No plans to increase Brookside episode release
Five episodes are currently released weekly on STV Player
Since February, fans of the trailblazing Channel 4 soap opera Brookside have been treated to episodes dating back to its launch in 1982.
Five episodes are released weekly on the STV Player and it has quickly become one of the Player’s biggest attractions. This week, Scottish broadcaster STV revealed that reruns of Brookside made March the STV Player’s greatest ever month for streaming, with 11.6 million streams for all its on-demand content.
Despite Brookside’s appeal, STV has told ATV Today that there are no current plans to increase the episode release from its current five. The Liverpool-based soap, which was axed in 2003, became the first show on the STV Player to hit 1 million streams in just one week.
Brookside aired for the first time on Channel 4’s opening night, November 2nd 1982 and instantly changed the soap opera landscape thanks to airing on the ‘fourth network’ that wasn’t as regulated as the BBC and ITV. This enabled the show to break new ground – something it did across its 21 years on air.
The production, based in Liverpool, was devised by former ATV and Southern Television script writer Phil Redmond who along with Brookside also brought to life Grange Hill for the BBC and Hollyoaks for Channel 4. Early storylines were a social document of the 1980s as the well-to-dos were downscaling while the working class were moving up – all mixing together on a close in Merseyside.
You can catch classic Brookside on the STV Player, available in the UK.
