Brookside

Time to talk about one of my lifelong passions. With Channel 4's 30th anniversary occurring this month, there has been quite a lot of publicity around about it's groundbreaking flagship soap, Brookside, which aired on the first night of the channel's launch and ran for 21 years.

There's even a DVD coming out with 16 episodes on it - a kind of greatest hits.

Yes, I am not ashamed to admit I am an unashamed Brookside fan! My love affair with it began with the first episode and ran all the way through to the end.

Over the years, I have watched all of the soaps at one time or another. Eastenders and Coronation Street - although I no longer watch, I have been an avid viewer of in the past. And as you know I am a collector of classic television - and in the case of Corrie in particular, I have at least 8 episodes from every year since it started.

My childhood in the 70s took place to a backdrop of Crossroads, where you never knew which way the credits were coming from and Corrie. Pretty stable stuff. And then Brookside arrived.

It's hard to describe how exciting the concept of a new television channel was back in 1982, considering the hundreds we have now. But when for your whole life there had only ever been three, and now there were four, well that was exciting.

And what excitement that first night brought - from Countdown through to the Comic Strip going mad in Dorset. But it was Brookside that caught my imagination.

The fact that they seemed like real people and they were living in real houses made it feel real. The houses are still there and you can even go and rent one and live in them now. Imagine that! If I lived in Liverpool I would be so up for it. I would feel like I was walking around in my own piece of televisual history.

The legendary "Harry Cross" - one of my
favourite soap characters of all time

It is great that the DVD is coming out, but predictably it focuses on the same few bits you always hear about - the body under the patio, the lesbian kiss, etc etc. For me Brookside was about so much more than that. The class divides between the neighbours and all the friction and social tensions that caused. In the 80s it was the Grants and the Collins. And in the 90s it was the Farnham's and the Dixons. And the humour at times was amazing - take Max Farnham and Ron Dixon - they explored the class divide there in a far more humorous and entertaining way than the BBC ever managed with any of their lame sitcoms e.g. The Good Life. And as for all the scams involving Jimmy Corkhill, Sinbad and others - well they made me laugh far more than any of the tired predictable stuff Del Boy and Rodney got up to.

Ron hated Max so much he built
 this fence out of old doors

Thanks to UK Living re-running the episodes in the 90s, I have every episode from the start up until 1992 videotaped and now converted onto DVD. I can tell you anything you want about the show, including the people who were in it - some of whom you would be amazed at where they ended up. For example, Kevin Carson, who played young footballer Geoff Rogers ended up as a teacher at the prestigious local Abingdon School.

So if Brookside was so great why is it not on any more? Well sadly, it was a victim of trying to compete in the ratings war. During the first 10 years or so it had the odd murder or rape, but most of the time had both feet in the real world. Then during the 90s, the focus on grabbing ratings started to take over. This wasn't just confined to Brookside but things really did start to get out of hand, with various explosions and sieges and other dubious plot lines. Whilst the humour and drama was still there it started to play second fiddle to whatever "issue" they had jumped on this month.

Jimmy outside his dodgy shop - one
of a number of things to get blown up.

The problem I think is that when shows do this, it is akin to a drug addict seeking a bigger and bigger fix to get a hit. What was shocking once, becomes predictable, and they lurch desperately from one ratings grabbing storyline to the next. Whilst the other soaps did this too, they were at least on at a stable time, and on the two major channels. When Brookside started to be shunted all over the schedules to fit around other things the writing was on the wall.

They also started editing it in a different way that gave it a "film look". This is something Neighbours experimented with too that put me off watching it. I'm not sure of the exact technicalities of it, but basically rather than pure video, they attempted to make it look like a film set. It was just plain wrong for a soap - I loved the pure video look that Brookside had before. Apparently the BBC did something similar with Casualty (which I don't watch) and that was not well received either.

I also think that Channel 4 fell in love with its new baby, Hollyoaks and alienated Brookside and its audience in favour of it. It came as no surprise in 2003 when the axe fell.

Such a shame, and we live in hope one day there may be a resurrection. I have reason to be hopeful - after all many of the shows I have loved in the past have returned to new glory after long absences. Star Trek, Doctor Who, Reggie Perrin, Dallas, V, Survivors, these are just a few that spring to mind.

Many of the old cast still support the show and it was great to hear so many of them on a Radio Mersey special the other day on the internet. It's obvious that so many of them still hold fond memories of the show, and would return. But in the meantime, I've got my DVD's and can dip in to classic Brookie any time I like.

She's dead, Teh!...but who did it?

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Jason x