Controversial Channel 4 soap Brookside is to be axed from its prime time weekly slots and moved to Saturday afternoons in a major reshuffle at the station. The show, which was devised by Grange Hill creator Phil Redmond, took on a groundbreaking role addressing previously taboo subjects such as incest, homosexuality and violence.
Audiences appear to have tired of its gritty realism, however, and a significant drop in viewers – from eight million ten years ago to just £1.6 million – is believed to have provoked the decision by new Channel 4 head Mark Thompson.
Speaking on Thursday, chief executive Thompson said: “Brookside has been a brilliant programme for Channel 4 as well as the most groundbreaking and influential soap of the past two decades. But peak time has changed radically across British television and is no longer an environment in which Brookside can thrive.”
News of the move resulted in tears among the cast, with creator Redmond describing the decision as “daft”. “We are all a bit pole axed,” he said. “Our big beef is that Channel 4 did not wait for the £1.5 million revamp changing the show’s look, story and music. We have a fantastic storyline for the relaunch on the 20th anniversary on November 2.”
None of which will be enough to prevent the series – which proved a launching ground for some of TV’s biggest stars, including Ricky Tomlinson, Amanda Burton and Anna Friel – from swapping its three evenings a week, plus Saturday omnibus, for a single 90-minute screening on Saturday afternoon.
Brookside’s large budget – it took up one quarter of the channel’s entire drama outlay – will now be ploughed into new and existing programmes.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
