If you go down to the woods today...

Oh the horrors. It was a week of high drama, with terror, suspense and moaning and groaning in Soapland, in what was sometimes like a pastiche of horror films - teenagers held captive, chases in the woods, stalking, threats and wall-to-wall psychos.

They had one of their five nights a week over-indulgence feasts in Brookside, signalling the high point of a big plotline. Charlie Manson-lookalike, ecowarrior and jailbird Marcus is back, and he's coming to get ex-lover Eleanor. There they all are on holiday, playing happy, if somewhat dysfunctional, families in the woods - Eleanor and boring Ollie, his son and her daughter - after a cosy afternoon of mutual marriage proposals (enough to make you sick). And they arrive back at the holiday home in the middle of nowhere - the scene was set earlier "it's a half hour drive to the nearest shop", "it's scary out here", "it's really quiet as well", and so forth.

Then we find that Marcus has not just been stalking them but has broken in and done a bit of housekeeping to boot. He has chopped some logs, "and who lit the fire?" You almost expect to hear "and who's been sleeping in my bed, then?"

So, after a bit of terrorising and a threat to set fire to himself (maybe the logs were damp), Marcus comes to a sticky end, as do so many plots in Brookside, this time at the bottom of a cliff. For a while it looked as if Toyah in Coronation Street might suffer the same fate after similar scenes of terror in the woods, as Corrie had its very own psycho this week too. Of course, to find a real lifethreatening nutter we had to leave the cosy environs of the street (where dullard Kev has just rumbled wife Sally's trysts on the factory work bench with cad-and-bounder Greg) and go south into EastEnders territory (well, Leytonstone, actually).

Teenage runaway Toyah Battersby had a bit of a barney with her mum Janice and stepdad Les and took her umbrage (and a laptop computer) to London in a quest to find her "real dad".

Instead she found a headcase worthy of American serial killer movies - "I'm as nice as pie till people upset me". Only, she's not too quick on the uptake: "You're not me real dad," she says, as the truth dawns. "It doesn't mean we can't have fun together," he says creepily. We're in sub-Wes Craven territory here. "You've gone and spoilt it all," says the nutter, who's now holding her hostage. "Why do the women I meet always start crying? And I've taken the gag off and all." Cue scary music. But he's not the only psychopath around. Supermarket manager Curly's ex-colleague Ann, who left the series some time ago after a spot of nutty behaviour, is back in town. Intriguingly, it seems to have escaped her new employers' notice that she is severely unhinged, and they have made her area manager, and Curly's boss. Can't they see the glint of madness in her eyes as she plots her revenge on Curly? He should watch out if she casually suggests a walk in the woods.

But it was horror of a different sort in Fair City - the death of long-time character Helen, played by Kira Carroll. Viewers have seen her mature over the nine years of the series from teenager to young woman to mother, through family and romantic traumas, latterly dramatically ditching boyfriend Mike at the altar, to literally run down the aisle into the arms of Paul (Tony Tormey).

When an actor wants out, and the script writers decide to dispose of an old faithful with a tragic death, there can be cruel, cruel scenes. So there was some heartwrenching stuff as Helen had a brain haemorrhage just as her family and Paul thought she was over her car crash injuries and was ready to come home from hospital. Just time for a last conversation before a second aneurysm and death. Paul and her family, Bela and Rita and the rest, stumbled around the hospital, numbed with shock and grief. The script tugged the heartstrings without descending too much into bathos and the performances were carefully-judged. It was unsettlingly realistic and low-key (despite the worst efforts of the unnecessary, soppy soundtrack), and thus more horrible than the woodland melodramatics of the British soaps this week.