Post by Taxigirl on Nov 4, 2003 9:39:42 GMT
THE PAVING STONES have been levelled, the cement set: Brookside, the once pioneering soap opera, has been laid to rest under Channel 4's patio.
Fittingly, the last episode will go out in the graveyard slot of 10.40pm on Tuesday, 4 November.
Born in 1982, at the genesis of the aforementioned channel, Brookside burst on to a stage inhabited by anodyne and aging contemporaries, most notably Coronation Street and Crossroads.
A feisty and belligerent baby, it set about tearing up the rulebook that had thus far governed soaps, by mixing sharp social issues in recession-hit Britain, with a dry, shrewd wit.
In Brookside Close unemployed Scousers with bubble-perms rubbed shoulders with independent career women; middle-class families forced into humble means through the social convulsions wrought by Thatcherism shared a postcode with self-made working class folk.
A good eight years before John Major set out his vision for a "classless society" Brookside embodied the notion, with all its inherent insecurities.
Brookie, as it became known to its legions of admirers, strayed where other soaps feared to go. Rape, homosexuality, racism, drugs, domestic violence, revenge killings, arson, Aids, mastectomies, crazed gunmen, bodies under the patio, flesh-eating super bugs, spooky cult leaders, love triangles, incest, illiteracy, inverted snobbery, semi-spoonerisms (Ron Dixon v Dick Ronson), vanishing gnomes and Casa Bevron.
Where Brookie led, others followed.
Among its legacy of talent are actors Amanda Burton, Ricky Tomlinson, Sue Johnston and the late Katrin Cartlidge, and writer Jimmy McGovern.
At its height the show regularly topped the Channel 4 listings with audiences of seven million. But numbers dropped drastically in recent years, prompting TV bosses to cordon off the cul-de-sac once and for all.
No flowers.