The "foreign soaps" topic

[JamesF]

I don't know what to make of this Stella stuff. I saw tonight's episode which was the first one in weeks I managed to catch and I just do not understand why she behaves in the way she does. She vaccilates between trying to get Ben's acceptance to whacking him about and it doesn't make sense. The dialogue doesn't help. She's always tossing off non-sequitirs with bizarre facial expressions.

Wow that was a long time ago. I think there are 5 or 6 people in that cast pic who were around in the episodes you watched though Libby is coming back this year full time when Susan is diagnosed with MS. It went to a soapy extreme last year but it's headed back to the laid back stuff it did in years gone by. I think it just highlights the problem with the US soaps having on identity anymore. Hollyoaks, EE and Neighbours are all so completely different but equally watchable.

[heatherwebber]

The US Neighbours run, short though it was, had Jesse Spencer who is now on House.

I can try to explain Stella a bit though the whole story is perplexing. Stella didn't seem to go off the rails until that night she blew up about Ben and took him to a horror fun house place. That's when the games started.

It's coming off that even when Stella is being nice to Ben there's an edge there and she's still messing with his mind. She's actually messing with his mind non-stop. She's also man-handled him in some way to get bruises all over his arms. It's definitely both physical and mental abuse. She tricked him into standing up to some bullies who then as she knew beat him to a pulp. Then when she thought he'd had enough she jumped in and took credit for helping him but gave him a weird pep-talk about not trusting people even if someone says they should. It was spooky odd.

But he honestly was a horror to her first before she whacked out and started all of this. Not that that at all makes her abuse any less horrifying. But he was a monster to her for awhile.

But she's not trying to get Bens acceptance anymore unless you were watching a very old episode. She's just playing nice to try to control him in some way. The whole thing is very bizarre. Add to it that it's all playing alongside that Mad May stuff and some manipulative stuff Shirley pulled against Denise.

[JamesF]

Thanks for filling me in on some of the stuff I didn't see. It doesn't help seeing an episode every couple of weeks with Stella being utterly different in each one. Tonight she was just completely weird...cooking a meal to celebrate Ben's return from football camp. It was only when he and Phil didn't take to what she'd made that she seemed genuinely hurt. Someone told me that last week she was self-harming by bashing her head against a wall because Ben went to camp instead of spending time with her.

I guess time will tell what the whole motivation is. There was some interesting stuff with Shirley laying it on the line to Phil that marrying Stella would be the biggest mistake of his life. I like that characters are interacting more these days.

As for the prior spoilers, is Tanya's heroin addict sister been in before or is she new? She sounds like a great addition. I love Tanya and I love EE doing depressing drug plots so it should be good.

[JamesF]

Just stumbled on this at YouTube. A clip from Neighbours 1997 season finale which I presume will end up on the DVD in September. It was one of my favourite finales with Karl cheating on wife Susan with sexy secretary Sarah, Anne about to walk in on her boyfriend getting it on with Caitlin in a Sydney hotel room and Phil proposing to Ruth at the exact moment her son Ben crashes his car at the racetrack.

[heatherwebber]

I haven't seen anything at all about Tanya's sister yet. No mention unless something got by me.

I never saw all the earlier Branning stuff either. When I picked up Jim was running around sort of watching Robbie & Sonya. But the other earlier Brannings were all gone.

I never saw the original Sam Mitchell. I never saw Tiffany or Bianca.

But I did see loads of reruns from the first few years.

I do find it odd that almost everyone left on the show is fairly recent. There's only a few old-timers left.

[dannigold]

Simon Ashdown has now replaced Tony Jordan as series consultant.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Ashdown is a fantastic talent, but losing Tony Jordan is sure to be yet another blow for EastEnders. No one understands that show better than Jordan, but the show just isn't the same anymore anyway. However, I don't think a series consultant has much authority anyway.

[dannigold]

They called him series consultant; but when Tony Jordan returned in 2005, John Yorke described his role as story consultant. Also Tony Jordan is responisble for Holby Blue, Hustle, Life on Mars plus two new shows for itv1; he was not exactly giving EE his full attention anyway. I think Ashdown will be much better in the role than Tony Jordan. Simon Ashdown has been their for at least ten - twelve years now, and is one of the most consistant writers.

[heatherwebber]

Despite the credit I'm not convinced Tony Jordan has been giving any or much input in awhile now. He did at first when he came back but I think it wore off.

I believe he wrote one lone episode where Pauline got married and then at the end of the episode a fight erupted in the pub.

But around that time he'd returned I do believe he was involved in a lot of retooling that went on. The show had become a bit of a mess. He helped fixed a lot of problems.

I think Tony wrote every episode of Hustle the first 2 or 3 years but may not have been involved in the most recent season.

[Sylph]

Isn't Tony involved in some USA TV project?

[heatherwebber]

Isn't Tony involved in some USA TV project?"">>

I don't know. If so I never heard about it. I think he was involved in the Fox Eastenders pilot which didn't get picked up last year. They'd reset the US version in some place like Chicago.

[heatherwebber]

Looks like Hollyoaks didn't work for BBC America. After a couple of time re-changes it now looks like it starts airing next week only at 3 AM.

[Paul Raven]

On Monday in Australia Neighbours was 'relaunched' with a new theme song,some new characters and filmed in HD.

All part of a revamp that promises a return to a more family friendly character based theme relying less on stunts and shocks.

Initial ratings saw the show have its best results this year.

[Sylph]

Brian Finch

Writer of explosive story-lines for 'Coronation Street' who later adapted 'Goodnight Mister Tom' for TV

Published: 30 June 2007

James Brian Finch, writer: born Wigan, Lancashire 25 July 1936; married 1963 Margaret Moran (one son, three daughters); died Wigan 27 June 2007.

For two decades, Brian Finch was one of Coronation Street's most prolific scriptwriters, contributing 151 episodes to the much-admired series set in a northern back street. Elsie Tanner, Ena Sharples, Annie Walker, Albert Tatlock, Ken Barlow and Hilda Ogden were all well-established national icons on his arrival, but Finch was one of those who breathed new life into the serial as new characters such as Bet Lynch, Deirdre Barlow, Mike Baldwin, Ivy Tilsley and Jack and Vera Duckworth became familiar.

During the years that Finch worked on the Street, the launch of EastEnders as a soap-opera competitor and the battle for ratings meant that the boundaries of high drama shifted. Having written the 1977 episode in which Rita Littlewood (Barbara Knox) married Len Fairclough (Peter Adamson), Finch's final episodes for the Granada serial 12 years later had the widowed Rita being defrauded by her lover Alan Bradley (Mark Eden), who used the deeds on her house to raise money to set up his own burglar-alarm business. This led to one of the Street's most explosive story-lines, with Alan trying to murder Rita when she discovered his deception and, finally, his death under a Blackpool tram.

Finch was a much valued member of the scriptwriting team. "Brian had a habit in story-line meetings of saying, 'I think we are missing a trick here'," recalled the veteran Coronation Street writer John Stevenson.

And sometimes he added, "Or possibly three." Then, he would elaborate on his idea. Another word he would use was "jeopardy", meaning who stands to get carved up. He was always looking for ways to "step up the jeopardy".

After leaving Coronation Street in 1989, Finch continued to write prolifically but gained his greatest success with a one-off script, fulfilling a long-time ambition to adapt Michelle Magorian's children's novel Goodnight Mister Tom for television (1998). The gentle, wartime story of a widower, Tom Oakley (played by a bushy-bearded John Thaw) who builds up a friendship with an evacuee boy billeted in his home, was so publicly and critically acclaimed that it was shown again within three months and repeated a total of six times on ITV. It also won Bafta's Lew Grade Award and the Television and Radio Industries Club Award as ITV Programme of the Year (both 1999).

Born in Wigan, Lancashire, in 1936, the son of a miner, Finch attended St Joseph's School in the town, where the music-hall comedian George Formby had previously been a pupil, and Thornleigh College, Bolton, before joining the Bolton Evening News as a junior reporter at the age of 15.

While doing National Service with the RAF in Paris, he wrote articles for the troops, and after demob found a job on the Manchester Evening News, then switched to the northern edition of TV Times, based in Manchester, where his assignments included ghost-writing articles for The Beatles.

Finch then worked as a BBC press officer, both in Manchester and London, and his submission of a play to the drama department led to his first screened work. Rodney, Our Intrepid Hero (1966), about a Sunday newspaper reporter on the trail of a vice ring, was broadcast in the prestigious Wednesday Play slot and starred Jim Norton in his first television role.

The journalist's scriptwriting career might have ended there had it not been for a call he made several years later to Granada Television accidentally being put through to the writer Jack Rosenthal, who was then working on Coronation Street and invited Finch to try his hand. After becoming a full-time writer for television, he also contributed scripts to the daytime serial Harriet's Back in Town (1973), the medical drama Owen MD (1973), the crime series Public Eye (1973, 1975), Hunter's Walk (1976) and Strangers (1978), the sitcoms The Life of Riley (1975) and The Squirrels (1976-77), the family haulage business drama The Brothers (1976) and the children's series The Tomorrow People (1973) and Potter's Picture Palace (1976, 1978).

On his own, Finch wrote the Thirty-Minute Theatre production An Arrow for Little Audrey (1972), the six-part children's thriller The Chinese Puzzle (1974) and the peak-time drama serial Fallen Hero (1978-79), about a Welsh Rugby Union player going north to switch to a more lucrative career in rugby league (Finch himself was a lifelong fan of the rugby league club Wigan Warriors).

From 1978 to 1989, he also wrote many episodes of All Creatures Great and Small, the popular BBC drama series starring Christopher Timothy and based on James Herriot's books about a country vet in North Yorkshire, leaving just a year before its final run.

He and Johnny Byrne were the programme's most regular writers and it seemed a short step for both of them to take on the same mantle for Heartbeat, ITV's adaptations of Nicholas Rhea's Constable novels about a village policeman in the Sixties in the North Riding of Yorkshire. They joined it from its first series, in 1992, and Finch stayed for 14 years, soon setting the tone for the occasional "disasters" visited on the fictional village of Aidensfield, with one of his early episodes involving a train crash in a snowstorm. His final episode of the drama was broadcast last December.

During these years, the versatile Finch also contributed to the crime series Juliet Bravo (1980-82), Bergerac (1984-90), The Bill (1989-90) and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates (1997-8), and wrote the BBC play Good as Gold (about a talented 14-year-old schoolgirl swimmer, 1986). He also created and wrote the football drama serial Murphy's Mob (1981-85) for children's television and the gentle comedy-drama Flying Lady (1987, 1989), starring Frank Windsor as Harry Bradley, who blows his redundancy money on a Rolls-Royce.

With other writers, Finch adapted another Magorian novel for television, Back Home (2001), with Sarah Lancashire as a newly independent woman finding problems adapting to family life after wartime work, and Goodbye, Mr Chips (2002), starring Martin Clunes as the popular teacher.

On his own, he wrote the screenplays of Heidi (for the cinema, starring Max von Sydow and Diana Rigg, 2005) and the television film The Shell Seekers (with Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell, 2006).

Anthony Hayward

[Andrew]

Everyone who sees Eastenders, how do you all watch it?

Are you from the United Kingdom?, or how do you watch it, i want to know, because i have seen that the most of you know what happens in Eastenders other than Emmerdale and Coronation who are also british soap operas

!!!!!!!!!..........??????????