Chris_2k11
23-01-2006, 23:27
I found this article on a website and thought it was quite interesting so I decided to post it on here for you guys to read if you wanted to...
'When asked to name a highly popular soap opera set in a cul-de-sac, many Americans would no doubt say KNOTS LANDING. The Australians would say NEIGHBOURS. The British, however, would come out with a completely different answer…
BROOKSIDE
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y178/Birks_2k4/brookie1.jpg
The development of BROOKSIDE is of course synonymous with the introduction of Channel 4 on British television in 1982. A new “minority” channel with a remit to provide a platform for alternative voices and pioneering new programmes, BROOKSIDE would deliver this and more. BROOKSIDE burst onto our screens on Channel 4’s opening night on 2nd November 1982, becoming the first soap opera to be explicitly engaged with the politics of the period, with a commitment to realism and innovation hitherto unseen in British TV drama.
Firstly, BROOKSIDE had one thing lacking in all the other soaps – verisimilitude. Eschewing the standard conventions of television production of filming in a traditional studio with filmed exteriors, BROOKSIDE was filmed entirely on location, on a small Liverpool housing estate bought by creator Phil Redmond and his newly formed production company Mersey Television. With an aesthetic of earthy authenticity – characters spoke in their native “scouse” dialect and didn’t shy away from guttural cursing – there were none of the contrivances often found in other dramas, no regular chance meetings in pubs or shops. Each family interacted with each other in their own home, allowing multiple storylines to be played out realistically. Even the structure of Brookside Close – a bungalow, semi-detached houses and one larger, detached residence accommodating a diverse range of characters from disparate backgrounds and classes – seemed to accentuate the programme’s stripped-down, heightened, confrontational air, dealing upfront with socially and politically contentious issues. The only thing that was fake in the Close was a postbox.
Secondly, BROOKSIDE can be identified as being part of an emerging trend in 1980’s TV drama. Many serials made during the decade were characterised by a certain interventionist fervour; a preoccupation with bringing the agendas of those marginalised and underrepresented in society to the mainstream, of standing up to be counted. The 1980’s were the decade where Margaret Thatcher’s administration controlled the social and political systems; and creative elements marshalled their forces to express their concerns about a government that trampled over civil liberties and individual autonomy. BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF was a heart-breaking, funny and visceral portrayal of the unemployed of the city of Liverpool, and a riposte to the Tories’ handling of mass unemployment in Britain through a moral panic over “dole scroungers”. EDGE OF DARKNESS was an excellent conspiracy thriller that ultimately delivered a hard-hitting anti-nuclear message in the face of Ronald Reagan’s advocated Strategic Defence Initiative. Although BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF and EDGE OF DARKNESS are both superb dramas, BROOKSIDE is probably the most praise-worthy since it thoroughly integrated its socio-political commentary into ongoing characterisation and storytelling.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y178/Birks_2k4/brookie2.jpg
In many ways, the main focus of the first few years was on the Grant family, who lived at no. 5 in the Close in a portrayal of how the working classes were encouraged to get onto the property ladder and become home-owners during the 1980’s. The storylines involving the Grant family became a compelling study of the decline of the nuclear family unit as they suffered unemployment, middle-aged parenthood, assault, rape and murder within their ranks. Years before THE ROYLE FAMILY, Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston were brilliant as Bobby and Sheila Grant, one of the most achingly convincing married couples on British TV. Bobby was a trade unionist with a strong line in socialist rhetoric who was made unemployed leaving devout Catholic mum Sheila the main breadwinner (a depiction of how men laid off during the miner’s strike and industrial unrest in the North of England led to a shifting of gender status within the family). It was Bobby’s emasculation by his wife and the workforce that saw the cracks begin to show in the Grant marriage – with Sheila recuperating after being raped and gaining confidence from an Open University course. All intelligently written and beautifully acted.
The Grant children each had storylines that explored young people’s experience in the 1980’s. The daughter, Karen, or “Kaggsy” as she was called by her brothers, left the series by leaving for university, with education being shown as a potentially key method of the working-class breaking out of a social cycle that confined them to dead-end jobs and limited horizons. The eldest, Barry, the “black sheep” of the family, was a misfit who fancied himself as a young entrepreneur and joined the rat race in a reflection of Thatcher’s boom-bust economy. By far, the most popular was young “scally” Damon, excellently played by Simon O’Brien. As Damon worked his fingers to the bone on a YTS “slave labour” scheme, only to find that no permanent employment was forthcoming and later was tragically killed off in “soap bubble” DAMON AND DEBBIE, the character almost became a personification of the hopes, dreams and fears of an entire generation.
As the Grant family continued to implode, their place as BROOKSIDE’s “working-class family in crisis” was taken by the Corkhills: husband and wife Billy and Doreen, and their teenage children Rod and Tracy. The soap took a different tack with the Corkhills as they struggled to make ends meet, exploring the links between poverty and crime. Billy, desperate to provide for his family, drifted into breaking the law, encouraged by his shifty brother Jimmy, fixing the “leccy” meter and faking a burglary in the house to claim on the insurance money. Doreen, unable to take anymore, walked out on her husband and children, while son Rod caused tension in the Corkhill household by training as a policeman. Although the storylines were augmented by a strong Liverpudlian sense of humour, there was no denying that BROOKSIDE’s storylines were determinedly naturalistic – often harsh, relentless and with no happy endings.
In the first episode of BROOKSIDE, we also meet the Collins family, who are on a different social scale to the Grants and the Corkhills. Wealthy middle-aged executive Paul Collins suddenly finds himself made redundant and flung onto the scrapheap. He, his wife Annabelle and children, gay Gordon – eventually outed when his copy of Gay Times is delivered to the Corkhills by mistake – and spoilt Lucy find themselves forced to leave their sprawling Wirral residence and move “down in the world” to Brookside Close. BROOKSIDE skilfully avoided being mere left-wing agit prop by showing that loss of status and empowerment under Thatcher’s government was not merely the sole province of working-class experience.
Yet all was not doom and gloom in Liverpool during the 1980’s. The renovation of the defunct Albert Dock into shops and restaurants during the mid-80’s saw the city slowly try to establish itself as a cosmopolitan metropolis. It was only right that BROOKSIDE also address the concerns of the more affluent, upwardly mobile residents of Liverpool. Amanda Burton may now be one of Britain’s most successful TV actresses, thanks to PEAK PRACTICE and SILENT WITNESS, but was she ever more beautiful and charismatic than when she played accountant Heather Haversham? Heather proved to be a strong and compelling heroine for the series, balancing her blossoming career with a disastrous married life, first to roguish Roger Huntingdon and then to heroin addict Nick Black. Her role in BROOKSIDE was later filled by “yuppie” couple Jonathan and Laura Gordon-Davies, and then by Max and Patricia Farnham. The initial hostility between the Farnhams and the newly arrived Dixon family, together with tatty mobile shop, saw overt class conflict return to the series for the first time since Paul Collins had accused the Grant boys of burgling his house.
What the first ten years of BROOKSIDE effortlessly demonstrate is that there is an intrinsic fluidity and robustness to be found in popular television that can support complex socio-political issues whilst delivering many of the same pleasures audiences had come to expect from soap opera. Highly influential, it could be argued that without BROOKSIDE we’d never had got EASTENDERS or CRACKER. Jimmy McGovern served his apprenticeship writing for BROOKSIDE, and like Phil Redmond before him, he used a popular genre (the police procedural) to sell his stories, infusing the standard conventions of that genre with his own dark and angry worldview. And although dubious about the idea of making a long-running soap to challenge CORONATION STREET, the BBC found an artistically viable solution in making EASTENDERS a fusion of CORONATION STREET’s sense of community with the social realism and credibility of BROOKSIDE.'
'When asked to name a highly popular soap opera set in a cul-de-sac, many Americans would no doubt say KNOTS LANDING. The Australians would say NEIGHBOURS. The British, however, would come out with a completely different answer…
BROOKSIDE
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y178/Birks_2k4/brookie1.jpg
The development of BROOKSIDE is of course synonymous with the introduction of Channel 4 on British television in 1982. A new “minority” channel with a remit to provide a platform for alternative voices and pioneering new programmes, BROOKSIDE would deliver this and more. BROOKSIDE burst onto our screens on Channel 4’s opening night on 2nd November 1982, becoming the first soap opera to be explicitly engaged with the politics of the period, with a commitment to realism and innovation hitherto unseen in British TV drama.
Firstly, BROOKSIDE had one thing lacking in all the other soaps – verisimilitude. Eschewing the standard conventions of television production of filming in a traditional studio with filmed exteriors, BROOKSIDE was filmed entirely on location, on a small Liverpool housing estate bought by creator Phil Redmond and his newly formed production company Mersey Television. With an aesthetic of earthy authenticity – characters spoke in their native “scouse” dialect and didn’t shy away from guttural cursing – there were none of the contrivances often found in other dramas, no regular chance meetings in pubs or shops. Each family interacted with each other in their own home, allowing multiple storylines to be played out realistically. Even the structure of Brookside Close – a bungalow, semi-detached houses and one larger, detached residence accommodating a diverse range of characters from disparate backgrounds and classes – seemed to accentuate the programme’s stripped-down, heightened, confrontational air, dealing upfront with socially and politically contentious issues. The only thing that was fake in the Close was a postbox.
Secondly, BROOKSIDE can be identified as being part of an emerging trend in 1980’s TV drama. Many serials made during the decade were characterised by a certain interventionist fervour; a preoccupation with bringing the agendas of those marginalised and underrepresented in society to the mainstream, of standing up to be counted. The 1980’s were the decade where Margaret Thatcher’s administration controlled the social and political systems; and creative elements marshalled their forces to express their concerns about a government that trampled over civil liberties and individual autonomy. BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF was a heart-breaking, funny and visceral portrayal of the unemployed of the city of Liverpool, and a riposte to the Tories’ handling of mass unemployment in Britain through a moral panic over “dole scroungers”. EDGE OF DARKNESS was an excellent conspiracy thriller that ultimately delivered a hard-hitting anti-nuclear message in the face of Ronald Reagan’s advocated Strategic Defence Initiative. Although BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF and EDGE OF DARKNESS are both superb dramas, BROOKSIDE is probably the most praise-worthy since it thoroughly integrated its socio-political commentary into ongoing characterisation and storytelling.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y178/Birks_2k4/brookie2.jpg
In many ways, the main focus of the first few years was on the Grant family, who lived at no. 5 in the Close in a portrayal of how the working classes were encouraged to get onto the property ladder and become home-owners during the 1980’s. The storylines involving the Grant family became a compelling study of the decline of the nuclear family unit as they suffered unemployment, middle-aged parenthood, assault, rape and murder within their ranks. Years before THE ROYLE FAMILY, Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston were brilliant as Bobby and Sheila Grant, one of the most achingly convincing married couples on British TV. Bobby was a trade unionist with a strong line in socialist rhetoric who was made unemployed leaving devout Catholic mum Sheila the main breadwinner (a depiction of how men laid off during the miner’s strike and industrial unrest in the North of England led to a shifting of gender status within the family). It was Bobby’s emasculation by his wife and the workforce that saw the cracks begin to show in the Grant marriage – with Sheila recuperating after being raped and gaining confidence from an Open University course. All intelligently written and beautifully acted.
The Grant children each had storylines that explored young people’s experience in the 1980’s. The daughter, Karen, or “Kaggsy” as she was called by her brothers, left the series by leaving for university, with education being shown as a potentially key method of the working-class breaking out of a social cycle that confined them to dead-end jobs and limited horizons. The eldest, Barry, the “black sheep” of the family, was a misfit who fancied himself as a young entrepreneur and joined the rat race in a reflection of Thatcher’s boom-bust economy. By far, the most popular was young “scally” Damon, excellently played by Simon O’Brien. As Damon worked his fingers to the bone on a YTS “slave labour” scheme, only to find that no permanent employment was forthcoming and later was tragically killed off in “soap bubble” DAMON AND DEBBIE, the character almost became a personification of the hopes, dreams and fears of an entire generation.
As the Grant family continued to implode, their place as BROOKSIDE’s “working-class family in crisis” was taken by the Corkhills: husband and wife Billy and Doreen, and their teenage children Rod and Tracy. The soap took a different tack with the Corkhills as they struggled to make ends meet, exploring the links between poverty and crime. Billy, desperate to provide for his family, drifted into breaking the law, encouraged by his shifty brother Jimmy, fixing the “leccy” meter and faking a burglary in the house to claim on the insurance money. Doreen, unable to take anymore, walked out on her husband and children, while son Rod caused tension in the Corkhill household by training as a policeman. Although the storylines were augmented by a strong Liverpudlian sense of humour, there was no denying that BROOKSIDE’s storylines were determinedly naturalistic – often harsh, relentless and with no happy endings.
In the first episode of BROOKSIDE, we also meet the Collins family, who are on a different social scale to the Grants and the Corkhills. Wealthy middle-aged executive Paul Collins suddenly finds himself made redundant and flung onto the scrapheap. He, his wife Annabelle and children, gay Gordon – eventually outed when his copy of Gay Times is delivered to the Corkhills by mistake – and spoilt Lucy find themselves forced to leave their sprawling Wirral residence and move “down in the world” to Brookside Close. BROOKSIDE skilfully avoided being mere left-wing agit prop by showing that loss of status and empowerment under Thatcher’s government was not merely the sole province of working-class experience.
Yet all was not doom and gloom in Liverpool during the 1980’s. The renovation of the defunct Albert Dock into shops and restaurants during the mid-80’s saw the city slowly try to establish itself as a cosmopolitan metropolis. It was only right that BROOKSIDE also address the concerns of the more affluent, upwardly mobile residents of Liverpool. Amanda Burton may now be one of Britain’s most successful TV actresses, thanks to PEAK PRACTICE and SILENT WITNESS, but was she ever more beautiful and charismatic than when she played accountant Heather Haversham? Heather proved to be a strong and compelling heroine for the series, balancing her blossoming career with a disastrous married life, first to roguish Roger Huntingdon and then to heroin addict Nick Black. Her role in BROOKSIDE was later filled by “yuppie” couple Jonathan and Laura Gordon-Davies, and then by Max and Patricia Farnham. The initial hostility between the Farnhams and the newly arrived Dixon family, together with tatty mobile shop, saw overt class conflict return to the series for the first time since Paul Collins had accused the Grant boys of burgling his house.
What the first ten years of BROOKSIDE effortlessly demonstrate is that there is an intrinsic fluidity and robustness to be found in popular television that can support complex socio-political issues whilst delivering many of the same pleasures audiences had come to expect from soap opera. Highly influential, it could be argued that without BROOKSIDE we’d never had got EASTENDERS or CRACKER. Jimmy McGovern served his apprenticeship writing for BROOKSIDE, and like Phil Redmond before him, he used a popular genre (the police procedural) to sell his stories, infusing the standard conventions of that genre with his own dark and angry worldview. And although dubious about the idea of making a long-running soap to challenge CORONATION STREET, the BBC found an artistically viable solution in making EASTENDERS a fusion of CORONATION STREET’s sense of community with the social realism and credibility of BROOKSIDE.'