Free George Jackson! The body is under the Patio!!! (Brookside)

Member Name: dove3066

Product:	Brookside
Date:	28/03/09 (111 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Hard hitting - more realistic soap opera

Disadvantages: No longer on TV, moved around in the schedule too much

This was the first soap opera to be shown on channel 4 on the channels first night started back in 1982.

The Brookside of the title was the close in Liverpool where all the charcters lived. There was a real mixture of characters -there were the Grants - who were on their way up in life having bought their first non council home, the Yuppies Heather and Roger and the wide boy Gavin with his wife Petra.

This series launched the careers of a number of actors who have since become household names, Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston who played Bobby and Sheila Grant, Amanda Burton who played Heather Haversham and Anna Friel who played Beth Jordache.

The story lines in Brookside were designed to be hard hitting and the writer Phil Redmond wanted them to reflect Britain as he saw it. This means we had storylines which involved strikes, theft, rape, teenage pregnancy. There were two stories which really captured the imagination of the country and they were the imprisonment of Fireman George Jackson who was thought to have been involved in a robbery on a warehouse, and the body of Trevor Jordache being buried under the patio.

Phil redmond moved onto other projects and the popularity of the programme declined. It kept being moved around the schedules so I ended up missing lots of episodes and so I just lost interest in the programme. I think often some of these programmes do become habit - as I often used to do the ironing whilst watching the latest episode and once they move them around they stop becoming habit.

Brookside finished in 2003 and all the houses were sold off again recently so you could have had your own piece of TV history if you wanted it!!

Summary: A different soap opera