Brookside

[beccabear67]

New tv arrangement means I can watch Youtube in the big telly and I've started (re)watching Brookside from the start. It's late 1982, Channel 4 has just launched, and a new suburban cul-de-sac development has people moving in... one family the Grants are moving up, Dad has a union job in an auto factory. All Liverpool accents, Mum's staunch Catholic who works at the chip shop, oldest son play football, daughter trying to look like music vid pop star, youngest son skiving off from school. Then the downwardly mobile Collins family with aging executive class Dad sacked, a stay-at-home Mum, everyone supposed to be sacrificing for the son to keep going to an expensive school further way where they came from, daughter thrown into dead-end school where her accent marks her as posh. There's also a younger couple with no kids at another address. Cue bad synthesizer theme music!

Any memories of this soap? It was innovative for use of language being 'realistic' and lighter weight cameras meaning they could shoot things in the actual houses (and with more natural lighting). Certainly a leg up on Crossroads of the wobbly sets if not reigning ITV champions Coronation Street. There was also Emmerdale, but it was pretty sleepy and in a bit of a slump at this time (at least in my opinion). Pre-Tates and pre-Dingles too of course. Corrie had a sort of yobbo family move in, the Battersbys... wonder if that was inspired by Brookside?

[culnara]

The only soap I ever got into, used to watch the omnibus on a Saturday after you've been framed while having a binge drink before going out, I've got tha whole fekin' lot on a HDD
just never got around to watching it yet LOL

[beccabear67]

It's got me hooked, have watched almost fifty now to where a new cast member has moved in name of Alan Partridge! No, not that one...

One death, an unexpected pregnancy, a couple of lost jobs...

Fun seeing Liverpool in 1982/83 when they do venture into town.

[culnara]

It's got me hooked, have watched almost fifty now to where a new cast member has moved in name of Alan Partridge! No, not that one...

One death, an unexpected pregnancy, a couple of lost jobs...

Fun seeing Liverpool in 1982/83 when they do venture into town.

Aye, brilliant stuff, will have to get watching it again LOL

[beccabear67]

I saw some promo for the return of Brookside earlier this year; they had the geezer who played Gizzmo (one of Damon Grant's pals) being interviewed by the 'Brookside Close' sign... I must've been 15 when it started and he couldn't have been much more than that, but he sure looks rough... his forty years since were either a lot harder then mine were, or too soft, not sure which. Still, some others aren't around at all like Katrin Cartlidge.

[George 1978]

There was a character called Alan Partridge in the series, and it made me wonder whether or not Steve Coogan had actually named his famous character after the one played by Dicken Ashworth?

[beccabear67]

The Brookside Alan Partridge arrives mid 1983, so if Coogan's use came after that... but I don't want to get him in any trouble as I loved his Stan Laurel in that bio film!

[George 1978]

Interesting because Coogan mentioned in a documentary in the 2000s about how Partridge was created, and he said that he chose that name because it sounded as if "you've already heard of him". He even did some research as to whether there was anyone at the BBC with the name Alan Partridge as he thought there was, probably in the sports department or somewhere like that.

I had come to the conclusion that he was familiar with that name originally because he did hear that name being used somewhere before, and it must have been earlier episodes of Brookside where Coogan had got the earworm for that particular name.

[beccabear67]

I'm really hooked on repeats, just when I think I might drop following it another story or turn... and that's knowing how some of the characters end up. Somewhere around the second year they say a lot of people turned off, I wonder if I will. I'm up to where some of them go to the Isle Of Man (1983) and there's more of central Liverpool with Lucy Collins' misadventures as a CND protestor. A few times they've shown televisions on in the homes but haven't really seen anything that way (wonder if they all got set up for Channel 4?), but have recognized some bits of pop music of the day in the background. Modern soaps are overdone with killers and spectacular crashes to me, I guess they can't find their ways back to a slower pace (and I know Brookside goes in that direction later on too).

[George 1978]

Jodie Hanson who was Marianne Dwyer played two characters in The Bill: one was a nurse in a St Hugh's scene. She also appeared in Casualty as a chauffeur driver for Freddie "Parrot Face" Davies' character, getting out of the car as if she was modelling for Pretty Polly.

Sue Jenkins who played a former Rovers barmaid in Corrie transferred to Brookside. And we wouldn't have Harry Enfield's Scousers characters had we not had Brookside, although it has to be said that they all seem to resemble Kevin Webster a lot more.

[beccabear67]

I don't think there was too much crossover among regular cast members between Brookside and Coronation Street, not like there has been between Corrie and Emmerdale. I think maybe Samantha Giles of Emmerdale (Bernice) was on Brookside, or was it just Brookside spin-off Hollyoaks? I've never seen Hollyoaks, maybe I should... but as I say like soaps of the '80s and earlier better so it might be too, er, 'modern', or 'young' for me now... I probably couldn't watch Home And Away like I did when it was newish and I was too.

[George 1978]

Had Granada lost the 1991 ITV franchise for the North West and Mersey TV's stalemate North West Television had taken over, there would have been plenty of crossover with the two - Brookside probably would have made it onto ITV and Coronation Street probably would have been on Channel 4.

[beccabear67]

I'm halfway into 1984 now... Alan Partridge has had a massive meltdown... will he be sectioned? Barry Grant gets further onto the darkside of the underground economy, and Mum Shiela about to announce she thinks she pregnant (the Catholic experience via the Grant family is a bit educational for me). Ian Hendry came and went as Marie and Michelle's wandering Dad, last role he ever did.

[beccabear67]

Just started 1985 (at episode #230), looked for a moment there was going to be the cliched Christmas baby but Shiela Grant made it to just past new year's day. The 'free George Jackson' subplot is ongoing.