Brookside, Channel 4's 20-year-old flagship Liverpool TV soap opera, is on its way out. It's official. The programme, previously screened on weeknights in prime time slots, has had dwindling audiences for some time now. It has been moved to a Saturday omnibus edition - broadcasting shorthand for 'We're taking this programme off air very soon'. When the news broke, Asda staff on Merseyside donned Scouse wigs and moustaches and launched a petition to persuade Channel 4 to change its mind.
Brookside (Brookie, to its fans) had become tough viewing, even for a Merseyside exile like me. I stopped watching a while back, when one storyline had become so plain nasty that I decided I couldn't stand it any more. Brookie disappeared from my life just as Neighbours and others did before it. But in its day, it was formidable television, with gritty narratives that made little concession to entertainment. Coronation Street offered Manchester-suburbia through rose-tinted spectacles, Dallas provided Hollywood glamour and sun-tanned stars, Neighbours was just one long beach barbecue, but Brookie gave you verisimilitude.
The first episode was broadcast in November 1982 on Channel 4's opening night. Audiences were 8 million ten years ago - nothing like Dallas figures, but very high for Channel 4 - but had shrunk to 1.5 million by the time the axe fell. 1982 was the year of the groundbreaking Boys From the Blackstuff. TV was then thought to be losing its cutting edge, but Alan Bleasdale, like Willy Russell, gave an authentic voice to the disregarded, the unemployed, the poor. Brookie's private housing estate in a fictional Liverpool suburb, Manor Park, added a further dimension, as different social strata rubbed shoulders with each other every week. And over the years a procession of the weak, the poor, the disadvantaged, the criminal and many more appeared in the episodes. The actors ranged from the bad (Michael J. Jackson's Ollie Simpson was frankly terrible) to the very fine. Some, like Sue Johnstone, Anna Friel and John McArdle - went on to bigger things. One child actor, Raymond Quinn, is currently winning awards for his portrayal of the bullied school child Anthony Murray.
