Thursday, November 01, 2007

Better off wed?

NUPTIALS! EastEnders, BBC1, 7.30pm

This is clearly a bad, bad week for wedding karma. We hope none of our readers are planning to get hitched on Saturday, or at least if they are, that they don't consider the events of soap operas to be in any way portents of how things are likely to go. Then again, when people get married in soap operas, they usually do so for a stupid reason, because that has more dramatic potential than something boring like being madly in love with someone and wanting to spend the rest of your life with them. God, how dramatically inert would that be?

So yesterday we dealt with Sarah Platt's second attempt to wed Jason Grimshaw, which was at least slightly marred by the attempted suicide of her brother David, who was presumably upset that she wouldn't let him be the ring-bearer. Tonight, it's the ostensibly happiest day of Bradley Branning and Stacey Slater's lives, as they prepare to pledge their troth for eternity. Which would be fine, had his father not been giving her the hot beef injection for longer than we care to remember, or indeed remember to care.

Making things harder still is the fact that notable wildcard Sean Slater has rumbled Stacey and Max's affair, because dear God SOMEBODY had to eventually. So the big question is whether he'll be able to make it through the ceremony, particularly that tricksy part about people here present who know of any impediment, et cetera. And Stacey herself is probably getting a bit wobbly, as the reality of getting wed to someone who doesn't know that you can compare his bedroom prowess to that of his father finally starts to hit her, and she wonders if she's doing the right thing. Picks her moments, does that one.

And so the scene is set for another will-they-or-won't-they soap moment, and let's hope this sets the wheels in motion for the whole ghastly affair to become public knowledge so we can all get on with the rest of our lives, eh?

Labels: BBC1, EastEnders, soap weddings, TV

By Steve :: Post link :: ::  
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Hallowedding

TRICK? Coronation Street, ITV1, 7.30pm
TREAT! Drop Dead Gorgeous, BBC3, 9.00pm

Pumpkins! Satanic overtones! Stupid costumes! Going begging from door to door! Something about All Hallow's Eve brings out the romantic in Weatherfield residents, and who can blame them? It's two years to the day since Jason ditched Lovely Violet at Les and Cilla's shambolic wedding reception and threw it up Sarah, and the fairly happy, quite stupid couple are having a second crack at tying the knot. This being Halloween (and Coronation Street), there's at least one obstacle to the couple's long-term happiness in the shape of David, Sarah's demonic half-brother. Having been banished to the shadows after two years of increasingly sociopathic behaviour, culminating in the accidental poisoning of his wind-up niece with ecstasy tablets, resentful David's attempts to sabotage the occasion have left Jason on crutches and the feuding Platts and Grimshaws on better terms than they have been for years. With his father apparently uninterested (when IS Martin going to get dragged back into a David storyline?), his mother and sister refusing to let him near the wedding, and his serial killing dead stepdad doing the voiceover on the trailer for tonight's episode (nice touch!), David looks set to do something rash.

So, Monday saw Sarah destroy David's suicide note, firmly convinced of his ability for world class manipulation and certain that it was just another trick to ruin her big day. But, look! There's two people in fluorescent jackets at the church, and they're not the ushers (we assume), so something must be up. Possibly involving witchcraft or, at the very least, David's car and one of Salford's beautiful canal basins. Whatever the outcome of tonight's hour-long special, we can only hope that all involved will learn from their mistakes/trauma, take stock and grow into better people. Will Sarah learn to be sympathetic to her brother's problems? Will David learn to stop terrorising his family and being endearingly surly and offhand with the rest of the Street? Will they fuck. You've turned out two diamond kids there, Gail. Well, they can't all be Rickitts.

Further matrimonial delights are to be had over on BBC3 where, true to the spirit of the channel, a repeat run of the brilliant second series of Drop Dead Gorgeous starts barely a week after it finished. Murray's glittering civil partnership ceremony kicks off six turbulent weeks of sex, jealousy, knicker theft, death, deception, dognapping, relocation and, yes, more sibling rivalry for teenage model Ashley Webb, her supremely dysfunctional family and their friends. While blessed with a fantastic cast in the central roles (including Corrie alumni Lee Boardman and Kathryn Hunt as bitchy agent Murray and desperately capable matriarch Pauline), the second series' crowning glory is the subtle, touching relationship that develops between school canteen manager Val and sensitive headmaster Howard. Worth sticking with for six weeks just for their heartrending (yes, our heart really was rended/rent) scenes in the finale. And Murray's 'special relationship' with Ashley's nan, obviously. Bless!

Labels: BBC3, Coronation Street, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Halloween, horny orange teenage sociopaths, ITV1, soap weddings, TV

By Nick :: Post link :: ::  
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Monday, September 10, 2007

Between a cock and a hard place

CAUGHT! Hollyoaks, Channel 4, 6.30pm

It's not that often that we get to use our "soap gaiety" and "soap weddings" tags in the same post, and to be honest we're rather stretching things to use them both here, but what the hell: it's gay-related, and it's nuptial-related. You can't say fairer than that. The reason for all this excitement is that the moment has finally come. Yep, Sarah (aka Swimbint) is about to catch Craig and John Paul together in the fair act of vest-clad buttsecks. We suspect we speak for many when we say: about fucking time too, you daft cow.

Craig, of course, is largely responsible for this situation, as he's been playing his boyfriend and his girlfriend off against each other ever since he rather improbably became a Libidinous Bisexual Puppetmaster (TM Joel on the messageboards) and, despite John Paul imploring him to make a fucking decision one way or the other, Craig seems reluctant. And indeed, when he's getting away with it, why should he care?

But in true soap fashion, it's all about to go horribly wrong - Frankie Dean, Occasional Plot-Mandated Homophobe, catches wind of Craig's engagement to Swimbint (itself a kneejerk reaction to a moment of homosexual panic) and throws them an engagement party at the Dog. An oblivious John Paul wanders into the whole thing and is a little thrown, and decides that enough is enough, and in a moment of supreme manipulation (the gays are always so good at that), deliberately sets Craig up to get caught out. Which, according to our flatmate who watched this on E4 on Friday, is the cue for some face-acting of the very highest quality. Shit, meet fan.

Labels: Channel 4, Hollyoaks, soap gaiety, soap weddings, TV

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Friday, July 20, 2007

The wedding from Stell'

WEDDING! EastEnders, BBC1, 8.00pm

All good things must come to an end, as a wise person once said. (We think it was Nelly Furtado.) And so it is with great sadness that we come to mark the passing of Sophie Thompson from EastEnders for, in an age where it's quite hard to find good things to say about the show, she's been worth her weight in gold as unhinged, child-terrorising solicitor Stella.

When Stella arrived, she appeared to be a nice respectable professional who was just going about her life with Phil as one of her clients. Of course, this state of affairs could not be allowed to continue for long because soaps, and EastEnders in particular, are profoundly distrusting of the middle classes, and of those who choose to work in a location that is not immediately visible from outside their front door. And so it came to pass that Stella became betrothed to Phil and slowly unravelled (though the show seems to suggest she was like this all along, because well-to-do people are always secretly evil) and waged a campaign of torment against Phil's son Ben for reasons that we were never entirely sure of, but which we suspect are related to a Need To Control and also Her Own Unhappy Childhood. If only she too had been treated to the occasional cockernee knees-up around the old joanna, maybe things would've turned out differently.

We're not averse to a bit of child-bullying in a soap - Clare's campaign against Tom in Hollyoaks was a triumph - and Sophie Thompson sold the hell out of the material that she was given throughout the storyline, as ridiculous as it may have become in places. But villains always get their comeuppance in this show, and just when Stella's at her happiest on her wedding day to Phil (clearly a sign that she's not all there, because no sane person would ever be joyful at the prospect of life in wedlock with the grumpiest potato in soap) Ben finally cracks and her secret shame is revealed. Phil's on the warpath, obviously, and Stella's unlikely to get away with it this time, thanks to those meddling kids. She may have been a monster, but she made the show worth watching for an all-too-brief period. Normal mediocrity presumably resumes next week.

Labels: BBC1, EastEnders, Soap, soap weddings, TV

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

(It's a nice day for a) shite wedding

CARNAGE! Hollyoaks, Channel 4, 6.30pm

It's a well-known fact that soap weddings never run smoothly, so why on earth would anyone want to have a double wedding? Surely that's just asking for twice the amount of trouble? Especially when both brides are members of the McQueen family, and hence are on such friendly terms with the word "trouble" that it pops around for tea twice a week. The more sensible among you might want to build some kind of fallout shelter and stay huddled in there until we give you the all-clear.

When we left things on Wednesday, it was looking a bit ropey for both brides. Mercedes ("affectionately" nicknamed Skoda on the messageboards, for what we hope are obvious reasons) had just enjoyed her hen-night, but monosyllabic (and alleged intellectual, but let's be realistic here) fiancé Russ had developed cold feet, it having only just occured to him that his bride-to-be is in fact a strident, selfish, screeching, clap-ridden* ho bag. The fact that everyone else realised this within minutes of meeting her just goes to prove that Russ is far from the sharpest tool in the shed. We're not even sure he knows where the shed is.

Speaking of mental dexterity, Tina wears glasses and enjoys books, therefore is clearly supposed to be The Brainy One in the McQueen family. Despite this, she's proved herself to be a moron of colossal proportions by jumping to a series of incorrect conclusions regarding her boring fiancé Dominic and his brother's ex-wife, Tragic Mandy. Tina is now worried that she doesn't know Dom at all, which is pretty much the risk you run when you emotionally blackmail someone into proposing to you when you've only been dating for six months, just because your sisters are all getting married and you feel left out. Having seen him in a compromising position with a not-quite-stripper on his stag night (heavens!), Tina has now decided he's impure and not worthy of her. Tina's quest for a man in Hollyoaks who is more virginal than Dominic will surely be documented in another late-night spinoff, one that will presumably run forever because she's on a hiding to nothing with that one.

So with both couples currently torn asunder, can they get to the altar on time? And even if they do, will they get through the ceremony without someone bursting in and delivering a few home truths? Don't bet on it.

*We presume she hasn't actually got the clap, since it would surely have been the subject of a Very Special Storyline complete with Channel 4 action line at the end of the programme, but given her general tendency towards wanton behaviour this state of affairs is clearly the result of luck rather than judgement.

Labels: Channel 4, Hollyoaks, Soap, soap weddings, TV

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Thursday, March 08, 2007

Don't it make you feel good?

NUPTIALS! Neighbours, BBC1, 1.40pm/5.35pm

If there's one sentence that strikes fear into the heart of any actor in Neighbours, we would imagine it would be something like "your new love interest is Paul Robinson". Because let's face it, for most people, this means you're DOOMED. It may not happen right away, but there's not going to be a happy ending. If even the formidable, much-missed Izzy Hoyland couldn't survive dating him, what hope is there for anyone else?

Of course, foak in soaps never listen to reason, and hence the scene is set for another soap wedding, and the doomed bride this time is the clearly outmatched Lyn Scully, who will be leaving the show shortly, presumably to the accompaniment of loud cheers coming from our messageboard. She's had a good run, all things considered: spawned several hellspawn children and the occasional nice one. Become a grandmother to a creepy-looking baby. Lost her husband somewhere along the way to a Sheila's Wheels advert. Obtained the requisite lesbian haircut. At this stage, what is there left for her to do?

Marry Paul Robinson, obviously. Except it's not going to work out, because he's already set his sights on Rosetta Cammeniti, with whom he shared some illicit passion whilst improbably locked in Lassiters' wine cellar (and if anyone can explain to us why you'd need a security code to get out of a wine cellar, we're all ears). He's made several protestations of the "I never even thought of cheating on you!" variety, which means he clearly thought of little else. Oh Paul, you scallywag. Don't ever go changin'. So Lyn's wedding is a-go-go, but will it go ahead - and if it does, how long will the marriage last? Our bets are firmly on the side of "not very long at all, at all", so we'll just sit here and begin our sort-of-fond-but-not-really farewell to Lyn Scully, and all who sailed in her. God speed, and if you could arrange for Steph to fuck off too in the not-too-distant future, that'd be super.

Labels: BBC1, neighbours, soap weddings, TV

By Steve :: Post link :: ::  
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