TimWil

Well, that's really bad news. Would it be too much to hope that Michael French returns for a brief period for her exit? I think he'd at least think it over.

Well, speaking of Our Girl, the BBC has recommissioned it but it will now star Michelle Keegan and not Lacey! http://m.digitalspy.com/british-tv/news/a654106/michelle-keegan-replacing-lacey-turner-as-lead-in-bbc-ones-our-girl.html#~pgbrNgeRRpLRvy

Thanks for the link, Carl. Paul Nicholas was so pretty when he was young, he had an amazing mop of blond curls. Kind of like William Katt did!

OK, far be it for me to toot my own horn but here's my Paul Nicholas idea back in March: Just remembered that someone who worked on the show told me that the very pretty actor Paul Nicholas (he played Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar in the West End) was considered to play Sharon's birth father around 2002 (Angie's death?). That idea was nixed. He was later brought in to a workshop to play Kevin Wicks but that didn't work out either. There is a good physical resemblance between him and Leticia Dean. Maybe he can still play her birth father after all. Another actor I have a feeling they're considering is Christopher Villiers, who played Grayson on Emmerdale. He's the right age and would have the right look. Edited by TimWil, 26 March 2015 - 09:49 PM. Carl, when I was over in the UK at Christmas I had lunch with people connected to the show who voiced your exact opinion of Lacey. They realized she thinks of EE as a "safe haven." Her family's house is a ten minute walk from the studios and she still lives there! But they said she must be having second thoughts about her decision to come back. Her TV movie (or was it a miniseries) Our Girl did pretty well last fall, ratings-wise.

I totally agree about Martin and Stacey having zero chemistry. I don't think she has any with Kush, either. They should introduce an older, powerful male character she was involved with when she was away from Walford. Even if there wasn't the Rapist Factor I'd still think Roxy and Dean didn't have any chemistry. I see lot of chemistry between her and Vincent, though.

On a purely shallow note Karl Howman looks pretty good in a tank top. I should think Buster got a fair amount of attention in prison. I wonder if that will ever come out.

Not once but on two separate occasions now. I understand Roxy being drunk out of her skull and making a bad choice by bedding down with Dean. Sort of. But then a day or so later she not only summons him back for seconds she begins the session with "Shut up and get naked"? Did she not get the memo that he's a rapist? I guess she doesn't believe Linda. Hmmm. I can envision a scenario where they're in the middle of the act, he cracks up for some reason, calls her "Linda" and rapes her. God help Roxy.

Nice scenes with Martin and Stacy tonight. But Sonia and Carol are morons for not figuring out what was going on in their own home. Roxy said to Dean tonight "Shut up and get naked." And in a post-coital scene there was a lingering shot of him without his shirt on. Great, let's make a sex object out of the rapist. Buster is definitely growing on me. He had one particular line "When I was in the nick I did anything to pass the time. Well...ALMOST anything." Methinks Buster was telling a porky pie. He's spent most of his adult life in prison, hasn't he?

i though Matt D was horrible in last night's episode. He's got all the bad actor habits. There's that particular bad actor habit of constantly standing outside of himself watching himself act rather than ever being directly in the moment, something that Linda Henry, Karl Howman and Lindsay Coulson are quite capable of. He's awful. Not awful to the point of being embarrassing like the guy who plays Les Coker but awful in a painfully predictable, low on energy, dull sort of way. Speaking of bad actors someone should sit Samantha Womack down and tell her that taking simple sentences and putting a question mark at the end of them is super annoying. She was enormously guilty of that last night.

Hah, it was a prediction, Ben-based on the knowledge that he came very close to joining the show on at least one occasion. I don't know if DTC or casting goes on these boards-maybe my posts gave them ideas? I do think Nicholas really was an obvious choice for the role, though. If he is indeed playing Sharon's father, too, the physical resemblance between them will be quite wonderful.

Bet's fellow (who Tanya ran off with and promptly discarded) was played by an actor who had been Sean Connery's stand-in/stunt double on several movies. He was an extremely sexy guy who could very easily have been the UK's answer to the Marlboro Man. From what friends have told me Raquel was embraced by the public immediately. Sarah Lancashire was always absolutely brilliant in the role and could even make sub-standard writing look good.

I've been binge-watching Orange Is The New Black and the young actress Taryn Manning who plays Doggatt aka Pennsatucky reminds me so much of Lisa Brown, both physically and vocally. I can't help but think how good she would have been in the role of Stacey aka Kelly Louise. I'd like her to have been called Flola, though. Heh.

I agree that Masood has behaved appallingly for weeks but still--it's HIS house. Well, as i predicted here many moons ago, Paul Nicholas has been cast as Gavin, Kathy's husband and, most likely, Sharon's "real" dad. Tony Jordan wanted to bring him on as Kevin Wicks but they obviously decided to go in another direction for Kevin. Nicholas is apparently one of Letitia Dean's favorite actors so that will be nice.He's a good choice for the role. It seems Gavin will be much more of a James Wilmot-Brown than a Phil Mitchell.

I remember Tanya was so nasty to Raquel that she made me furious with her. Eva Pope was extremely good in the role, though.

As a member of SAG-AFTRA who's been upgraded in quite a few film and TV projects since the 1970s I can confirm that to get an upgrade today all you have to do is speak one word. On a film you go from getting $152 (as a background actor) to $880 (principal actor). And, like I just did on a film called The Big Short, you get both if you were upgraded on set. The daytime soaps were all under an AFTRA contract-the unions only merged a few years ago. They had a very different contract/pay scale than films, which were under the SAG contract. If you said five lines or less on any daytime soap than you'd be classified as an U/5 player-this paid about $180 in the early 80s when I worked the soaps. The "silent" background actors on The Doctors were just that-background actors. If they said 5 lines or less than they were U/5 players.

I think Y&R at that time, with its endless pauses and slow pacing, just wouldn't have been a good fit for her.

Carl, what I loved about the clip was Cindy protesting that she was just "phoning a friend" in the middle of the quiz night. And this was three years before Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? first hit the air in the UK! Wow, Shirley really thumped Carol on tonight's episode. And how dare Shabnam and Kush tell Mas they wanted him out of his own house? Give me a frigging break. Carmel's takedown of Bushra was very impressive. And too bad Jean wasn't in this episode-her "sausage surprise" would have made for an apt compliment to Kim's anatomically correct Vodka Ice Luge.

I remember seeing another actor at the screen test but he was dull. There must have been a third who had already screen tested when I got there. Reilly had an easygoing, natural quality. Eileen Fulton as Lisa seemed to be flirting with him!

Ah, I stand corrected, then. That was my recollection of what she said. It was a long time ago!

That is sad. On the exact same day in 1974 when I had my screen test with Eileen Fulton to play her son Chuckie they were also screen testing actors for John Colenback's replacement. I vividly remember watching John Reilly do his scene with Fulton and thinking he'd probably get the role. And he did!

Some months ago I posted here that I did a play with Ms. Butts in 1975-she and Isabel Sanford (The Jeffersons) were sisters!

Yes, Geraldine did write for the show for a bit. She was friends with Agnes Nixon's daughter, Emily. And she once again mocked the insistance of TPTB that Corinth was mentioned ad nauseum!

The very first time Geraldine had me on the floor holding my sides with hysterical laughter was her description of the Obonda Fever storyline on The Doctors!

Reading through these posts jogged my memory: my friend, the late, wonderful Geraldine Court was Doug Marland's choice to play Ann Forbes but he was vetoed by Agnes Nixon and ABC. She said Doug told her that they wanted people who weren't already familiar from other soaps. The show was then called Love Without End. She had me in stitches mocking the script she'd received, saying that every other line had the town's name "Corinth" in it-"Well, Roger, Corinth isn't the same sleepy town it used to be."

She was a terrific actress. I saw her in the play The Sisters Rosenzweig in London. I think it was on The Bill where she played a nasty drug dealer or something. She would have looked extremely different than Lindsay but then again a lot of actresses would. I was told they were on the brink of signing Bellingham when Lindsay and her agent blinked and she finally said yes, she'd return. Well, I knew Shirley would keep Jade's CF to herself. I didn't think she'd lie about her being adopted, though.