Zandra Plackett - Barbara Hunt

Barbara Hunt

A middle-aged, middle-class woman very much of Middle England, Barbara Hunt was sent to prison for three years on a manslaughter charge for mercy-killing her terminally-ill second husband. She is devoutly religious, attends chapel frequently and the prison officers give her significant responsibilities, which she sometimes abuses. Her fellow inmates often offend her traditional sensibilities: she is uncomfortable with sharing a cell with the lesbian inmate Nikki Wade. She stores all her thoughts in a diary, which gets stolen by Shell Dockley. Hunt eventually plucks up the courage to confront Dockley, takes the diary back and breaks Dockley's arm in the process.

She loathes her step-children, who testified against her in court and reveal that she didn't get properly divorced from her first husband, so wasn't legally married to Peter, and then contest her inheritance. Some of the inmates on G Wing start a campaign of bullying her step-children over the phone, until the prison officers get wind of it.

At the end of season five, she marries Henry Mills, the prison chaplain.

Upon first arrival, Barbara is screaming with a bitter, fearful rage at her imprisonment. 'Mad' Tessa Spall, a psychologically-damaged prisoner takes advantage of this and pretends to be Hunt. Hunt is put into segregation, while Spall is inducted onto the wing - she manages to then threaten Karen Betts with a syringe of HIV positive blood.