Brookside has been off our screens for nearly 8 years now, yes, you heard right, 8 years!! Goodness!! 8 years without explosions, fights, car crashes and so on!! The TV and TV listings magazines/guides still look bleek, especially in the soap column, all we hear about today is the press saying, "They can't Corrie on like this" or "Bust up at EastEnders" and so on. The television programmes today are all sad, like THE JEREMY KYLE SHOW or CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER. Anyway back to Brookie... If you don't know what Brookside is or WAS as I should say, It was a soap, set in a close, in Merseyside, Croxteth, Liverpool and it introduced ...  Read the complete review

I have to admit I am a big soap fan and that might be a bit sad I guess but I do love them as they are normally just easy viewing that you really don't have to think about and can almost pry into other's lives even if you know it's not real so offers an escape from the hustle and bustle of your own life for a bit at least. Brookside was Channel Four's big soap offering back in the days it was on, although they do of course still have Hollyoaks too. It was a British soap opera that was set in Liverpool in England and ran for twenty one years from 1982 to 2003 before being cancelled. It was hugely popular in it's day and I remember watching if for a fair while ...  Read the complete review

I must confess that I am not really in any way a soap fan. I got roped into watching Brookside when I was younger (in the late 1990s), and given my hatred for soaps, it was in my opinion the best of the bunch. It wasn't as stuffy as Corronation Street, nor as poorly acted and shoddily made as Eastenders. It was a nice middle ground that had a few revolutionary ideas even if it was ultimately still a dodgy soap. The show took place in an estate called Brookside Close in Liverpool, where, as with most soaps, everyone was either a criminal, an alcoholic, or had some strange secret that they were conceiling. The show was actually shot on a real "close" ...  Read the complete review

Do you know, I still miss Brookside. It hasn't been on now for several years but I think if they brought it back tomorrow every one of their viewers would tune in again. It was one of the first programmes to be shown on Channel 4, back in 1982. Over the years it got stronger and had many contraversal storylines. I guess that had alot to do with the fact the Phil Redmond was the genius behind it. I think it was typical of Liverpool (and many other areas) at that time and that is why is was so popular. The viewers could identify with the characters and their lives. The storylines I remember most were, Sheila Grant's rape, Barry and Terry getting up to all sorts, ...  Read the complete review

Who can forget Brookside, the first soap ever shown on Channel 4. This programme was set on a Liverpool housing estate, and followed all of it's residents. The show was always hard hitting, covering almost every story that you can think of. Some examples from the top of my head include murder, rape, sieges, shootings, incest, affairs, domestic abuse, helicopter crashes and explosions. Who would ever want to live on such an estate with all of these nasty things going on. The close would have surely been on the news all of the time! The hardest hitting story would have to be the Jordache domestic abuse story, in about 1993. Mandy Jordache and her ...  Read the complete review