DRW50

The scenes with Sam/Charity/Chas were perfect. This is the type of comedy which makes Emmerdale so unique, it's character-driven stuff but not overly eccentric. Poor Edna. I wish they gave her more stories than having her arm almost ripped out so Eve can get closer to Carl. Some at Digital Spy call Declan Coconut Head. I think he's kind of sweet, and he has nice pecs. I love the tension between Declan and Nathan. I can't help feeling sorry for Nathan. His mother keeps saying let me move on...when she murdered his father! The scenes with Diane and Doug are exhausting; anything with Doug is these days. He's just so morose. I think the woman who plays Diane is a good actress, she just has a very weird acting style. She's not suited to high drama.

Yeah, I guess they saw Whitney as the new Bianca, at least in her relationship to Carol, but it never worked out because they gave up any plans for Whitney as soon as Billie showed up. I've rarely seen such a rapid upheaval with a soap character. It's never a good idea to bring someone in as the "new" someone else.

They could make him a mute...like Morgan

I think they could also consider bringing back some characters from the early years of the show who have some history but not so much that it overpowers them. That way you could have both past and future. It would be good to see Sharon again, and possibly some new Fowlers or Beales. I'm sure Kenny or the other brother had kids (besides Pat's kids).

There isn't a lot left to bring back anyway. I would say there would still be room for Sharon, but that's probably not going to happen. I do think since they brought back Billie they could have his father Alan return briefly, although that probably won't happen either.

Richard Bekins was the best Jamie. Matt Crane left in early 1997 and a few months later was replaced by Brian Krause of Return to the Blue Lagoon fame. He was OK, he had some potential. He was written as more of an amoral Matt. He was fired after a few months. He went on to do Charmed. Jeff Phillips, best known as the first Hart Jessup on Guiding Light, replaced him. He was very dull. He was fired in late 1998 and Matt Crane was brought back.

It's hard to know what to say because I do think that returns are important for a show like Eastenders which has generally not built up a strong bench of new characters since somewhere around 2004 (Jane, Stacey, Chrissie). Every time they have brought in a new character with some promise they are emasculated or turned into a plot-driven headcase. In Santer's run I'd say the only new character he brought in who have had any real worth were Ronnie, Zainab, and Masood, and all three of them were badly damaged by the end of his run. Yet the returns weren't that great either, the latest being bringing back Carol when they obviously had no plans for her. Kirkwood did a great job of creating new characters on Hollyoaks in 2006, so hopefully he will do the same here.

Jamie may have been angry with Paulina because of her part in conning the family about her true background (she and Ken Jordan claimed that she was Mac's daughter even though at the time she didn't know she actually was Mac's daughter; only after the con was exposed did she learn the truth).

I guess he might just be able to rely on presence if it's a gangster type role.

MMA fighter to play an underworld boss in Hollyoaks Later: http://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/s13/hollyoaks/news/a228530/ufc-fighter-cast-in-hollyoaks-later.html

Any comments on it? I guess he confirmed what you and I (you and me?) both suspected in making the Lucas story more about Denise, which is what has pretty much almost singlehandedly turned the storyline around. Oh and I think he was 100% right about the show being its worst when it tries to be a sitcom (why do I think this is what got Minty the chop) and that Ian needs more dramatic stories. That's what the story about Steven SHOULD have been.

The Darren/Steph scenes were amazing, they have such a wonderful relationship. I just love Darren, he can play any material. Rae is an idiot. This story is just dumb. If they wanted us to take her problems seriously then why have her wearing all the oven mitts and scarves like she was out of some conspiracy theory. The Loretta story is just wretched, it's one of the worst I've ever seen on a soap.

They seem a bit Valentine-ish, even the mother has the Diane Valentine car episode. At least she lives, unlike poor Diane. I wonder if her husband is just a short-term role. Andonis Anthony has played short term stuff on Emmerdale (Val Lambert paid him to pretend to be her boyfriend) and Hollyoaks (he ran the call center Zak and Jessica worked at in summer 2007 and then Jess worked with him to help pilfer antiques).

It's not wrong to find him sexy, I just think something with the shape of his face is off, like he's a Mr. Potato Head doll mixed up. He looks pretty good from the neck down. Yesterday's episodes seemed like amateur hour, especially the first half. I thought the stuff with Janine and Ryan sitting around outside getting drunk was crazy -- there was no reason they would do that other than to have Stacey get riled up. And then Janine stealing Charlie's money, and doing her weird vamping in her floaty black dress. The stuff with Lucas and Janine was good (although I wish Denise had had more of a reaction) but the rest... I wonder if Max is going to flip out with Abi and Jordan the way he did with Lauren and Peter. I also wonder if Abi WANTS him to flip out, so she can get the attention Lauren did. The scenes with Denise and Lucas and that woman he inflicted his mental torture on were very good. That and the stuff with Ronnie/Glenda were the best parts of the episode. I hope we see more of that woman. I think it was very clever to have him not kill her. Apparently he didn't in the original scripts either. Liam Bergin was SO awful in that speech about Glenda's abuse. It's a shame because that was obviously meant to make Danny look sympathetic. And why was he such an idiot with stealing the money from Roxy's room? This story never should have happened.

Another new family, the O'Connors: http://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/s13/hollyoaks/news/a228059/hollyoaks-unveils-third-new-family.html The story that Alex Fletcher is playing basically has the exact same storyline her Brookside character Jacqui Dixon had -- a stepmother who wants a child biologically. In one episode of that story she and another woman went to Chester for a treatment and they ran into Kurt Benson (HO's big leading man in its early years) and Ruth Osborne, Darren's sister and Jack's daughter.

I loved the opening. I know it was dated but who cares, daytime was not supposed to be about how hip and cool everything was. JFP updated the opening and it looked like a knockoff of ER and NYPD Blue, and that's nice, but then how many cast members left and they could not afford to replace most of them, so by the end, the opening was basically Linda Dano, Victoria Wyndham, and Stephen Schnetzer wandering around or grinning. I had years of that Linda Dano shot which looked like that INXS video which had aimless wandering in some European town. I thought the teens on AW at that time were interesting, aside from Josie, who was boring and entitled. Matt was a believable young man growing up and trying to find his way. Jenna was a bit fake but Alla Korot managed to leaven the saccharine with some backbone (then again I've always liked Alla Korot). I didn't like Dean's smart-ass attitude but RPG was good at conveying the sensitivity behind Dean's bravado, and he had great chemistry with Alla. I think that type of role suited RPG more than Jake, which is a horrible role he plays with the same old tricks which aren't so cute when a man who is pushing middle age is doing them. The opening lasts until late 95.

I just love Mary, I could watch an entire episode about her and her nutty sincerity. Now they're branching her out, which is even better. The Leia hairdo and the bizarre conversation with Ciaran (who finally has a purpose when he's acting as a straight man), just brilliant. Mary represents Corrie's spirit -- you can easily see Ena Sharples and Martha Longhurst sitting in the snug and clucking their tongues about her latest antics.

That's a very interesting photo, it's very 70s.

Thanks so much, that's a great interview, you asked good questions and she gave very detailed responses. I was almost going to ask about Thomas Gibson but decided that might be kind of stupid, so I'm glad she mentioned him. It's fascinating that she tried so hard not to go back to AW but they went along with what she wanted so she came back. And her thoughts on GH and how disappointed she was with that GH had become -- it's right on the money. She sums that up better than almost anyone I've seen.

How nice to know that flouting security laws gets you a spot on TV. http://tvwatch.people.com/2010/06/15/real-housewives-dc-party-crashers-white-house/

Shane was played by RKK. They waited about six or seven months between Ryan's death and between the story with Shane, although part of this was due to Jensen going on maternity leave. The problem was that Vicky loved Ryan so much and Jensen played this grief so strongly that it was very difficult to shake. I don't think it helped that Jensen supposedly did not care for working with RKK. The story itself was a mess. Bobby Reno AKA Shane's backstory and his past changed so many times -- he was somehow a race car driver and then later a brain surgeon on the run from a murder conviction. And then you have the decision to bring Ryan back as a ghost to try to warn Vicky of Grant's stupid Fake Jake plot, and have Vicky and Ryan reunite in Heaven, and this just zoomed right in on how flat this pairing was compared to Vicky/Ryan. There were a lot of issues with Vicky/Jake too, I think it just worked better because Jensen and Tom worked well together. I do think it was shameful that the show just decided to ignore Jake raping Marley. At least this was addressed when Ellen Wheeler returned to the role, and, under Jake's self-righteous bluster, there were some hints of how she'd been damaged by what he'd done to her.

I think he played a cancer patient, but I didn't see a lot of that story. With a body like that it's a shame anyone would notice the hair... I thought Schnetzer was fantastic. He was theatrical, yes, but in the quiet moments, he knocked it out of the park every time. My all time favorite was after he found out Nicole had killed Jason Frame and let Felicia go to jail for the crime, and he got sick from wandering around in the rain. While he was delirious, a vision of Kathleen appeared with him and stayed with him, talking about good times and bad times, until he was found. The scenes where he was in the hospital mourning Kathleen all over again were exquisite.

That's true about JB overplaying the two roles. She apparently really disliked playing Marley and insisted if she returned, Marley would not return. That did a lot of damage to the Vicky character, as she just became a generic ingenue. After JFP destroyed Donna, killed Bridget, and killed Ryan, Vicky floundered for material, especially when the Shane/Vicky story tanked. Vicky stabilized again as a character through old ties with Jake which were built up by other actresses. I also thought Jensen had good chemistry with Mark Pinter, but the show sure wasn't going there.

I'm not sure she was lucky to have Steve Burton. Carly was a supporting player in that story, which was, as it is now all these years later, about how awesome Jason was and how he was so good to Michael. Most of the next two years were all about Carly pining for Jason, who only tolerated her because of Michael and much preferred Robin or Liz, and Carly contorted herself all for Jason's goodness. She was lucky to get Benard but then considering the massive flop that was Hannah/Sonny, he was also lucky to get her. Braun may not have had Emmy-worthy material, but then, the entire show was a huge turd at that time. She had more opportunities to be her own character, aside from being shot in the head. I guess this is the wrong thread. I often wonder why Buchanan was so wan as Marley. I guess she was tired of playing a Sarah Gordon type role, but she was much better as Sarah.

http://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/s13/hollyoaks/news/a227498/stenson-quits-hollyoaks-after-a-decade.html