Weekend Report: Brookside, GMTV and BBC Drama

The Weekend Report returns for a new season of reports and reviews on the bigger, and even lesser, stories of the past week. This week we cover the departure the sale of Brookside Close, the departure of Fiona Phillips from GMTV and BBC Drama.

Brookside Close: Sold

Twenty six years after Brookside burst onto our screens, on the newly founded Channel Four, the most famous cul-de-sac in the country has been sold off – but whom too? The 13 houses that form Brookside Close was sold in auction to a buyer “local to Liverpool” raising speculation amongst Brookie fans that the soap could be on its way back. Could Brookside really come back? The soap’s final episode saw all the residents move out as the Close was to be knocked down so is there a way back for it? Would those residents actually move back to the deadliest cul-de-sac in the world? It’s like moving to one of the Midsomer villages – a death sentence.

Recently Brookie actor Dean Sullivan, Jimmy Corkhill, threatened to get a bank loan to buy the Close so he could revive the soap. I can hardly see a bank giving him a loan so he can buy the Close in the hope of reviving a soap axed five years ago! Then again stranger things have happened so who knows? Meanwhile a rumour persists that several years worth of Brookside has been wiped and while that may not bother most of you, it doesn’t me, it does seem a little odd considering by the time Brookside started the practice of wiping stuff was long since dead. Then again a little birdie told me that the wiped rumour was actually an April Fool’s day joke taken too seriously by some. If you know if episodes of Brookie REALLY is missing then do let us know!

Phillips leaves GMTV

Fiona Phillips has presented her last edition of trashy magazine show, GMTV – the breakfast show that conned its audiences out of money. Fiona Phillips has been with GMTV since it launched in the 1990s, replacing the fondly remembered TV AM. While GMTV were keen to give the impression that Fiona will be missed by audiences we know that there’s large section of you out there who just can’t stand her. Just take a butchers at the Digital Spy forums for several lovely, long threads full of people who don’t like her. Fiona told viewers it had been a “privilege” to be in their homes every morning. That’s not the word I’d use.

While some may be sad she’s gone we’re not. Maybe now GMTV will pull itself out of the gutter and ditch its tabloid approach to news and become a decent breakfast show but as that’s not likely we’ll stick with the BBC.

Drama on the BBC

How many new dramas has ITV re-commissioned this year? The answer? Not many. Moving Wallpaper and The Fixer are the only two that spring to mind, everything else has been canned. It hasn’t been a good year for ITV drama all in all for every good drama they had, Lost In Austen, they had two duds; Harley Street and Britannia High. Meanwhile the BBC enjoy a slightly better year than their commercial counterparts, forgetting Bonekickers that is, with several new shows given a second run, like Mistresses.

This week the BBC re-commissioned two new dramas, Merlin and Survivors. Both had performed well against tough competition from reality pap on ITV and both have been surprisingly good. So well done to the BBC for giving good drama another series even if it didn’t beat ITV. ITV are yet to learn that good ratings don’t always equal good drama, Heartbeat for instance, and good dramas don’t always pull in huge audiences – Lost In Austen. Drama shouldn’t be about pull in big audiences it should be about good drama and audience enjoyment and the BBC seem to know that better than anyone else.

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