The more people caught her out in her lies, the harder she fought back and the more deadly she became. As you say, Almar, this made for incredible viewing.

As much as I loved Bea as a character (she's always been my all-time favourite), I'm glad in retrospect that she left when she did. If B ea had stayed on, we would never have had the pleasure of seeing Myra Desmond and Rita Connors as Top Dogs. Each added their own distinct flavour to the mix and added to the legend of Prisoner.