DRW50

Marie was a lot of fun on A Different World. I wish she hadn't just disappeared. She had the puppy romance with Ron, which then made Ron's transition into being a horn dog even more jarring (I did love Ron in the last season -- Ron/Freddie were a great couple, although the blatant sexuality from them and from Whitley/Dwayne in that last season was such a departure from the earlier seasons). bellcurve, I've always wondered about what happened with Joe. I thought Dietz and Jennifer Hammon were very good together and worked well as the young romantic leads. They were billed as the show's breakout couple. Then they dropped Dietz to recurring and he had to play an increasingly less important part until they found David Gail. It seemed like they wanted to make Joe more edgy, or whatever. Perhaps this was an ABC mandate. It felt very strange and did Joe no favors. Joe wasn't supposed to be edgy. I just wish the show hadn't had to go so heavily into those hollow arcs, which were blatantly plot-driven and which wrecked so many characters with such flimsy reasons. Kevin's a lunatic because he got jabbed with a needle! People are paid to write this? I wish they'd done more with Gabriella. They had an interesting story when she became a vampire, but it went nowhere. I guess that would have involved writing for a minority character.

It wasn't as bad in execution as it seems on paper. Most of her return visits were lots of fun and full of delicious confrontations with other characters like Rachel or Felicia. When she was bad, she was never seriously bad, as the story was camp (like when she drugged Cass to give her an heir so she could be queen of Tanquir). In her 1989 return, she had bad ideas in mind, like embezzling a charity, but she changed her mind at the last minute. The only return I didn't care for was the 1996 one, which was very crass and like all of that era, lacking most humor. To me killing a character like Cecile is just tacky and a bit heavy. She wasn't that type of character.

I think one of the reasons Debbi left was they had started to mellow Ellen significantly. She did seem to enjoy some of this (there was some good comedy when she became friends with Lucy), but overall the character lost most of her purpose. She was probably right to go, as I don't think they had any real plans for Ellen. Poor Marie Alice Recasner never had much of a chance. Chris never had a lot to do on the show but did have his moments. I always loved his friendship with Eve (frankly that was one of the few times I found Eve tolerable) and he also had some very tender moments with Julie. Seeing his vendetta against that prig Matt was fun too. He was very funny. And Nolan North was very cute. To think that PC had a parade of boring Joes, and later, the awful Rafe and Jack, and never properly used Chris or Jamal.

Thanks, bellcurve. I had forgotten they finally used her briefly later on. I have heard good things about that nurses' strike story and Karen's tenure. At the time I wasn't watching because I was still annoyed by what LML had done to Lucy, by some of the material in the Hamner run (the DV/Lucy stuff when she had amnesia turned my stomach, and I thought he also went too far with how Courtney and Frank behaved in breaking up Karen and Joe, although I did get a kick out of their relationship/the actress who played Courtney), and by Kevin/Eve in general. By the time I tuned in for her run, she was already on the way out.

My memory isn't the best, but I actually don't remember ever seeing Audrey on PC after the primetime movie. At the time it was almost a joke, because she was in the credits every day but never around. I guess this was good practice for GH's opening credits of the past five years. Julie was great as early Eve but I lost interest when they tried to make her into a heroine. Julie, on the other hand, comes alive when they make her a bitch.

Yes, she was. She put all those actors around en masse. Jerry Lanning also showed up later on, although he didn't exactly have a great role.

They put Lisby and Bev together again as Calla and Alex, didn't they, on GL? I guess Calla didn't work out as a character.

They're not wasting any time! Usually transitions are longer. Even Kim Crowther, whose tenure at Corrie won't be remembered with fondness, is not actually leaving until mid-year. So the stories Allan had planned will be significantly changed then?

They need to have a Ghost of Eve Guthrie account.

I think she did. His manipulations and whining finally pushed her too far and she killed him before she could think through. I had expected a whodunit, but I'm glad they went another way.

For a while they suspected his father of killing her, but finally he came forward and was eventually found to be acting in self-defense and a state of fear. When he went back to the place where she'd drowned, her mother showed up and almost drowned him. Then they had a heart-to-heart, and she accepted what happened, but said she could never forgive him for leaving her daughter there. There's a long writeup here on the Murray family. http://www.brooksidesoapbox.co.uk/page61.htm The little boy who played him, Ray Quinn, was runner-up to Leona Lewis on the X Factor and won Dancing on Ice last year.

Thanks for the article. I didn't know Marquess worked with Brian Park at Corrie. The Deirdre in prison story was a huge national event at the time. I think some of these culls leave some long term damage. Eastenders has never been the same without Kathy, and a few other characters from that era could have stayed (like Sanjay and Gita). Overall it was probably a success. I do think they do a disservice to Thelma Barlow (Mavis on Corrie). They imply she was fired for being past it. She actually quit the show because she was upset when they wrote out her husband on the show, Derek. She's continued to act regularly since leaving the show -- just a few years ago she did well in a Doctor Who episode (she was in the one where her scientist husband did experiments to become young; he did, but he also became a monster, and killed her). These days new producers don't cull soaps as much, but there is so much dead weight at Hollyoaks, I won't be surprised if the axe falls, unless they don't have the budget. Can anyone tell me about Marquess's time at Family Affairs? I wish that show were available. It was on for 7 years yet I have almost never seen any of it. The closest you get is some of the clips of the lesbian stories on the show.

Marquess is known as someone who has no problem firing a lot of people, in front of and behind the camera. I guess Hollyoaks will get a big cull. That's needed, although I hope he leaves some of the better actors.

Should have happened months ago. Paul Marquess presided over some of the last years of Brookside. I believe he did a story about a young boy being bullied by a girl, and finally the girl drowned in a lake and the boy thought he'd killed her. He was also producer of The Bill. He was involved in their big gay storyline, involving two police officers and their secret affair.

Really great episodes last night, better than I'd expected, since the Mark Wylde/Daniel Lamb story has been dragging on. I think soaps at their best are about complex women and we got that in spades with Natasha. The men aren't that interesting in this story, although they're nice to look at. Maisie's pain was so raw and well expressed. The ending was a surprise too.

Poor Cecile

Zsa Zsa looks so much older than the part, and she's also very wooden.

I was catching up on 2009 episodes and was blown away by the work from Eileen Derbyshire, who has played Emily for almost 50 years. She rarely gets a storyline and is often sneered at by some fans as "boring" or as dead weight. Yet when she does get material, she more than delivers. This is a few moments from a story where Emily, who has basically been alone since her husband was murdered 30 years ago (she's had a few relationships but most of them were not happy), has fallen in love with Ramsay, recently arrived brother to her lodger, Norris. Norris hates Ramsay because of a past family conflict and refuses any efforts to get over the past. Finally he is so rude that Ramsay decides to return to Australia. He dies on the airplane trip, and they learn he had a brain tumor and he'd known he was dying the entire time he had been visiting them. She finally cannot take anymore and gives Norris a real dressing down. She talks with Rita afterward:

I can't stand Calvin, so perhaps they finally, after about 3 years, realized how awful he is. Some have said Louise should come back as the killer -- I hope they do that. I'm still disappointed they ruined Malachy/Mercedes so she could sleep with Calvin. I haven't watched a lot of it but the story with Anita causing Hannah to relapse sounds sick. Is it any better watching it?

Was that EdgeofLlanview? I think he took his clips down because of the quality of them, or something like that. Then he said he was going to start putting them back up.

I think what made Loving work was the commitment of the actors. It's interesting because AMC always had a VERY distinct identity, and it kept that identity for many years. I think Loving was more like OLTL, a show which Nixon also took a reduced role on (even more than Loving), and which had many different identity changes. I guess the big differences with Loving and OLTL were OLTL had stronger showrunners and their timeslot helped provide better ratings, along with their stories, and some of their casting moves (like Reinholt and Courtney). And OLTL started in an earlier era, when ratings were healthier all around.

The City tried to be so many things. They tried social issues, but didn't seem to know how to handle them. There was a hint of nighttime soap, but that also didn't quite pan out (and the scuttled Born/Fairchild pairing didn't help). Then they revamped with the Masquerader. I thought everything with Tracy's arrival was brilliant, she really gave a huge breath of fresh air. Carla was also great. When I watched at the time that was what kept me tuned in. The Ally/Tony/Carly/Danny stuff and Angie's baby needs didn't do a lot for me. Tess's cancer story was good, what I remember of it. I think the show always had a problem knowing what it was and how to mix the fresh filming style with storytelling which eventually became very safe.

I think the only person from Loving who won an Emmy was Bernie Barrow. The City should have been an obvious choice for Soapnet, but then, that channel has almost always had odd choices. I really enjoy most of Loving when I get the chance to see it. Some of the material some feel very generic, but the actors often make it work. In some ways I think it was ahead of its time, in that the show was very plot-driven and did not have a strong identity, and the actors had to push ahead.

Oh. For some reason I thought she'd stayed with AW until she passed away.

I've never seen Egypt, only heard about her. It's interesting that she was like Opal. One thing I like on the lesser-rated soaps is they often have more room for eccentricity. I don't mean AMC, of course, but I mean stuff like Cass/Cecile/Felicia/Wallingford on AW (who ended up being a family in a soap which by that time had no real core family), or on Loving, Ava, and Deborah, and so on. I've never seen any of the Jeremy/Gilbert stuff either. Is it as bad as I've heard? Or just dull? Or not too bad? Jean LeClerc is such a distinctive actor, putting him in a dual role seems odd to me. The only time I saw Gilbert was at Jeremy's funeral. At the time I swore they were hinting he wasn't really Gilbert, that it might have been Jeremy. Or I might have imagined that. I think they also tried to throw some suspicion on him for the murders. I can't believe we're up to 11 pages. I guess Loving really was the little show that could