DIRTY Den is lounging in a sudsfilled bath. "Is there life after soap?" he asks. Amazing, after all these years; first, that the original bad guy from EastEnders still has some resonance, and second, that the actor Leslie Grantham is still trading on that resonance, even if it is just to sell bath salts.
Of soap stars who moved on, Grantham hasn't had a bad innings, having built up a decent enough portfolio soon after leaving Albert Square. This week we finally saw his successor - as bad guy of the Queen Vic - make his departure, with a malevolent grin and a twinkle of his hand as the airport boarding doors closed on him and daughter Courtney. For the previous week Grant Mitchell was, as they say in all the best tribunals, like the Scarlet Pimpernel. Following a dramatic car crash into the Thames with his estranged twin, Phil, Grant disappeared underwater. Initially he was presumed dead, but when bags of money started to appear mysteriously at Phil's hospital bedside we viewers figured, smartish, that even a lungful of dirty water wasn't enough to snuff out the man who punches first, grunts later.
So farewell, Grant; we shall never again see you flouncing around the house - or even outside on Albert Square, God save us - in those skimpy black footie shorts. And for that we are thankful. The sight of a grown man glowering and fuming while showing too much thigh and looking ridiculous was too much to take. You would imagine there would be few takers for a gigantic baldy bloke with limited acting skills, but Ross Kemp seems to be moving on to a highly-paid future in TV action drama. The resident bad guys he leaves behind are his brother Phil and the Spandau Ballet murderer (Martin Kemp, who plays cold-blooded Steve). For some reason people keep hitting Steve suddenly on the street (they all reckon he killed his ex, Saskia, with an ashtray - and they're right). Next on Steve's hitlist - in the romance rather than murder stakes - is former girlfriend Melanie. As Melanie is betrothed to the slimline poundshop and chipper king Ian Beale, Steve can expect to be battered with a piece of smoked cod next.
Over in Brookside we haven't seen that other Scarlet Pimpernel, Barry Grant, for years, but his presence still fills the close - especially on the regular occasions when it's being bombed, burned or besieged by gangsters - and he has an actual as well as metaphorical investment in the place, as part owner of Bar Brookie. That's despite actor Paul Usher being busy over on ITV in the crime series Liverpool 1. Beth Jordache was hardly a baddie (even if she did kill her father and bury him under the patio) and Anna Friel, who played her, has gone on to greater things in films and on the New York stage after her Brookie character slipped off her mortal coil in jail.
EastEnders's Cindy Beale was killed off on a train, and has been speeding down the tracks ever since as one of the very successful Real Women. And Grant's most recent wife in EastEnders, Tiffany (Martine McCutcheon), picked herself up and dusted herself off after her death to launch a singing career. Maybe the prognosis for a successful post-soap career is improved if the character is killed off (though it famously didn't work that way many years ago with Dallas's Bobby Ewing, who miraculously recovered from his own death and found he'd just got a bit damp in the shower instead).
In Irish soap terms, the obvious example of one who went on to greater things was Gabriel Byrne's character in The Riordans and later Glenroe, who landed a role as Ellen Barkin's husband and as a Dublin-accented gangster in many Hollywood films.
Meanwhile on Fair City, the latest, and unlikeliest, bad guy is Harry, hard-working mechanic and dedicated family man-in-a-woolly-hat. His latest incarnation is as Dirty Harry, love rat and adulterer. Harry finally realises that in dallying with his wife's friend and business partner Shelley, he is playing with fire, and should call a halt. But baby-voiced Shelley isn't going to go quietly - it looks like trouble brewing next week, just as Fair City moves into gear with three episodes a week. Expect fireworks around Hallowe'en.
