Bad Girls’ Victoria Alcock says show was ‘brilliant’ for underrepresented groups

Bad Girls star Victoria Alcock has said the classic TV drama about a women’s prison was “brilliant” for showcasing underrepresented groups to wider society.

The ITV series, who ran from 1999 to 2006, followed the lives of the inmates and staff of fictional prison HMP Larkhall, set in London.

As the show celebrates its 25th anniversary, Alcock and her fellow co-star Debra Stephenson appeared on ITV’s Loose Women on Wednesday to reflect on the drama.

Alcock, who played Julie Saunders, said: “Representing people that had never been represented on telly before… that was absolutely brilliant.

“So many people over the years, I’m sure it is the same for Debs, people would come up to and say ‘You changed our lives. We saw ourselves on telly’.

“And the Bad Girls fans, big shout out to all of them amazing, beautiful people, but it’s changed them as well.

“And I think for women, it was amazing… It was a female-led drama, the format was great because you had the prison and then you would get wonderful guests… coming in and out, following the prison officers, following our lives… it was brilliant.”

The actress added that she has forgotten parts of the show as it was filmed so long ago but that the first read-through “seems like yesterday”.

She recalled being amazed at the size of the set, saying: “I can remember meeting you and everybody and they also then took us to the studios, which was the biggest freestanding set in Europe and when we walked in… and I remember thinking ‘blimey’, it was immense.”

Stephenson, who starred as Shell Dockley, also noted that the set “wasn’t actually very glamorous at all”, which she said was “quite conducive” to helping them get into the mentality of a prison inmate.

She added: “We were all just thinking ‘What’s this going to be? Is this going to be a hit? Is this going to be a miss? And we really didn’t know…

“It was so different to anything else at the time and we thought it’s either going to be a huge flop or a huge hit.”

Alcock said that it was after series two when the show took off and proceeded to go on for eight series.

It went on to win a number of gongs including National Television Awards and Inside Soap Awards.

Reflecting on some of the challenging storylines they had to contend with, Stephenson revealed that having to portray Shell while pregnant was the “toughest” point for her as she was pregnant herself at the time.

She said: “I gave birth about four weeks after I left the show so that pregnancy tummy was real and my son Max is now (aged) 21 and it does feel like a very long time ago.

“But that pregnancy storyline was the hardest one to deal with because I was so hormonal.”

Stephenson explained that she had to have a midwife on stand-by and do the “worst acting she has ever done” while filming the birthing scene in case she went into actual labour.

She added: “But when they took the baby away, that just got me and it was about 10 years before I could talk about it without bursting into tears.”

Actor Jack Ellis, who played villainous prison officer Jim Fenner, also joined the chat via a video call.

Discussing how he detached himself from the his evil character, he said: “Basically, I’m an actor, it’s my job, it’s what I had to do and I had to do it quite regularly.

“It does get to you a little bit so what I tended to do, I enjoyed very much finishing work and then getting on the tube and going back into life and seeing that life isn’t really like that.”

He also recalled how he would take the cast’s mind off the gritty drama by playing tricks.

Asked whether they feel the show will ever come back, Stephenson said: “We would have all moved on to different prisons, wouldn’t we? Some of us would have got out, some of us were lifers…

“So I’m not sure whether it would really work as a sort of thing to come back to.”