Friday, April 18, 2008

Baby, I Swear it's Deja Vu

REPETITIVE! The soaps, various channels and times

We've noticed something rather annoying in soapland lately - they are all reusing each other's plots. Now we know this is common practice but we're far more used to them recycling their own (yes Hollyoaks with your incest, Neighbours with your infertility=baby, EastEnders with your sleazy teenage girl/dirty old man affairs). Anyway, here's your guide to the current soap plots, and where you may have seen them before...

Emmerdale currently has Laurel's potential babies-switched-at-birth storyline going on (with a DR MARSHALL, which was the name of the resident awesome all-powerful Neighbours doctor who came inbetween Clive Gibbons and Karl Kennedy), the like of which you may remember cropping up last year in both Neighbours and Coronation Street, the soap currently vying with EastEnders over which child of a controlling parent is the most batshit crazy - David Platt or Steven Beale?

Neighbours is currently being rocked by the SCANDALOUS teacher/pupil affair between Rachel and Angus. You may remember this plotline from such stories as, err Libby and Taj in Neighbours, Becca and Justin in Hollyoaks, Emma and, er, Craig McLachlan's character, in Home and Away and Michelle and Geoff in EastEnders (what do you mean storylines from the early '90s about university lecturers and mature students don't count?).

Home and Away is currently thieving from its Aussie neighbour in not-one-but-two-count-em storylines. Firstly, they have a very boring journo story with Belle, mimicking Neighbours' very boring journo story with Elle. (And Riley. And its previous ones with Scott and Libby and umpteen others). The other robbed story involves physio Sam giving a fatal injection to Johnny, in a sort-of-echo of Erinsborough's amazing FakeDoc story last year (and FakeDoc herself has rocked up in Summer Bay recently as another character. Coincidence? I think not?). Will Sam join the current line-up of soap characters perhaps getting away with murder? Hollyoaks' Warren looks set to join that elusive club, which also includes Paul Robinson from, yes, you guessed it, Neighbours.

And a mini-spoiler for next week's Coronation Street (skip to the next paragraph to avoid): according to my TV guide, 'Paul heads to the Police Station. Will he confess to the arson attack?' which, word for word, could be a summary of a Neighbours storyline not so long ago. They didn't even bother changing the character name.

Talking of not changing the character name, EastEnders has completely lifted the character and storylines of Clare from Hollyoaks and placed then in Albert Square. Let's hope she also gets to strut around in a red coat, cheat death in a red coat and fly away, head held high, in a red coat. Hollyoaks has also been attempting the soap-geek makeover (seen everywhere, but most famously in Plain-Jane-superbrain from Neighbours) on Elliot, with mixed results so far, it has to be said.

Even last night's rubbish 'Sean pretends Gus has eaten his dog. LOL!!11!!' story in EastEnders has echoes of the time Neighbours attempted to go multicultural with the Lim family and Julie Martin thought they, too, had eaten a dog.

Oh, and think The Archers is immune to all this? Think again. It's just had a rape trial, and we all know rape is the fall-back storyline option in Hollyoaks...

Labels: Coronation Street, EastEnders, Emmerdale, Hollyoaks, Home and Away, neighbours, Soap operas, The Archers, TV

By Rad :: Post link :: ::  
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Monday, March 31, 2008

The Butch[er][s] is[/are] back

FRANK! EastEnders, BBC One, Mon & Fri 8.00pm, Tue & Thu 7.30pm

Exciting and solemn (mainly exciting) times in EastEnders this week, as the soap pays a very special tribute to the late Mike Reid with four episodes centred around the funeral of Frank Butcher. Pat and Peggy's health spa / civil partnership witnessing break is interrupted by the arrival of Ricky and Diane (DIANE!) with some grave news about their mutual ex-husband, and over the course of the week the Square's residents (the few who've been in it for longer than two years, anyway) pay their respects in true East End style. There may be piano playing. There could be arguments. It's going to be quite a week.

Of course, it's not Frank's first funeral, and the biggest tragedy of all is that with the magnificent Mike Reid officially dead in real actual life, there's no chance of Frank popping out of the coffin mid-service in one of those moments of supreme good taste with which he was always so closely associated (see Fig. 1). So now the REAL thrill is the return of three of Frank's offspring (advance reports make no mention of Clare 'occasional table' Butcher, the Belinda Slater of the family, but we live in hope), with Sophie Lawrence briefly reappearing as Diane (DIANE!) after her last brief reappearance 11 years ago, Charlie Brooks temporarily dragging Janine out of cold storage for the first time since 2004, and serial returnee Sid Owen returning PERMANENTLY (or at least until the lure of To Buy Or Not To Buy and I'm A Celebrity becomes too great) as Ricky, conveniently at exactly the same time as Patsy Palmer makes a similarly permanent return as Bianca 'the former Mrs Ricky Butcher' Jackson, now with added kids, added not a very good singing voice and apparently no money.

So what's everyone been up to in their absence? Well, Bianca's been collecting kids and failing to have any money (see above), while Ricky's bafflingly been doing rather well for himself money-wise, and has landed a gold-digging girlfriend in the shape of Siobhan 'not former-EastEnder Daniela Denby-Ashe' Hayes from My Family. Janine's been hard at work competing with Leanne Battersby in the perpetual ex-cocaine addict, ex-prostitute, money-grabbing bitch parallel life stakes, and appears to be back mainly for the reading of the will (presumably hoping for some cash to cover the cost of the petrol she's presumably planning to buy for the small Italian restaurant she's presumably been running for about a year - looks like Leanne's about to pip you to the post on that one, Janine!), while Diane (DIANE!) has taken responsibility for her son (the frequently offloaded Jacques), is training to be a doctor and has already trained to be a lesbian, evidently hoping to minimise the risk of accidentally falling into bed with Ian Beale or Phil Mitchell during her slight return to Albert Square.

Naturally, the return of Sophie Lawrence is the most exciting part of all this for us, with the early-90s episode where Frank found Diane (DIANE!) living in Paris being our earliest memory of that peculiarly EastEnders thing of having someone only appear right at the very end of an episode and then putting them at the top of the cast list in the end credits, adding SIGNIFICANCE and INTRIGUE and EXCITEMENT to their appearance. And clearly no post about Sophie Lawrence and Butchery would be complete without this:

Labels: amazing cover versions, BBC One, Charlie Brooks, EastEnders, exciting guest appearances, soap death, TV

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Friday, February 01, 2008

Box of Delights

The life of being a previewer for your favourite website is not easy, you know. Sometimes we look at the next week's TV listings, full of despair because there is nothing good to talk about that we haven't already previewed. And yet like buses, the law seems to be that you wait for ages for something exciting to come along, then it all comes along at once. Tonight sees such a ridiculous embarrassment of riches on the box that Steve and Rad needed to collaborate together (in a move that hasn't been seen since, oooh, Christmas) to get it all in. So get a cup of tea and a biccy and plan your evening with us....


RETURNING! EastEnders, BBC1, 8pm

It's good to see that Gemma Bissix's lucrative career of playing scheming bitches called Clare didn't end when she finally bowed out from Hollyoaks last year (and boy, does the show miss her. It's never the same without a good villain, and no, Jake Dean certainly does not count), as she reappears tonight in the TV alter ego we all knew before Clare Devine ever set foot in Chester: Clare Bates (née Tyler), in EastEnders on BBC1 at 8.00pm. Having been last seen as a rosy-cheeked schoolgirl heading off to Scotland with adoptive dad Nigel, she makes her entrance tonight in fine style - being thrown out of a car while wearing a skimpy dress and not looking not wholly unlike archetypal soap bitch-with-a-soft-centre Izzy Hoyland. Clare quickly reconnects with Dot, who's in dire need of a project at the moment, and then sets her sights on Ian, as everyone in the Square eventually does. Seriously, even the gays are going to be after him in a couple of weeks. When will this madness end?



ENDING! Jam and Jerusalem, BBC1, 8:30pm
We know that this series is never going to go down in the comedy annals in the same way that Absolutely Fabulous or The Vicar of Dibley have. However, we still love it, and it's a darn sight better than recent episodes of French and Saunders. This gentle, warm and still pretty darn funny series ends tonight when we see whether Tash will marry Spike. We'd like to see a Jam and Jerusalem wedding, so let's hope she says yes, eh?



SINGING! The Choir: Boys Don't Sing, BBC2, 9pm
We loved The Choir last year and we're very pleased to see it back. For the uninitiated amongst you, the series featured loveable, geeky and slightly hot choirmaster Gareth Malone (who has a touch of the Tennant about him, we think) in his attempts to transform a bunch of inner-city 'yoofs' into a choir to sing at the World Choir Olympics (if only they would integrate that into the ACTUAL Olympics, we would be so into that). This year, he's trying to repeat the same trick, only the 2008 twist is that it's an all-boys choir and they're competing in something at the Albert Hall instead. So there's a few echoes of The History Boys there, too. Only, we hope, without all the slightly creepy sexual undertones. This is your standard life-affirming fare, but none the worse for it.


JAW-DROPPING! Hey Paula!, ITV2, 10pm
Someone over at ITV2 has clearly broken into our top-secret personal diary, the one where we write our topmost secret telly wishes. While they couldn't quite see fit to give us "The Paula Abdul and Janice Dickinson Crazy Medicated Bitch Channel", they've done the next best thing, and got hold of Paula's very own reality show Hey Paula! to play directly after American Idol at 10.00pm. It doesn't take a genius to guess that the Paula in this show is Idol Paula, with the car-crash level upped by a factor of 20, so it will either be the greatest programme ever or the absolute worst. Possibly it will somehow manage to be both at once, thereby snapping the space-time continuum cleanly in two and killing us all where we stand. But let's hope not, eh?



COMPETING! Alan Carr's Celebrity Ding Dong, Channel 4, 10pm
If you're not a Paula Abdul fan, get the hell out of here and never come back. Sorry, that should read: "why not try Alan Carr's Celebrity Ding Dong on Channel 4 at 10.00pm instead?" - our mistake. We've read an interview with Alan Carr, seen a few trailers and looked at the listings, and yet we're still not really sure how on earth this show works, except that it pits celebrities versus civilians (no doubt inspired by Liz Hurley's famous clanger about the vast chasm between the two species) in a series of zany questions. It's got legs, certainly, but we'll wait until after the first episode before our final judgement.


REMINISCING! The Law of the Playground, Channel 4, 10:30pm
There was a time at the end of the last decade and the start of this one when you couldn't turn on your telly without a bunch of talking heads babbling on about the wonders of growing up in the 70s and 80s. Which was fine, because we all know that any conversation between 20 or 30 somethings always turns to the things of our childhood in the end. But there are only so many conversations you can have about all things retro before you get all meta and starthaving retrospectives of the retrospectives and the aforementioned space-time continuum comes and gets us. So what we are trying to say is that we are quite surprised to seeThe Law of the Playground returning for a second series. Perhaps Channel 4 decided it had been long enough without a nostalgia-fest that they could get away with it (or perhaps they were just desperate for some cheap filler whilst they wait for new episodes of Ugly Betty). The usual suspects are here: Justin Lee Collins, Vic Reeves, and, ooh, look who it is! Myleene Klass! Who'da thunk it, eh?


JAMMING! Later...200, BBC2, 11:35pm
The institution that is Later... With Jools Holland returns for a new series, and kicks off with its 200th episode. Although there is often a bit too much boogie-woogie jamming for our liking, the series is always guaranteed to pull off a few corkers from established artsists and is renowned for launching some great talent to boot. Tonight the big draw is a set from Radiohead, but there are other goodies to be had as well, including Cat Power, Dionne Warwick, Mary J Blige and Feist, a booking that will make at least one lowculture user very happy indeed.

So there you have it. Phew. We're going for a nice lie down now.

Labels: Alan Carr's Celebrity Ding Dong, BBC1, BBC2, Channel 4, EastEnders, Hey Paula, ITV2, jam and jerusalem, Later..., Myleene Klass, Paula Abdul, The Choir, The Law of the Playground, TV

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Thursday, January 31, 2008

One is such a lonely number

MONOLOGUE! EastEnders, BBC1, 7:30pm

It seems only, ooh, a couple of weeks ago, that there was a thread on the forum named 'Cancel EastEnders'. Oh, and another one called 'EastEnders: How can it stop being shit?' The show hasn't quite shown the mammoth turn around in quality it might want you to think it has, but it's certainly improved from a few months ago at any rate.

Even the most casual viewers and those who have long since deserted it will want to be tuning in for the next couple of nights, though. In fact, these next two episodes of EastEnders are so (potentially) momentous that we are featuring the soap on our front page two days in a row. We can't remember whether that has ever happened before, and we doubt whether it will happen again.

Tonight's episode has been promoted for two or three months now. It is the soap's first single-hander, and it is only fitting that it should go to Dot, a character we actually care about (and note to the scriptwriters, if you EVER try this trick with Phil Mitchell or Max Branning, we will never watch again).

The storyline centres around Dot recording a message for Jim, recovering from a stroke (as actor John Bardon recuperates from the same). We love Dot and Jim together, even if the show has kind of glossed over the fact that they both have a bit of a dodgy racist past, and we also love June Brown's portrayal of Dot. She manages to inject real heart into what could be a tedious series of storylines (a seemingly endless cycle of being religious, loving wayward son, being done over by wayward son, being mugged/terrorised/robbed, seeing loved one die, losing faith in God, regaining faith, loving wayward son etc).

We imagine this one will be a bit of a tearjerker, but at least there's a range of shows at 8 to cheer you up (schedulers take note: we like Waterloo Road, Masterchef, Jamie at Home AND American Idol. Would it hurt to spread the love out a bit?). Grab a box of tissues, and we'll see you tomorrow for a bumper box of Friday TV goodies, including more EE.

Labels: BBC1, EastEnders, Soap, TV

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Friday, January 11, 2008

Something's come along and it's burst our bubble

SERIAL DRAMA! The soaps, usual channels, usual times

It's been a while since we previewed most of the soaps, and by now they should all be in the throes of post-Christmas-near-apocalypse fallout so as there is nothing particularly exciting on tonight that we haven't already previewed recently, we thought we'd give you a little run down on where things are at with each of them.

In Doctors, the soap that isn't quite a soap, there is some tedious ongoing business, including some more on the *so wrong* affair between George and Nick, and a slightly more interesting patient storyline involving a woman stabbing her husband in the leg because she gets frustrated with a TV shopping channel. Now, that's more like it.

After its long winter break Neighbours is back, and we missed it so much that we have forgiven the fact that it hasn't been very good of late. Sadly, today's episode doesn't feature much in the way of Valda, or Frazer, or Harold, or Lou, or Susan (though next week Susan's illness - and yes, we know what it is, and we are also not telling - comes more to the forefront). It does feature the Barnes/Napiers, and the tedious plot involving Gus Cleary's made-up sister. But it's still more entertaining than life without it.

Home and Away sees the sexual tension between Jonah and Martha reach a climax (ahem) and also features a death. We won't tell you who. Meanwhile, in Hollyoaks, Micksy is still flirting with the absurdly young priest. We think she will be out of luck. Elliot and JP try more Rubbish Tranny pwning, which is always a good thing. And even Swimbint gets in on the Tranny pwning action today. We like that the writers have turned on him recently and realised how obnoxious he really is. The Barnes family are trying to come to terms with the fact that Bintmother Kathy poos in tupperware to taunt the neighbours, and in a move that will divide the opinions of the board, and of all Hollyoaks viewers, a new relationship is consummated...

Of the big three, in Emmerdale the Nicola/David storyline trudges on, whilst Val has health worries... Coronation Street is building up to the big events of next week, when one of the show's longest-serving characters bows out. Tonight, however, we see Kevin go to trial, Ryan go missing, and David potentially get some girl action. Surely that one can't end at all well? As for EastEnders, Darren's inexplicable rise into rubbishy EastEnders wide-boy type continues, and Ian's pushy parenting of Peter escalates. Take your bets on the outcome of this story, people. Will it be drugs? An eating disorder? Running away? A suicide attempt? Or emulating big brother Steven and creating awesome forms of Ian-torturing revenge?

Labels: Coronation Street, doctors, EastEnders, Emmerdale, Hollyoaks, Home and Away, neighbours, Soap operas

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Sunday, December 30, 2007

Ring out the old, bring in the new

ANOTHER YEAR OVER! New Year's Eve telly

So, 2007, then. The year that brought us two Big Brother race rows, Any Dream Will Do, Harry Potter film 5 and book 7, floods, an actually good remake in the form of Hairspray, a new Prime Minister, Heroes, LOLyoaks, McDean, Ugly Betty, Martha Jones, Steven Beale, data loss by the government, High School Musical 2, David Platt, the LC chatroom, the rise of misplaced apostrophes, Facebook for the masses, John Simm as The Master, X, Gavin and Stacey (and also Max and Stacey... ewww), Britney's shaved head, Tangled Up, King Biggins, Umbrella, Enchanted, Same Difference, Big Evva, Sarah Jane Adventures, Stardust and THAT Indy article.

So, how are our TV schedulers sending this year out? Well, five is basically not bothering, with only the film version of Oliver! at 4:20pm of any note - and with their recent mini-series and the upcoming I'd Do Anything, the Beeb has missed a trick by not getting this one. They don't have any show whatsoever to mark midnight. Channel Four are doing little better. They also fail to have anything happening over midnight, although they have a Monty Python evening beginning at 8. However, they do up the ante somewhat with a new series of LC fave Come Dine With Me at the ridiculous hour of 4:55pm, so you best start remembering to set those videos/PVRs/Sky+'s when you go back to work...

ITV1 also has little on offer, although there is a double bill of Coronation Street at 7:30 and 8:30pm, where we see if Liz McDonald will marry Tricky Dicky off of EastEnders. The channel sees the new year in with a Take That and Friends at the O2 Arena at 11:15pm, which is a bit odd, but hey. They then try and grab Channel 4's audience with Monty Python's The Meaning of Life at 12:45 am, and you can cleanse your mind of images of Hollyoaks' Rubbish Tranny in fishnets with a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at 2:40am.

As is usually the case with big occasions, BBC1 has it all in the bag tonight, with a new series of Celebrity Mastermind at 6:30pm, followed by Spice Girls: Giving You Everything at 7, in which all five give interviews about their rise, their break-up, their fame and their reunion. Oh, and Geri cries. The 8pm episode of EastEnders ensures that Kevin Wicks (and thus half of Walford) will not be having a very happy new year, then at 8:35 we have The Vicar of Dibley Story which is basically a talking-heads/clip show thing and we think it was on last year, but what the hey.

As for the big 'see in the new year' shows, we have The Big Finish at 9:40, where Graham Norton and a bunch of celebs go over the year's events in much the same way Clive James always used to do, presumably in the format of the Bigger Picture which we were the only people who liked. Then you should turn over to BBC2 at 11:10 for Jools' Annual Hootenanny with Paul McCartney, Kate Nash, Kaiser Chiefs and KYLIE MINOGUE OBE. Yes, that's KYLIE. KYLIE HOO(TENANNY). BBC1 is also doing some actual rubbishy see-in-the-new-year thing at 11:10. Myleene Klass, naturally, will be there. No word on the Barrowman yet, but fear not, you can always watch this if you want to see out 2007 in the presence of its two most omnipresent personalities:





So long, 2007! And to show we still love our Scottish friends despite Leon, let's all join hands and sing: 'Should auld acquaintance be forgot....'

Anyway, enough of that, we have a whole new year to be getting on with, and our dear telly schedulers are heralding this new era with... well, loads of very old movies, in fact, the same ones that they show on every New Year's Day, although they are all packed with LC icons: Bedknobs and Broomsticks, 12:20pm, BBC1, Mary Poppins, 4:05pm, ITV1, Singin' in the Rain, 3:10p, Channel 5, and, ummm, Sister Act 2, 3:25pm, BBC1. BBC1 also sneaks in a repeat of Kylie Who at 2:15pm.
Pink Name. There is are two newish films on today - BBC2 premieres Finding Neverland at 5:30pm, and Channel 4 premieres Fantastic Four at 8:10pm, and we never got round to seeing these at the pictures, so that will be nice.

But there are three main events tonight, two of which clash, so make sure you are armed with Channel 4+1, 4OD or BBC iPlayer to avoid heartache. The first big offering of the evening is Sense and Sensibility on BBC1 at 9:10pm. You may think you have seen versions of this before, and you'd be right, but, like Dickens, it seems you can never have too many versions of Austen on the telly. This is followed by the first episode in the new series of Jam and Jerusalem. Now, this series divided people first time round, and we must admit, it took us a few episodes to get into it, but we soon grew to love the characters (played by the best ensemble of British female talent until, and since, Cranford, with David Mitchell and one or two other men cropping up) and the setting. Think of it less as a full-on sitcom and more as a gently funny drama and you'll love it, we promise. Well, you might, anyway. Oh, and just to warn you, episode two is this Friday. We will remind you of this at the time.

The other big hitter, which Paul gave you a teaser of a few weeks ago, is the opener of series 5 of Shameless. Now, series four was pretty below-par, but we hold out higher hopes for this one, with the promises of Lilian's knocking shop, Ian bumming Carl's teacher, Mimi having weight issues, and, er, a beach. In tonight's episode, Frank is told he only has days to live, and presumably hilarious high jinks ensue. Unfortunately Monica is still around, but fortunately, so is Norma. And who knows, maybe Monica will decide to bugger off again soon. We can hope.

Here are the first fruits of 2008, then. We'll be with you for the rest of it: Mistresses, Big Brother, Dancing on Ice, Torchwood, Doctor Who, Rubbish Tranny getting his comeuppance (we can hope), Strictly Come Dancing, The X Factor, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2008, and maybe even The Olympics if we get really over-excited.

Happy New Year, lowculture!

Labels: 2007, 2008, come dine with me, Coronation Street, EastEnders, films, jam and jerusalem, new year, sense and sensibility, Shameless, Spice Girls

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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Huw who?

Yes, we know what you're probably thinking.

"Whatever happened to the actors who played Huw and Lenny in EastEnders?" you're probably thinking. "Y'know - the "comic" duo who once bestrode Albert Square like a particularly unfunny half-Welsh-half-not Colossus."

Well, wonder no more. We are delighted to report that Des Coleman, aka the Lenny one, has turned up as the new weatherman on the BBC's East Midlands Today.

Early reports suggests that Des has a slightly more lively style of presentation than the people of the East Midlands have hithero been accustomed, as you can see from this "comic" YouTube clip.



Smashing! But what news is there of Richard Elis, who played the Huw one? Frankly, there is none - which only goes to prove that you really can't have everything.

Labels: EastEnders, Huw, Lenny, the weather

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Thursday, November 01, 2007

Better off wed?

NUPTIALS! EastEnders, BBC1, 7.30pm

This is clearly a bad, bad week for wedding karma. We hope none of our readers are planning to get hitched on Saturday, or at least if they are, that they don't consider the events of soap operas to be in any way portents of how things are likely to go. Then again, when people get married in soap operas, they usually do so for a stupid reason, because that has more dramatic potential than something boring like being madly in love with someone and wanting to spend the rest of your life with them. God, how dramatically inert would that be?

So yesterday we dealt with Sarah Platt's second attempt to wed Jason Grimshaw, which was at least slightly marred by the attempted suicide of her brother David, who was presumably upset that she wouldn't let him be the ring-bearer. Tonight, it's the ostensibly happiest day of Bradley Branning and Stacey Slater's lives, as they prepare to pledge their troth for eternity. Which would be fine, had his father not been giving her the hot beef injection for longer than we care to remember, or indeed remember to care.

Making things harder still is the fact that notable wildcard Sean Slater has rumbled Stacey and Max's affair, because dear God SOMEBODY had to eventually. So the big question is whether he'll be able to make it through the ceremony, particularly that tricksy part about people here present who know of any impediment, et cetera. And Stacey herself is probably getting a bit wobbly, as the reality of getting wed to someone who doesn't know that you can compare his bedroom prowess to that of his father finally starts to hit her, and she wonders if she's doing the right thing. Picks her moments, does that one.

And so the scene is set for another will-they-or-won't-they soap moment, and let's hope this sets the wheels in motion for the whole ghastly affair to become public knowledge so we can all get on with the rest of our lives, eh?

Labels: BBC1, EastEnders, soap weddings, TV

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Monday, August 20, 2007

Getting your Ender away

AWAY! EastEnders, BBC1, 8.00pm

It's always a fairly brave move to move a handful of soap characters away from their main territory, or to follow them when they go, at least. We can't quite explain why, but soap characters outside their natural habitat often fall flat. Maybe it's because it breaks the flow of the normal storylines back home, maybe it's that they don't stand up well under closer examination, or maybe it's just because, y'know, because. Coronation Street just about got away with it the other week when Steve and Eileen went to Malta, but it was a close-run thing. This week, some of the EastEnders crew are heading to Brighton, so let's see how they get on.

Leaving the Square are Garry and Dawn, making what he hopes will be a romantic getaway of some sort, presumably because he has low standards and he hopes that hers aren't much higher. Brighton's his home turf, which also leaves things open for Minty to relight his fire with Garry's mum Hazel. We'll pause here to give you all enough time to swallow that dry heave. And Heather also sets off for the south coast, being somewhat smitten with Garry for reasons that will never be entirely clear.

Also trippin' out this week is Pat, presumably because it's time for her annual storyline. Hooray! Pat is on a trip as a result of a mysterious letter which she will be seen to read ominously shortly beforehand, and cadges a lift off everyone's favourite neglectful parent and all-round degenerate, Shirley. Shirley, being Shirley, abandons Pat in the middle of nowhere, but fortunately Pat bumps into DCI Burnside who accompanies her on her journey, presumably leading to hilarious adventures of many varieties. Whee!

Labels: BBC1, EastEnders, Soap, TV

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Friday, July 20, 2007

The wedding from Stell'

WEDDING! EastEnders, BBC1, 8.00pm

All good things must come to an end, as a wise person once said. (We think it was Nelly Furtado.) And so it is with great sadness that we come to mark the passing of Sophie Thompson from EastEnders for, in an age where it's quite hard to find good things to say about the show, she's been worth her weight in gold as unhinged, child-terrorising solicitor Stella.

When Stella arrived, she appeared to be a nice respectable professional who was just going about her life with Phil as one of her clients. Of course, this state of affairs could not be allowed to continue for long because soaps, and EastEnders in particular, are profoundly distrusting of the middle classes, and of those who choose to work in a location that is not immediately visible from outside their front door. And so it came to pass that Stella became betrothed to Phil and slowly unravelled (though the show seems to suggest she was like this all along, because well-to-do people are always secretly evil) and waged a campaign of torment against Phil's son Ben for reasons that we were never entirely sure of, but which we suspect are related to a Need To Control and also Her Own Unhappy Childhood. If only she too had been treated to the occasional cockernee knees-up around the old joanna, maybe things would've turned out differently.

We're not averse to a bit of child-bullying in a soap - Clare's campaign against Tom in Hollyoaks was a triumph - and Sophie Thompson sold the hell out of the material that she was given throughout the storyline, as ridiculous as it may have become in places. But villains always get their comeuppance in this show, and just when Stella's at her happiest on her wedding day to Phil (clearly a sign that she's not all there, because no sane person would ever be joyful at the prospect of life in wedlock with the grumpiest potato in soap) Ben finally cracks and her secret shame is revealed. Phil's on the warpath, obviously, and Stella's unlikely to get away with it this time, thanks to those meddling kids. She may have been a monster, but she made the show worth watching for an all-too-brief period. Normal mediocrity presumably resumes next week.

Labels: BBC1, EastEnders, Soap, soap weddings, TV

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