Friday, April 18, 2008
Baby, I Swear it's Deja Vu
REPETITIVE! The soaps, various channels and times Labels: Coronation Street, EastEnders, Emmerdale, Hollyoaks, Home and Away, neighbours, Soap operas, The Archers, TV
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...
By Rad :: Post link
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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
By Rad :: Post link
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Thursday, January 18, 2007
Horses' heads in pigses' sheds
SUSPECT! Emmerdale, ITV1, 7.00pm.
So! It’s Chas’s turn to be fingered for The Murder Of Tom King, and it’s not looking good. Earlier in the week the police dug the horse head statue that was stolen from Home Farm on the night of the murder out of the shit in the Dingles’ pigsty, and Eli was pulled in on a standard charge of Burglary By Dingle. But with the horse head-shaped bruises on Tom King’s corpse matching the statue, it looks like there’s more to the robbery than meets the eye – at least to dodgy police chief Vaughan, who’s been sniffing the hem of Venus Flytrap-faced Rosemary’s skirt since her brand new pocket-sized husband snuffed it on Christmas Day.
Chas’s fingerprints are all over the statue and, after Rosemary provoked a violent outburst (not unlike the violent outburst Chas directed at Tom King on his wedding day, in fact) from her in front of the lusty policeman on Tuesday, it looks like she’s well and truly in the pig shit. But don’t worry, Chas! There’s still a whole bunch of other suspects to go through yet, and maybe, just maybe, the statue will turn out to be one of a pair, and by then it’ll be someone else’s turn to get hauled in for interrogation. Hopefully someone quite pointless and dispensable. Like, say, Terry.
Rosemary is certainly the viewers’ choice of suspect over on ITV’s beautiful but fiddly and annoying Who Killed Tom King? interactive investigative internet experience, and our own suspicions about her were only reinforced by the sinister text message she sent us after we voted for her in the online murder poll. (Oh, Rosemary! You should know better than to put your name at the end of the message if you’re trying to intimidate us.) So far we’ve exchanged e-mails with Viv, argued with Shadrach, hacked into Jimmy’s computer, read Edna’s personal correspondence, rummaged through a whole bunch of offices and private residences and peeped through the keyhole in Jasmine’s bedroom door (hmmm). And apparently that was only four days’ work! Sod that. We’ll leave it for a few weeks until it’s Carl King’s turn to be Main Suspect and we might get the chance to look at him in the shower or something.
By Nick :: Post link
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