Bad Girls
I’ll start this post with a disclaimer: I love Bad Girls . It’s always entertaining, and at times- especially in Series 1-3- it’s absolutely brilliant. The Nikki/Helen romance is, I’d say, one of the best gay storylines ever to grace British TV. But that’s not to say it’s perfect. Ultimately, I would say, the show suffers from one big problem: it’s a serious drama that’s been squeezed into the format of a soap. Nikki and Helen’s relationship is the best-written and best-developed plotline in the series. If I had to guess, I’d definitely say it was the one that Chadwick wanted to write. But that doesn’t sustain the weekly slot for very long. The natural B-plot is Fenner’s relationship with Shell (and whichever other prisoners take his fancy), and the tension between Fenner and Helen, with Helen and Sean’s rapidly-deteriorating engagement in the background. Now both those plotlines are quite well developed in the finished product- probably moreso than Helen/Nikki- but they’re surrou