Women and warders behaving badly

Almost everyone is bad on Bad Girls, especially Fenner (right).

You really have to pay attention to keep up with the convoluted nonsense that is the inexplicably enjoyable Bad Girls (tonight, 8.30, TV One).

In last week's batty tribunal hearing, in which mad, bad screw Jim Fenner takes on bad, mad Governor Grayling, claiming Gov G. drugged him and performed homosexual acts on his unwilling person, there was a line from a lawyer which sums the whole thing up.

"It's hard to decide," said the lawyer, "which word most aptly describes your defence, Governor Grayling. 'Risible', 'desperate' or maybe just plain 'farcical' covers it best."

That sounds about right. As does plain filthy.

Bad Girls is almost impossible to write about because it's so, well, rude.

God knows what the writers get up to in their story meetings but writing for this thing must be the equivalent of writing headlines for the Sun.

Great recent lines (the ones that can be published) include "bastardising faggot" and "bye bye, poof". Everyone talks like that because everyone's bad on Bad Girls.

With the exception of the Julies, two cuddly ageing slags who dress in lolly shades of pink and somehow manage to keep their hair dyed blonde and who seem to be the only two characters who aren't bonking each other.

That evil Fenner's at the bonking again: he was last seen closing the door to psycho bitch Natalie Buxton's cell.

Although perhaps they were just about to engage in another round of witty repartee of the calibre of the following.

Fenner: "Yates has got a screw loose."

Natalie: "More than that, she's bloody unhinged."

That Natalie is pure evil. Spurned by Kris, whose lover Selena has got a job as a screw in order to be close to her, Natalie lets Fenner know the pair are filthy lezzies.

God knows why this is a surprise. Everyone's at it on Bad Girls and it's more than likely to be girls at it with girls. Unless it is the Governor who is, according to Fenner, "a predatory homosexual who can't take rejection".

"He said to me how he craved the feel of another man's hard body up against him."

On Bad Girls lezzies aren't actually known as lezzies. They're known by an assortment of other names which are far too rude to put in print.

Tonight we'll find out who wins: the predatory homosexual or the devious Fenner.

Grayling looks up against it, what with evidence from his former wife (now shacked up with Fenner) that the disease he caught from frolicking about with other faggots caused her miscarriage.

But there is that little matter of Fenner's history.

Lawyer to Fenner: "Mr Fenner, could you talk us through the day you exposed yourself to an entire wing of female prisoners?"

Fenner: "I was diagnosed as suffering from extreme stress."

Lawyer: "It was the same stress, was it, that made you attack a prisoner?"

You see how complicated it all is? It's hard enough to keep up with the plot when your attention keeps wandering off to ponder such details as: why do the bad girls have plastic plates and cutlery - presumably to stop them cutting each other's eyes out - when they're allowed enough jewellery to garrotte an entire wing, and they all own weapons in the form of mascara wands?