Viewers don't want Scouse couples shouting in fitted kitchens unless they're on 'Wife Swap'. Gareth McLean on the demise of 'Brookside'
If past performance is any kind of measure, Brookside will go out with a bang. Quite possibly a nuclear one. A dirty bomb at the garage, perhaps. Planted by Merseyside fundamentalists fighting for a free Birkenhead, it will make Manor Park a no-go area for decades to come. It'll be Threads all over again.
After 21 years, the (net) curtains are indeed falling on Brookside. A year ago, after it gave the show a £1.5 million relaunch to commemorate two decades in existence, Channel 4 announced it was to evict the residents of the close from their thrice-weekly prime-time location and shunt them into a Saturday tea-time omnibus. Not long after this proclamation, a police helicopter surveying a siege, in which practically everyone was held hostage by drug-crazed armed robbers, crashed. Not long after that, Brookside was again moved, this time to a late-night midweek slot.
There was much deliberation - or at least the appearance of deliberation - at Channel 4 over the programme's fate.
"No one wants to kill off a soap opera, so we're looking at different options," John Yorke, the channel's head of drama said in June, shortly before killing it off. Most recently, Brookside could be seen on Tuesdays at around 11.45 p.m., with the final episode next Tuesday night. Anything could happen. And probably will.
Phil Redmond, the soap's creator, said that Brookside died on February 17th 1998. That night, he dined in a London restaurant with Michael Jackson, then Channel 4's chief executive and the man blamed by Redmond for shunting the soap about the schedule.
"We spent 10 minutes trying to get a table that Michael was happy with," Redmond said. "I thought to myself: 'If they take 10 minutes to find a table rather than discuss what we are going to do with the programme, I'm on to a loser here.' "
He was. These days, there's a nasty character in Brookside called Jack Michaelson (do you see what they did there?), who will meet a grisly end just before the show does on November 4th.
Not before time, you might say. The last siege wasn't, after all, the first one. In 1985, Pat Hancock, Sandra Maghie and Kate Moses were held at gunpoint in number seven. Pat and Sandra were eventually released but the gunman killed Kate and then himself. Between then and now, it's not as if it's been an everyday tale of suburban folks. Number five, remember, was taken over by a religious cult headed by the least charismatic charismatic ever. Intent on spreading his version of the Word ("The forces of darkness have declared war on us and we must not be found wanting"), Simon Howe kidnapped Barry Grant and tried to make Katie Rogers sleep with Terry Sullivan. When that didn't work, he detonated a home-made bomb.
You may also recall that Mick Johnson was held hostage by his stalker, Jenny, in 1996.
Amid all the desperate sensationalism with which it has become synonymous, it's easy to forget what a brave and brilliant soap Brookside once was. If soaps are the way the nation talks to itself, Brookside spoke of the concerns raised by the emergence of Thatcherism. When it began, Coronation Street was a real and true reflection of life on the backstreets of Manchester. Brookside did the same for Liverpool. In Bobby and Sheila Grant, it had Old Labour working-class credentials. In Billy and Doreen Corkhill, the aspiring lower middle-class were represented. The conflicts between the two families were being played out all over the UK. The issues being raised were rearing up everywhere. With the flight of Coronation Street into a rosy, cosy universe, Brookside was one of the few depictions of working-class life on television.
It's been said that Brookside and EastEnders - which Brookside effectively made possible - were the heirs of the socially relevant television drama of the 1960s. "If Cathy Come Home were to be shown for the first time on television today," Linda Grant wrote in the Guardian in 1996, "it would be as a storyline in EastEnders or Brookside."
Brookside certainly never shied away from the issues of the day. In 1985, with Gordon Collins, it became the first soap to have a regular gay character. Jimmy Corkhill's descent into heroin addiction, and the devastation it inflicted on his family and neighbours, was brutal. The disintegration of the Rogers family, culminating in Chrissy's secret flit on daughter Sammy's wedding day in 1991, was painful and poignant. And then there were the Jordaches.
Their appearance, in March, 1993, signalled the start of probably Brookside's most famous storyline. A grimly chilling depiction of domestic violence, it became a compelling bit of drama that engaged the viewers. Trevor's murder, then burial under the patio, was water-cooler TV before we had water-coolers. The trials and then the trial of Mandy and Beth was, to steal an EastEnders tagline, the thing everybody was talking about. The Jordache story was a perfect blend of social issues and entertaining television.
And then, there was The Kiss. It only lasted eight seconds, but the Christmas Eve smacker between Beth Jordache and Margaret Clemence set the heather alight. All sorts of articles were written about lesbians who didn't wear dungarees and sapphism suddenly became cool. While the kiss came 59th in Channel 4's poll of the greatest TV moments of all time, the couple didn't endure. Beth went to prison for killing her dad and died off-screen while Margaret decided against lesbianism and went to Bosnia with her vicar fiancé.
At some point - well before Redmond's 1998 dinner date - something went wrong with Brookside. It all got a bit, erm, excitable. The "issues" became sensational, ridiculous, daft. Instead of characters we cared about dealing with problems we recognised, Brookside was full of nonsense and idiots. There were Jacqui Dixon's ever-changing hairstyles; Susannah catapulting her children through the windscreen of her car; the incestuous Simpson siblings, Nat and Georgia; Lindsey Corkhill's dalliances, first with gangsters and then with lesbianism; Tinhead and Emily; the Shadwicks; the Murrays; the Musgroves ("Joeeeeeey!"); the family with the traffic-warden mother who won the lottery and became a gambling addict; Sinbad the paedophile, and Jack Michaelson.
And, of course, Channel 4 changed. Gone are the days of fulfilling its remit. Now it's the home of Property Ladder, Property Ladder Revisited, Jamie's Kitchen, Nigella's Kitchen. Viewers don't want Scouse couples shouting in fitted kitchens unless they're on Wife Swap.
Brookside will be mourned, but in truth its demise doesn't come a day too soon. The show gave us Sheila and Bobby, Sheila and Billy, Damon and Debbie, Harry and Ralph, Jimmy and Jackie, Bev, Beth, Barry and Sinbad. It introduced us to Sue Johnston, Katrin Cartlidge, Anna Friel, Ricky Tomlinson and Amanda Burton. Without it, Holby City would be as understaffed as a real hospital and the streets of The Bill's Sun Hill wouldn't have quite so many bobbies on the beat. Spooks wouldn't have had Lisa Faulkner to deep-fry. Brookside is dead. Long live Brookside.- (Guardian Service)