From little Closes do Cults and Plagues grow...BROOKSIDE!

[Mashibinbin]

Not sure if there's going to be to be enough interest to warrant a subforum as yet but for now here's the place for all discussions of our beloved 'Brookie'. The place where a helicopter could crash one minute or your daughter could go from innocent single mum to gun toting lesbian gansgter the next all whilst murdering and subsequently burying your husband under the patio as you strive to avoid a killer virus!

http://interactive.knightmare.org.uk/co ... =Brookside

Share your memories, favourite and worst characters and plots here... or the bizzies will get yeh and we'll 'ave Bing organising yet another BRA meeting!

[Canadanne]

Callum Finnegan was my favourite character by a country mile. So sad to hear of the actor's sudden death last year. :( The programme was never the same after he left, IMHO.

I only started watching in '97, so I don't know much about the "classic" era, but I was a big fan for the next three years and kept watching right to the end (though I increasingly wondered why I bothered). Jacqui Dixon was another favourite of mine. I hated RLindz, as she was known on the Brookie newsgroup!

[Mashibinbin]

Heya!

I think you probably joined at just the right time to see the end of arguably the shows peak and sadly saw its demise in all its' glory too. A lot from the 80s was realistic and gritty but perhaps harder to relate to whereas the later years could be shown now and tweaking a few points here and there, ahem, (such as references to the Milennium Gate, Bug etc) and you'd still be able to fit it in the schedules...or maybe not with some of those haircuts

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=h ... 9,r:11,s:0

Callum was a rare breed of soap villians, charming menacing, damn funny and most importantly utterly credible in every one of his scenes. Slime positively oozed off him yet I'd have happily have him shoot off some of the more annoying cast members. He is gone as you say but most assuredly not forgotten.

Jacqui on the other hand seemed to get it too easy compared to her brother who could do no right, in my opinion, and was not a suitable partner for Max FarnHAM.

[Canadanne]

I wrote a fangirly journal entry about him last summer, in which I concluded:
"So that was Callum, who went from being a nasty piece of work to a gleefully evil delight, master of the one-liner. Is he a clichéd sweet-eating, cackling pantomime baddie? Absolutely. But he does it so well! And he had infinitely more personality than anyone else in the cast. He might have been a lying, murdering, sleazy would-be rapist, but still - you gotta love him!"

Of course, the villains are always the best characters... especially the sarcastic ones.

[Mashibinbin]

Haha marvellous! (From IMDB) "Tell him to have the money by 6... no wait... the Simpsons are on then, make it 7."


In my collection he's also great in the Young Ones, City Lights, Scotch & Wry, Victoria Wood's as seen on tv, Rab C Nesbitt, the Comic Strip and of course his much accliamed 'Bunny' in Extras.

Paul 'Barry Grant' Usher on the other hand...

[Drassil]

Thanks for starting this thread, Our Robin. I would have got here earlier but I was watching this mesmerising rabbit puppet show...

Jacqui on the other hand seemed to get it too easy compared to her brother who could do no right, in my opinion, and was not a suitable partner for Max FarnHAM.

Mike Dixon didn't have it easy, and never got the happy ending he'd surely earned. Shut out of one son and daughter's life, written out of another son's life, and generally left out in the cold by characters and script writers alike. As for Jacqui+Max, it was on the cards for years before it happened - when they were trapped together after the gas explosion on the Parade, there was a spark between them (no pun intended) - and Max wasn't the choosiest of men, so I had no trouble accepting that particular pairing. Plus the idea of Ron becoming Maxie's father-in-law was rather amusing. Max is now married to Gaby Parr in real life (i.e. Steven Pinder to Stephanie Chambers); and Alex Fletcher, also married to a Brookside co-star, joined Hollyoaks last year.

Only by changing the subject away from Knightmare, and indeed ChuckleVision, could we ever get away with speaking ill of someone called Barry on this forum! Barry+Lindsey, then, never worked for me, though she herself admitted that it was a union of convenience in the final episode.

P.S. I checked YouTube, just in case the 1997 Christmas special featuring Rayner Bourton had gone up, and ended up rewatching this slice of magic from the day before. A Channel 4 show that started on the same day as Brookside, with a guest presenter whose own show sadly ended in the same month as Brookside.

[Canadanne]

I so wish David Learner's appearances on Countdown would be uploaded to YouTube!

[Mashibinbin]

Heeheehee,

that's a fantastic upload and I'm sure a certain male FarnHAM of the non Max variety would love that equally

Speaking of our Max, I guess you're right: he was never picky and was beginning to become a rival of Henry VIII with all his wivery. How is Jacqui fitting in with Hollyoaks and it's, in my opinion, very poor style.

I still see 'Mick Johno' now and then in the neighbourhood and he's always been polite but never seems to attract that much attention. These days he's probably more known as PC Cooper in Last of the Summer Wine.

I sometimes wonder what suffered more - the parade or the close itself in way of explosions, fires and all that flapjack.

[Drassil]

Henry VIII was the less efficient, with six wives across six marriages; Max got five weddings out of three wives! I've not seen 'Jacqui' in Hollyoaks, though I did happen to catch her nephew/adopted brother 'Josh' in Waterloo Road recently. Before that, he was in Grange Hill. This could be a sign that Waterloo Road is soon to be axed.

Close versus Parade: that is worth pondering. From memory, it would seem that for every coup the Close pulled off, the Parade had an answer. The Close has Laura Gordon-Davies electrocuting herself and falling down stairs, the Parade has Sue Sullivan pushed off scaffolding. The Close has Barry kidnapped by a cult, the Parade has Mick kidnapped by a stalker (one of my favourite storylines. I wanted it to pick up again after Jenny got out of prison, but it wasn't to be.) The Close had a body under the patio, the Parade retconned a body under the club. The Close has a badly-set time bomb courtesy of aforementioned cult, the Parade has two separate gas explosions. Plus the Millennium Club bomb. And then a helicopter crash blowing up the petrol station. The Parade may just clinch it.

[Canadanne]

Didn't the Shadwicks' house burn down as well? Candles left on the TV or something.

[Mashibinbin]

Either way not wanting to rain on anyone's parade but its a close call! BOOM BOOM!

There is very little to reccomend Waterloo Road for sadly despite it's recent award. What's particularly worrying is Tina o Brien playing an almost younger character than she was when she took over gymslip mum Sarah Lou Platt.

The Mick and Jenny storyline was unique in my opinion - an obsession but one handled very beleivably and understandably so much so that you didn't know who to side with. A follow up would have been certainly much welcome.

[Aldarion]

Anyone ever seen the film Salvage (the one about the British Army creating a Frankenstein monster which escapes)? All the exterior shots are in the former Brookside Close!

[Pooka]

I checked YouTube, just in case the 1997 Christmas special featuring Rayner Bourton had gone up, and ended up rewatching this slice of magic from the day before. A Channel 4 show that started on the same day as Brookside, with a guest presenter whose own show sadly ended in the same month as Brookside.

I didn't know that existed. I've just watched it all the way through. I hope that doesn't make me a bad person.

[Mashibinbin]

...and now for something completely different...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG6rDc4XQOQ

A very peculiar oddity here. Enjoy?! Maybe as an extra on the upcoming dvd?

[Drassil]

Either way not wanting to rain on anyone's parade but its a close call!

That's boss, man.

There is very little to reccomend Waterloo Road for sadly despite it's recent award. What's particularly worrying is Tina o Brien playing an almost younger character than she was when she took over gymslip mum Sarah Lou Platt.

The actress herself, some 10 years older than her character, has said that it's "strange", and I can't disagree.

...I hope that doesn't make me a bad person.

With respect, that is a little off-topic.

The great news for Brookside fans is that, as Robin mentioned, it looks like we can expect a DVD next year. And in the meantime: Annie, look who made a brief reappearance on our screens (3:44 onwards)!

Thanks for the mentions of Salvage and the 'peculiar oddity', both of which were news to me.