Is anyone else a fan of the now defunct British soap? Set in a Liverpool cul-de-sac?

I'm a devotee of the early years of the show during the 1980's with the Grants, the Collinses and the Corkhills.

Damon Grant was my first love. I adored him and when he died was so crushed. It was pretty amazing back then, a bit macho (never forgave them for making Sheila's rape all about how it affected her husband and sons instead of her) but with strong realistic characters and stories. Plus, Morrissey was in it!

It got really really terrible towards the end though. Nearly everyone left and Jimmy was the only recognisable character with unbelievable storylines (I'm a drug addict! Now I'm a teacher! Now I'm a local campaigner!) plus there was that family who all had entirely different accents which was never explained. BUT they had that fantastic finale which was so jaw-droppingly cheeky (nearly all the characters banded together to murder a gangster who was named after the TV executive who had cancelled the show, then Jimmy delivered a 15-minute rant about the decline of television while sitting in an armchair outside his house, as all the characters simultaneously moved out of the street).

Of all the UK soaps, the first ten years of Brookside (1982-1992) remain my favourite.

The development of Brookside is of course synonymous with the introduction of Channel 4 on British television in 1982. A new “minority” channel with a remit to provide a platform for alternative voices and pioneering new programmes, Brookside would deliver this and more. Brookside burst onto UK screens on Channel 4’s opening night on 2nd November 1982, becoming the first soap opera to be explicitly engaged with the politics of the period, with a commitment to realism and innovation hitherto unseen in British TV drama.

Firstly, Brookside had one thing lacking in all the other soaps – verisimilitude. Eschewing the standard conventions of television production of filming in a traditional studio with filmed exteriors, Brookside was filmed entirely on location, on a small Liverpool housing estate bought by creator Phil Redmond and his newly formed production company Mersey Television. With an aesthetic of earthy authenticity – characters spoke in their native “scouse” dialect and didn’t shy away from guttural cursing – there were none of the contrivances often found in other dramas, no regular chance meetings in pubs or shops. Each family interacted with each other in their own home, allowing multiple storylines to be played out realistically. Even the structure of Brookside Close – a bungalow, semi-detached houses and one larger, detached residence accommodating a diverse range of characters from disparate backgrounds and classes – seemed to accentuate the programme’s stripped-down, heightened, confrontational air, dealing upfront with socially and politically contentious issues. The only thing that was fake in the Close was a postbox.

Secondly, Brookside can be identified as being part of an emerging trend in 1980’s TV drama. Many serials made during the decade were characterised by a certain interventionist fervour; a preoccupation with bringing the agendas of those marginalised and underrepresented in society to the mainstream, of standing up to be counted. The 1980’s were the decade where Margaret Thatcher’s administration controlled the social and political systems; and creative elements marshalled their forces to express their concerns about a government that trampled over civil liberties and individual autonomy. Boys From The Blackstuff was a heart-breaking, funny and visceral portrayal of the unemployed of the city of Liverpool, and a riposte to the Tories’ handling of mass unemployment in Britain through a moral panic over “dole scroungers”. Edge Of Darkness was an excellent conspiracy thriller that ultimately delivered a hard-hitting anti-nuclear message in the face of Ronald Reagan’s advocated Strategic Defence Initiative. Although both series were superb dramas, Brookside is probably the most praise-worthy since it thoroughly integrated its socio-political commentary into ongoing characterisation and storytelling.

In many ways, the main focus of the first few years was on the Grant family, who lived at no. 5 in the Close in a portrayal of how the working classes were encouraged to get onto the property ladder and become home-owners during the 1980’s. The storylines involving the Grant family became a compelling study of the decline of the nuclear family unit as they suffered unemployment, middle-aged parenthood, assault, rape and murder within their ranks. Years before The Royle Family, Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston were brilliant as Bobby and Sheila Grant, one of the most achingly convincing married couples on British TV. Bobby was a trade unionist with a strong line in socialist rhetoric who was made unemployed leaving devout Catholic mum Sheila the main breadwinner (a depiction of how men laid off during the miner’s strike and industrial unrest in the North of England led to a shifting of gender status within the family). It was Bobby’s emasculation by his wife and the workforce that saw the cracks begin to show in the Grant marriage – with Sheila recuperating after being raped and gaining confidence from an Open University course. All intelligently written and beautifully acted.

The Grant children each had storylines that explored young people’s experience in the 1980’s. The daughter, Karen, or “Kaggsy” as she was called by her brothers, left the series by leaving for university, with education being shown as a potentially key method of the working-class breaking out of a social cycle that confined them to dead-end jobs and limited horizons. The eldest, Barry, the “black sheep” of the family, was a misfit who fancied himself as a young entrepreneur and joined the rat race in a reflection of Thatcher’s boom-bust economy. By far, the most popular was young “scally” Damon, excellently played by Simon O’Brien. As Damon worked his fingers to the bone on a YTS “slave labour” scheme, only to find that no permanent employment was forthcoming and later was tragically killed off in “soap bubble” Damon And Debbie, the character almost became a personification of the hopes, dreams and fears of an entire generation.

As the Grant family continued to implode, their place as Brookside’s “working-class family in crisis” was taken by the Corkhills: husband and wife Billy and Doreen, and their teenage children Rod and Tracy. The soap took a different tack with the Corkhills as they struggled to make ends meet, exploring the links between poverty and crime. Billy, desperate to provide for his family, drifted into breaking the law, encouraged by his shifty brother Jimmy, fixing the “leccy” meter and faking a burglary in the house to claim on the insurance money. Doreen, unable to take anymore, walked out on her husband and children, while son Rod caused tension in the Corkhill household by training as a policeman. Although the storylines were augmented by a strong Liverpudlian sense of humour, there was no denying that Brookside’s storylines were determinedly naturalistic – often harsh, relentless and with no happy endings.

In the first episode of Brookside, we also meet the Collins family, who are on a different social scale to the Grants and the Corkhills. Wealthy middle-aged executive Paul Collins suddenly finds himself made redundant and flung onto the scrapheap. He, his wife Annabelle and children, gay Gordon – eventually outed when his copy of Gay Times is delivered to the Corkhills by mistake – and spoilt Lucy find themselves forced to leave their sprawling Wirral residence and move “down in the world” to Brookside Close. Brookside skilfully avoided being mere left-wing agit prop by showing that loss of status and empowerment under Thatcher’s government was not merely the sole province of working-class experience.

Yet all was not doom and gloom in Liverpool during the 1980’s. The renovation of the defunct Albert Dock into shops and restaurants during the mid-80’s saw the city slowly try to establish itself as a cosmopolitan metropolis. It was only right that Brookside also address the concerns of the more affluent, upwardly mobile residents of Liverpool. Amanda Burton may now be one of Britain’s most successful TV actresses, thanks to Peak Practice and Silent Witness, but was she ever more beautiful and charismatic than when she played accountant Heather Haversham? Heather proved to be a strong and compelling heroine for the series, balancing her blossoming career with a disastrous married life, first to roguish Roger Huntingdon and then to heroin addict Nick Black. Her role in Brookside was later filled by “yuppie” couple Jonathan and Laura Gordon-Davies, and then by Max and Patricia Farnham. The initial hostility between the Farnhams and the newly arrived Dixon family, together with tatty mobile shop, saw overt class conflict return to the series for the first time since Paul Collins had accused the Grant boys of burgling his house.

What the first ten years of Brookside effortlessly demonstrate is that there is an intrinsic fluidity and robustness to be found in popular television that can support complex socio-political issues whilst delivering many of the same pleasures audiences had come to expect from soap opera. Highly influential, it could be argued that without Brookside we’d never had got EastEnders or Cracker. Jimmy McGovern served his apprenticeship writing for Brookside, and like Phil Redmond before him, he used a popular genre (the police procedural) to sell his stories, infusing the standard conventions of that genre with his own dark and angry worldview. And although dubious about the idea of making a long-running soap to challenge Coronation Street, the BBC found an artistically viable solution in making EastEnders a fusion of Coronation Street’s sense of community with the social realism and credibility of Brookside.

Then in the early 1990’s they built a Parade of shops on the back of the close and Brookside turned into just another conventional, populist soap – and that was that. Discussing Brookside’s decline and fall over the last ten years of its life is again inextricably linked to the way Channel 4’s alternative remit has now been “remitted.” Brookside became increasingly sensationalist and divorced from its previous naturalistic context, only superficially referencing its Liverpudlian roots and bombarding the audience with frantic storylines involving domestic abuse, murders, drug addiction, euthanasia, incest, rape, stalkers, gangsters, cults, deadly viruses….

When do I think Brookside "jumped the shark"? Probably at some point during the Jordache family saga. I liked the storyline itself, and it felt more genuinely "epic" and expansive than Brookside had ever been before - but I was thinking throughout "How exactly are they going to top this?" And of course, they couldn't.




I'd long stopped watching Brookside before the final episode, but I do remember tuning in and saw that Jimmy Corkhill was now a ridiculous caricature, and then witnessed the horrendous spectacle of a gun-toting Lindsey in full wedding dress. Of all the UK soaps, Brookside probably fell the furthest in terms of quality. It almost makes you want to punch Phil Redmond for allowing the series to fall apart so badly.

Brilliantly written, Ben King, and spot on.

I remember in the 80's Brookside was absolutly vital viewing. McGoverns wrinting was superb and as you have mentioned, the perfomrnces were excellent.

You are right about it's shark hurdle too. My love for the show died when they killed off Beth Jordache (oh Beth, how I pine for thee).

After the Jordache saga it was plastic gangsters and drugs (or 'druks' as Jackie Corkhill would have it).

Dude, you totally copied that out of your essay for film and tv class, right? ;-)

Very good summation though! You've only missed out Harry Cross, the grumpy old neighbour. He was ace. I think though that they did have some more sensationalist stories early on, what about the siege with the nurses being held hostage by an aggrieved relative of someone who died at their hospital? And the male nurse in particular was kind of a cheesy character.

There's a definite irony in Simon O'Brien's later career after Damon. From playing the son of a family moving onto the property ladder as you say, he stopped acting and became a successful property developer in real life and then ended up back on TV co-presenting one of the umptymillion property shows which infest the schedules these days, particularly on Channel 4, which has virtually abandoned all commitment to decent drama in favour of property makeovers and Big Brother.

Well for me the Jordache arc marked the point when the series became plot-driven, rather than character-driven. I quite liked the way in which the story was constructed though, with no. 10 being bought by a mysterious woman in a cap and raincoat and then a while later, completely different people moving in, and the way in which Trevor insidiously insinuated himself back into the women's lives. The trial scenes effectively highlighted the inequalities in the law along gender lines i.e. if a man throttles his wife in a fit of temper, it's manslaughter but if a woman, not having the physical strength of a man, picks up a knife and stabs her husband, it's premeditated murder. But I think the story eventually came across as rather self-important and Beth died in a thoroughly contrived, mean-spirited manner.

When did Brookside lose the plot? Yes, I do think it was around 1990 in the awkward transitional period from one decade to another. The series was still watchable - I do remember liking Frank and Crissy Rogers, Sue Sullivan (who came to a memorable sticky end - those shops again!), Max and Patricia Farnham, Margaret the nanny etc. - but it seemed to lack a genuinely dramatic impetus. The 1980’s produced some excellent drama – not only Brookside and EastEnders but also Boys From The Blackstuff and Edge Of Darkness – informed by concern about the right-wing agenda that was taking hold of British society and the need to creatively rail against it.

In the 1990’s however, these issues became diffused. Margaret Thatcher, ever a hate figure for left-wing writers, was replaced by the neutered, insipid John Major, and indeed television drama became more neutered, more middle-of-the-road since in the 1990’s, the Tory ideology had lost much of its potency, and therefore people seemingly had less to buck against. This in turn lead to a confusion were creative forces had less to focus on, and little idea what to write about. Also, the likes of Phil Redmond and Alan Bleasdale had by now been recognised by the media and their work had been absorbed into a canon of “quality TV”. They were no longer outsiders fighting the mainstream. They were the mainstream.

So Brookside had to adapt to this cultural and political change, but didn’t have the advantage that EastEnders had, that almost mythological sense of East End history and community that was there to build upon. Instead Brookside looked towards social issues, rather than explicitly political ones. After the Jordaches came the Simpson family, which from the outset was another incest storyline, only this time about consensual sex between brother and sister. However, lacking the care and commitment that that had been shown in the 1980’s, the characters became ciphers in a dramatic vacuum, completely divorced from any kind of naturalistic context and consequently less affecting as drama. Brookside became like a house of cards, a precariously structured framework where each storyline had to top the previous one in terms of being “must see TV” in order for the series to maintain its ratings and profile. The stakes are continuously raised, the dramatic returns continue to diminish and eventually the whole artifice comes crashing down with indignity.



No. Just a little something I'd written a while back, and thought I'd post here.



Harry was great indeed. And Ralph.



A rare mistep, I thought. The best thing about the 1985 siege was the character of the gunman, an unbalanced mummy's boy who blamed the nurses renting no. 7 from Harry Cross - Pat, Sandra and Kate - for his mother's death in hospital, and took them hostage. I never liked Pat and Sandra as characters and their whingey acting during this story was what finally alienated me. Kate was the most interesting of the three of them, and killing her off was a shame.

How many sieges and gunfights were there in Brookside by the end? It must've run into double figures.

I loved the sibcest storyline. I stopped watching Brookie after Sinbad left.

Hello i am just making my first ever post on here, and i really hope i get a good responce, I have been intouch with the Liverpool Echo recently (mike hornby) and its about my DVD petition to bring Brookside back, Now i am from huyton and a online Brookside mate of mine from Essex came up with this idea about 2 weeks ago, and we thought it was a really good idea at that, So we made our Description for our petition first which i think is Really good and tells alot of why were doing this petition. And then it was officialy up and running at 10pm last Wednesday.

Now we currently have 173 Signatures in just over 1 week which is Amazing, I also have put up little small posters of my Campaign in the Page Moss area (post office, Newsagents) and in the (old swan newsagents) And i thank them for allowing that! And will be posting more around Liverpool soon.

The reason is When Brookside finished in 2003 we were promissed dvd releases WE NEVER GOT! And yes one dvd was released but was still promissed more and on the dvd that did come out there were Trailers of up coming dvd's one involving Barry Grant going after Damions killers,
Now i know the dvd's didnt come out because of poor sales with the first dvd, But i think because of the Grant storyline was so big back in the days of when Damion got killed i think it would of sold quite good. Or even Limited Edition (why not)..
But nope still nothink.

Brookside fan base is still massive on the net but has been shatterd because of who ever owned Brookside would take action so fan sites had to close, But its all coming back, even if it is slowly, And so we contacted the Daily mirror which the Editor put on his blog page at http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/editor/ and then we contacted Echo, And they have seemed to be very intrested about our campaign, And it is going into the Echo maybe tomorrow. And we really hope our signatures shoot up. It would really help us, And the Echo are also trying to contact Phil Redmond about this but he is away for easter so cant wait for that.

I also got my picture taked a few days ago by a photographer from the Liverpool Echo, And even my mate Dan from Essex drove all the way to Liverpool just to be here with me to get into the paper, And it just shows you how commited we really are. We miss Brookside it was the BEST soap on uk, Especially when you look at them all now, It done every storyline first in the BEST possible way.

And after 21 years it just still didnt get that chance. Look at Crossroads that has been revamped about 2 or 3 times? why couldnt Brookside get its chance? Why can Crossroads get dvd releases? Why cant Brookside?...
Yeah exactly i hope your understanding me now,

So i hope we get in contact with Phil, and Keep an eye out in the Echo for our Article,

If you wish to support me and Dan with our Campaign please put your Signature to our petition at www.brookside.tk Also please spread the word, This also helps Liverpool city itself as its the BEST thing Liverpool have ever had TV wise.

Thanks for reading.
Lee Brady & Danny Burton