It was a shame that Louise Jameson wasn't able to be in series 3 as she was pregnant,thus Blanche was killed off between series 2 and 3.
Blanche was sorely missed in series 3 with Maggie an obvious replacement,shame they couldn't have brought back Blanche halfway through series 3 as they did in series 2.
Yes, I agree. Louise's character Blanche was hilarious and brought humour to the suffering the women had! Actually, I think they needed another series between Series 2 and Series 3 becuase it appeared at least 2 years had past between them. At the beginning of Series 3 they were in a new camp (the old one was bombed in an air raid at the end of series 2) and it was apparent that a lot had happened between the two series. They panned the graveyard at in the first episode of series 3 and you could see that quite a few of the characters had since died.
From what I've heard, the BBC wanted to pull the plug on Tenko because the dinosaur chauvinistic BBC bosses at the time didn't like having a series that was such a success with a cast mainly of women! Therefore, they only allowed one more series after making the decision, hence the latter days of the women's incarceration was somewhat rushed!
Yes that's right Louise Jameson and Rosemary Martin(Verna)were both asked to be in series 3 but Louise Jameson was pregnant and Rosemary Martin was working on something else so thats why their characters died between series 2 and 3.
Episode 8 of series 3 was filmed first,so that put paid to Blanche returning half way through the series.
I love TENKO but series 3 is my least favourite,as there is no Blanche and Rose(Stephanie Beacham),I hoped Nellie(Jeananne Crawley) might have survived but Beatrice(Stephanie Cole)learns she's dead too.
At least the wonderful Sister Ulricha(Patrica Lawrence)survived!
Louise was pregnant between series 1 and 2, and they were able to bring her back miway through series 2. When she was pregnant again, between series 2 and 3, it wasn't possible to fit the filming around her family commitments. Shame, a Maggie is an obvious Blanche replacement. I once read an interview with Louise Jameson, where she grumbled that the BBC were always killing her off (Tenko, Bergerac, EastEnders...)!
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Verna wasn't killed in the bombing. She's last seen holding her (dead) cat in the mayhem after the bombing. Miss Hasan is definitely killed though.
Verna's cause of death is never stated. Ther's a scene between Marion and Clifford in series 3 where they discuss collaborators, and Marions ays something like "There was one, in the second camp ... she died".
There must be a lot of cuts in the UKHistory broadcasts as I don't recall Verna cradling her dead pussy.
"Next day, an allied plane bombs the camp while trying to bomb Yamauchi's headquarters, killing Miss Hasan and Shinya and seriously wounding Daisy and Sato. Led by Blanche, the women takes advantage of the incident to raid the storerooms and steal the Red Cross parcels. Yamauchi shows up in the middle of it all and orders them to stop."
Also, I didn't see Miss Hasan (a monster!) get killed. I recall Yamauchi showing up and throwing Christine out of the car but I don't recall Blanche raiding Red Cross parcels unless I'm blind.
The UK History repeats have cut out a lot of the scenes and dialogue that are in the DVD sets. I presume this is due to reasons of running-time or because some of the scenes are too violent and contain bad language.
In the final episode of Series 2, an Allied plane does bomb the camp. The women run from the water-hole back to the camp to find the place in chaos. Marion and Beatrice turn over a woman (not showing her face) who looks like Miss Hasan and Bea says: "So much for exposing her!".
Dorothy runs up to the truck that was taking the Jap soldiers away to the front and finds Shinya's body. Marion finds Daisy seriously wounded (I think she was all blistered and suffering from shell-shock) and Verna is seen cradling her dead cat in her arms.
From what I could gather, it looked like Sato had been impaled in the leg (that would explain his walking with a stick in Series 3). Some of the women (never seen Blanche though) start helping themselves to the Red Cross supplies and Yamauchi turns up and fires a gun to stop the chaos while the Japs round the women up.
He tells them they will be shot for stealing from the Japanese (!) and goes on about them being defeated women, to which Marion replies "But not for long!". Images of all the surviving women are shown and the credits roll.
Hope this helps!
Thank you.
Poor old Sato. The whole imperial thing never really worked out for him, did it?
Apparently there is a rape scene missing. Perhaps when Rose and friends go to investigate rumours of missing red cross parcels.
Verna died at some point in the 3rd camp,i think like Blanche in 1944.I remember Alice(Cindy Shelley) looking at her grave and Joss said "nasty piece of work". It would have been interesting to see how Verna abdicated and Marion became leader again!Also a shame to see Miss Hasan get off! I wonder what her ethnicity was meant to be? Maybe Indonesian with some dutch?
The big gap between series 2 &3 makes one use their own imagination.Yamauchi was great as were Marion,Beatrice,Sister Ulrica and Sylvia in series 1.Joss in 2 was excellent and Blanche and Maggie too!
There was a great cast !
"....It would have been interesting to see how Verna abdicated and Marion became leader again!Also a shame to see Miss Hasan get off! I wonder what her ethnicity was meant to be? Maybe Indonesian with some dutch?..."
Verna went mad and died shortly afterwards. According to the novelization, Miss. Hasan was like Christina, a local Eurasian, Christina being half Scottish and half Chinese. Yes, it would have been nice to see Miss Hasan get her just deserts.
I suspect that a few of the cuts are pandering to political correctness. The series was made in the early 80's when there were still many survivors of the camps who could tell just how badly the Japanese behaved. Flash forward 30 years and it is not acceptable to 'make up stories' and claim that 'our allies the Japanese could ever behave like that' as was recently pointed out me by someone accusing me of being racist. The same detractors claim that the alleged atrocities, if true, were committed by the Japanese military and not by the Japanese people. Who did they think made up the Japanese military?
All I can say is that I lived in Australia and during the 50's and 60's met and worked with many former POW's who were in their 40's at the time, and whose lives and health were ruined. Men and women putting in 18 hours of hard labor a day working on the Burma railway or logging hauling and teak on 750 calories. The high death rate cannot be denied. Many spent months in hospital after the war. From what little they said to people who did not experience it, the films and TV play down the horrors. There was humor yes, as people try to cope with what they could not change, but it was no holiday camp.
I think the collaborator in the second camp who died was referencing her friend (whose name I can't remember now) who sold out Rose and her husband for food in series 2.
shareIt was Marion's old friend Lillian who gave information about Rose & Bernard for food for her son Bobby.
sharePoor Lillian ...
There was no rape scene. There's the attempted rape of Blanche/Rose/Dot in series one, but nothing more than that.
Unless you include young Alice being attacked by her date after the tea dance. Though it wasn't a full follow-through, Alice was fairly well traumatized. Before Bea got the full story out of her, I was sure she had been raped...but in any case, the attack happened off screen, so I guess there wasn't a rape scene at all! My bad!
shareI'm at the beginning of Series 3 and I don't care for Maggie at all. She's too obvious and clumsy a replacement for Blanche; it feels as if the writers were obliged to shoehorn in a tart-with-a-heart just because Louise Jameson had resigned.
It's not just that I dislike change, because I am finding the new Cindy Shelley character, with her late-adolescent concerns, very interesting and sympathetic. I just dislike change for the sake of change! I think that the show could easily have succeeded without a Blanche-shaped character at the end because there were plenty of stalwart originals (Marion, Dot, Beatrice, Kate, Domenica, Christina, Ulrica, Yamauchi) who could have carried the third series easily.
I agree rdavies, she never felt like a character in her own right to me - but more of a generic working class 'tart-with-a-heart', shoehorned in as you say to replace Blanche.
I wonder if they had already written the story lines for Blanche and had to substitute her at the very last minute, it certainly felt that way.
My mother and I absolutely lived and died with this series every week when it was shown on A&E in 1985. Of all the emotionally devastating moments--of which there were many--the single worst for me was seeing Blanche's grave. Even with now knowing the reasons why Louise Jameson did not appear in series 3, the fact that we viewers didn't get to experience Blanche's death firsthand--as we did with, say, Rose--made for a conspicuous lack of closure regarding her loss (for me, anyway). It truly felt as if I had lost a beloved friend, which I ascribe to Ms. Jameson's wonderful performance as well as the brilliant writing of Jill Hyem and Anne Valery.
Despite being a longtime Doctor Who fan, I had never seen Ms. Jameson as Leela, so when I finally saw her episodes in late eighties, all I could think was, "Why is Blanche talking all posh?" :)
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